Research Database
Displaying 101 - 111 of 111
Wildland firefighter entrapment avoidance: modelling evacuation triggers
Year: 2013
Wildland firefighters are often called on to make tactical decisions under stressful conditions in order to suppress a fire. These decisions can be hindered by human factors such as insufficient knowledge of surroundings and conditions, lack of experience, overextension of resources or loss of situational awareness. One potential tool for assisting fire managers in situations where human factors can hinder decision-making is the Wildland–Urban Interface Evacuation (WUIVAC) model, which models fire minimum travel times to create geographic trigger buffers for evacuation recommendations.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Living in a tinderbox: wildfire risk perceptions and mitigating behaviors
Year: 2013
The loss of homes to wildfires is an important issue in the USA and other countries. Yet many homeowners living in fire-prone areas do not undertake mitigating actions, such as clearing vegetation, to decrease the risk of losing their home. To better understand the complexity of wildfire risk-mitigation decisions and the role of perceived risk, we conducted a survey of homeowners in a fire-prone area of the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. We examine the relationship between perceived wildfire risk ratings and risk-mitigating behaviours in two ways. First, we model wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Social Science at the WUI: A Compendium of Research Results to Create Fire-Adapted Communities
Year: 2013
Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire. Building on a relatively small number of foundational studies, this research now addresses a wide range of topics including mitigation activities on private lands, fuels reduction treatments on public land, community impacts and resident behaviors during fire, acceptance of approaches to postfire restoration and recovery, and fire management policy and decisionmaking. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting…
Publication Type: Report
Mapping multiple forest threats in the northwestern United States
Year: 2013
US forestlands are increasingly subject to disturbances including wildfire, insects and disease, and urban and exurban development. Devising strategies for addressing these “forest threats“ depends on anticipating where individual disturbances are most likely and where they might occur in combination. However, many spatial data sets describing forest threats are produced at fine scales but are intended only for coarse-scale planning and policy purposes. We demonstrate one way to combine and display forest threat data at their appropriate spatial scales, using spatial data characterizing…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and preparing for wildfire in the wildland-urban interface
Year: 2013
Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America’s wildland areas. However, the rising number of homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), associated impacts on lives and property from wildfire, and escalating costs of wildfire management have led to an urgent need for communities to become "fire-adapted." We present maps of the conterminous United States that illustrate historical natural fire regimes, the wildland-urban interface, and the number and location of structures burned since 1999. We outline a sampler of actions, programs, and community planning and…
Publication Type: Report
Overcoming barriers to firewise actions by residents
Year: 2013
Encouraging the public to take action (e.g., creating defensible space) that can reduce the likelihood of wildfire damage and decrease the likelihood of injury is a common approach to increasing wildfire safety and damage mitigation. This study was designed to improve our understanding of both individual and community actions that homeowners currently do or might take to protect their home or property, and the barriers that impede homeowners from completing firewise treatments to their home or property.
Publication Type: Report
Wildfire exposure to analysis on the national forests in the Pacific Northwest, USA
Year: 2012
We analyzed wildfire exposure for key social and ecological features on the national forests in Oregon and Washington. The forests contain numerous urban interfaces, old growth forests, recreational sites, and habitat for rare and endangered species. Many of these resources are threatened by wildfire, especially in the east Cascade Mountains fire-prone forests. The study illustrates the application of wildfire simulation for risk assessment where the major threat is from large and rare naturally ignited fires, versus many previous studies that have focused on risk driven by frequent and small…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Has Fire Suppression Increased the Amount of Carbon Stored in Western US Forests?
Year: 2008
Active 20th century fire suppression in western US forests, and a resulting increase in stem density, is thought to account for a significant fraction of the NorthAmerican carbon sink. We compared California forest inventories from the 1930s with inventories from the 1990s to quantify changes in aboveground biomass. Stem density in mid-montane conifer forests increased by 34%, while live aboveground carbon stocks decreased by 26%. Increased stem density reflected an increase in the number of small trees and a net loss of large trees. Large trees contain a disproportionate amount of carbon,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Lessons of the Hayman fire: weeds, woodpeckers and fire severity
Year: 2008
This project took advantage of pre-fire data gathered within the perimeter of Colorado’s 2002 Hayman Fire. Researchers studied the unique fire regime of Front Range ponderosa pine forests, and fire effects on understory-plant communities and American Three-toed Woodpeckers. Results confirmed that historically, the diverse structure of these forests was maintained by a mixed-severity fire regime that included large areas of severe fire. In addition, researchers found that much of the burn meets habitat requirements for American Three-toed Woodpeckers, and that understory plant species that…
Publication Type: Report
Social Science to Improve Fuels Management: A Synthesis of Research Relevant to Communicating with Homeowners About Fuels Management
Year: 2006
The large fires in southern California during the fall of 2003 highlighted the significant fire hazard many wildland-urban interface communities and homes currently face. Despite this risk, people continue to leave metropolitan areas for the beauty and tranquility of the wildland-urban interface. The peaceful natural views instill a treasured sense of place and privacy among residents, which can make it challenging to manage the environment and reduce fuels (Lee and Tribe 1987, Lee et al. 1987, Shands 1988, Sullivan 1994, Weise and Martin 1994). Firefighting and land management agencies as…
Publication Type: Report
Social science in fuel management: an annotated bibliography of prescribed fire
Year: 2002
This annotated bibliography is collected from professional journals in natural resource management and sociology, conference proceedings, and technical reports. It is categorized into thirteen sections: acceptability, fire in wilderness, general, history, institutions, media, policy, public attitude toward wildfire, public involvement, public perception of prescribed burning, risk perception, social psychology, and wildland-urban interface.
Publication Type: Report