Research Database
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9
Forest thinning and prescribed burning treatments reduce wildfire severity and buffer the impacts of severe fire weather
Year: 2024
BackgroundThe capacity of forest fuel treatments to moderate the behavior and severity of subsequent wildfires depends on weather and fuel conditions at the time of burning. However, in-depth evaluations of how treatments perform are limited because encounters between wildfires and areas with extensive pre-fire data are rare. Here, we took advantage of a 1200-ha randomized and replicated experiment that burned almost entirely in a subsequent wildfire under a wide range of weather conditions. We compared the impacts of four fuel treatments on fire severity, including two thin-only, a thin-burn…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Tamm review: A meta-analysis of thinning, prescribed fire, and wildfire effects on subsequent wildfire severity in conifer dominated forests of the Western US
Year: 2024
Increased understanding of how mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, and wildfire affect subsequent wildfire severity is urgently needed as people and forests face a growing wildfire crisis. In response, we reviewed scientific literature for the US West and completed a meta-analysis that answered three questions: (1) How much do treatments reduce wildfire severity within treated areas? (2) How do the effects vary with treatment type, treatment age, and forest type? (3) How does fire weather moderate the effects of treatments? We found overwhelming evidence that mechanical thinning with…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The influence of wildfire risk reduction programs and practices on recreation visitation
Year: 2024
Background: The increasing extent and severity of uncharacteristic wildfire has prompted numerous policies and programs promoting landscape-scale fuels reduction. Aims: We used novel data sources to measure how recreation was influenced by fuels reduction efforts under the US Forest Service Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Program. Methods: We used posts to four social media platforms to estimate the number of social media user-days within CFLR landscapes and asked: (1) did visitation within CFLR Program landscapes between…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exploring spatial heterogeneity in synergistic effects of compound climate hazards: Extreme heat and wildfire smoke on cardiorespiratory hospitalizations in California
Year: 2024
Extreme heat and wildfire smoke events are increasingly co-occurring in the context of climate change, especially in California. Extreme heat and wildfire smoke may have synergistic effects on population health that vary over space. We leveraged high-resolution satellite and monitoring data to quantify spatially varying compound exposures to extreme heat and wildfire smoke in California (2006–2019) at ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) level. We found synergistic effects between extreme heat and wildfire smoke on daily cardiorespiratory hospitalizations at the state level. We also found spatial…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Simulated Future Shifts in Wildfire Regimes in Moist Forests of Pacific Northwest, USA
Year: 2024
Fire is an integral natural disturbance in the moist temperate forests of the Pacific Northwest of the United States, but future changes remain uncertain. Fire regimes in this climatically and biophysically diverse region are complex, but typically climate limited. One challenge for interpreting potential changes is conveying projection uncertainty. Using projections of Energy Release Component (ERC) derived from 12 global climate models (GCM) that vary in performance relative to the region's contemporary climate, we simulated thousands of plausible fire seasons with the stochastic spatial…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Coupling fire and energy in the Anthropocene: Deploying scale to analyze social vulnerability to forced electricity outages in California
Year: 2024
Extreme events such as wildfires and winter storms result in disruptions to grid-based electricity delivery. Electricity supply disruptions are both reactive, whereby specific events cause damage to physical infrastructure, or anticipatory where electricity suppliers—namely electric utility companies—preemptively de-energize sections of an electrical grid or distribution network based on elevated potential of extreme conditions that may cause wildfire ignition. De-energization has been promoted as a strategy to mitigate risk of wildfire ignition and spread when active fires may encounter…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire suppression makes wildfires more severe and accentuates impacts of climate change and fuel accumulation
Year: 2024
Fire suppression is the primary management response to wildfires in many areas globally. By removing less-extreme wildfires, this approach ensures that remaining wildfires burn under more extreme conditions. Here, we term this the “suppression bias” and use a simulation model to highlight how this bias fundamentally impacts wildfire activity, independent of fuel accumulation and climate change. We illustrate how attempting to suppress all wildfires necessarily means that fires will burn with more severe and less diverse ecological impacts, with burned area increasing at faster rates than…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A systematic scoping review of the Social Vulnerability Index as applied to natural hazards
Year: 2024
Social vulnerability approaches seek to identify social, economic, and political drivers that exacerbate environmental risks, and inform adaptation strategies that redress uneven vulnerabilities. Social Vulnerability Indices (SVIs), one such approach, have exponentially increased in use since their inception in 2003. This paper contributes the most comprehensive and rigorous systematic assessment of SVIs to date, as applied in hazard and disaster contexts. We evaluate how 246 peer-reviewed articles, published online between 2003 and 2021, conceptualized, constructed, and applied SVIs across…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Record-breaking fire weather in North America in 2021 was initiated by the Pacific northwest heat dome
Year: 2024
The 2021 North American wildfire season was marked by record breaking fire-conducive weather and widespread synchronous burning, extreme fire behaviour, smoke and evacuations. Relative to 1979–2021, the greatest number of temperature and vapor pressure deficit records were broken in 2021, and in July alone, 3.2 million hectares burned in Canada and the United States. These events were catalyzed by an intense heat dome that formed in late June over western North America that synchronized fire danger, challenging fire suppression efforts. Based on analysis of persistent positive anomalies of…
Publication Type: Journal Article