Research Database
Displaying 181 - 200 of 301
A Review of Community Smoke Exposure from Wildfire Compared to Prescribed Fire in the United States
Year: 2018
Prescribed fire, intentionally ignited low-intensity fires, and managed wildfires—wildfires that are allowed to burn for land management benefit—could be used as a land management tool to create forests that are resilient to wildland fire. This could lead to fewer large catastrophic wildfires in the future. However, we must consider the public health impacts of the smoke that is emitted from wildland and prescribed fire. The objective of this synthesis is to examine the differences in ambient community-level exposures to particulate matter (PM2.5) from smoke in the United States in relation…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed Fire Policy Barriers and Opportunities: A Diversity of Challenges and Strategies Across the West
Year: 2018
We are conducting a project investigating policies that limit managers’ ability to conduct prescribed fire on US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in the 11 Western states. The goals for this phase of our work were to understand the extent to which various policies are limiting prescribed fire programs, strategies to maintain and increase prescribed fire activities, and opportunities for improving policies or policy implementation. To understand the diversity of challenges faced and strategies in use across the West, we conducted a legal analysis of the laws and…
Publication Type: Report
Living with Wildland Fire in America: Building New Bridges between Policy, Science, and Management
Year: 2018
In his October 26, 2017 commentary in these pages, Dr. Tom Zimmerman highlights a number of ongoing and future challenges faced by wildland fire management. To address these challenges he also identifies an important role for science and in particular management-relevant wildland fire research. Here, we first briefly elaborate on Dr. Zimmerman’s challenges and how they relate to new opportunities for the role of science. Second, we focus on three additional institutional or “cultural” barriers or divides that should be acknowledged and addressed when forging a path forward for wildland fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Landscapes 101: Understanding Landscape Approaches to Forest Restoration and Management
Year: 2018
About Go Big or Go Home?: The goals of this research project were to analyze how public land managers and stakeholders in Oregon’s east Cascades can plan and manage at landscape scales using scientific research and participatory simulation modeling (Envision).
Publication Type: Report
Synthesis of science to inform land management within the Northwest Forest Plan area: executive summary
Year: 2018
This is the executive summary of a three-volume science synthesis that addresses various ecological and social concerns regarding management of federal forests encompassed by the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). Land managers with the U.S. Forest Service provided questions that helped guide preparation of the synthesis. It builds on the 10-, 15-, and 20-year NWFP monitoring reports and synthesizes the vast body of relevant scientific literature that has accumulated in the 24 years since the NWFP was initiated. Here we summarize scientific findings and considerations for management that were…
Publication Type: Report
Rethinking the wildland fire management system
Year: 2018
In the western United States and elsewhere, the need to change society’s relationship with wildfire is well-recognized. Suppressing fewer fires in fire-prone systems is promoted to escape existing feedback loops that lead to ever worsening conditions and increasing risks to responders and communities. Our primary focus is how to catalyze changes in fire manager behavior such that responses are safer, more effective, and capitalize on opportunities for expanded use of fire. We daylight deep-seated, systemic drivers of behavior, and in so doing, challenge ingrained ways of thinking and acting…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland fire smoke and human health
Year: 2018
The natural cycle of landscape fire maintains the ecological health of the land, yet adverse health effects associated with exposure to emissions from wildfire produce public health and clinical challenges. Systematic reviews conclude that a positive association exists between exposure to wildfire smoke or wildfire particulate matter (PM2.5) and all-cause mortality and respiratory morbidity. Respiratory morbidity includes asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchitis and pneumonia. The epidemiological data linking wildfire smoke exposure to cardiovascular mortality and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest landscapes as social-ecological systems and implications for management
Year: 2018
Many of the most pressing threats to forests result from complex interactions between multiple stressors and require management on large spatial and temporal scales. For this reason, many ecosystem managers have begun to recognize the need to consider the broader context of decisions, and how outcomes of past, present and future decisions in one location may interact with outcomes of such decisions in other locations nearby. The landscape has been put forth as an appropriate unit for such holistic approaches to management. However, as there are differing definitions of landscapes, it can be…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Toward Shared Stewardship Across Landscapes: An Outcome-Based Investment Strategy
Year: 2018
Managers and owners of forests across the Nation face urgent challenges, among them catastrophic wildfires, invasive species, drought, and epidemics of forest insects and disease. Of particular concern are longer fire seasons and the rising size and severity of wildfires, along with the expanding risk to communities, natural resources, and the safety of firefighters. Accordingly, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, we are rethinking our approach to land management. We will work closely with States to set landscape-scale priorities for targeted treatments in areas with the…
Publication Type: Report
Using Social Media to Predict Air Pollution during California Wildfires
Year: 2018
Wildfires have significant effects on human populations worldwide. Smoke pollution, in particular, from either prescribed burns or uncontrolled wildfires, can have profound health impacts, such as reducing birth weight in children and aggravating respiratory and cardiovascular conditions. Scarcity in the measurements of particulate matter responsible for these public health issues makes addressing the problem of smoke dispersion challenging, especially when fires occur in remote regions. Previous research has shown that in the case of the 2014 King fire in California, crowdsourced data can be…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A comparison of the US National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) with recorded fire occurrence and final fire size
Year: 2018
Most previous research has assessed the ability of the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) to portray fire activity at either single sites or on small spatial scales, despite it being a nation-wide system. This study seeks to examine the relationships between a set of NFDRS fire danger indices (Fire Danger Ratings, Staffing Level and the Ignition Component) and measures of fire activity (fire occurrence and final fire size) across the entire conterminous US over an 8-year period. We reveal that different regions of the US display different levels of correspondence between each of the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire risk reduction in the United States: Leadership staff perceptions of local fire department roles and responsibilities
Year: 2018
As wildland fires have had increasing negative impacts on a range of human values, in many parts of the United States (U.S.) and around the world, collaborative risk reduction efforts among agencies, homeowners, and fire departments are needed to improve wildfire safety and mitigate risk. Using interview data from 46 senior officers from local fire departments around the U.S., we examine how leadership staff view their departments’ roles and responsibilities in wildfire risk reduction. Overall, our findings indicate that local fire personnel are often performing a variety of mitigation tasks…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Developing an online tool for identifying at-risk populations to wildfire smoke hazards
Year: 2018
Wildfire episodes pose a significant public health threat in the United States. Adverse health impacts associated with wildfires occur near the burn area as well as in places far downwind due to wildfire smoke exposures. Health effects associated with exposure to particulate matter arising from wildfires can range from mild eye and respiratory tract irritation to more serious outcomes such as asthma exacerbation, bronchitis, and decreased lung function. Real-time operational forecasts of wildfire smoke concentrations are available but they are not readily integrated with information on…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Impacts of different land management histories on forest change
Year: 2017
Many western North American forest types have experienced considerable changes in ecosystem structure, composition, and function as a result of both fire exclusion and timber harvesting. These two influences co-occurred over a large portion of dry forests, making it difficult to know the strength of either one on its own or the potential for an interaction between the two. In this study, we used contemporary remeasurements of a systematic historical forest inventory to investigate forest change in the Sierra Nevada. The historical data opportunistically spanned a significant land management…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Studying interregional wildland fire engine assignments for large fire suppression
Year: 2017
One crucial component of large fire response in the United States (US) is the sharing of wildland firefighting resources between regions: resources from regions experiencing low fire activity supplement resources in regions experiencing high fire activity. An important step towards improving the efficiency of resource sharing and related policies is to develop a better understanding of current assignment patterns. In this paper we examine the set of interregional wildland fire engine assignments for incidents in California and the Southwest Geographic Coordination Areas, utilising data from…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Historical perspective on the influence of wildfire policy, law, and informal institutions on management and forest resilience in a multiownership, frequent-fire, coupled human and natural system in Oregon, USA
Year: 2017
We examine the influence of wildfire institutions on management and forest resilience over time, drawing on research from a multiownership, frequent-fire, coupled human and natural system (CHANS) in the eastern Cascades of Oregon, USA. We constructed social-ecological histories of the study area’s three main landowner groups (national forest, private corporate, and tribal) using a historical framework (1905–2010). Our findings highlight two infrequently recognized linkages of multiownership, frequent-fire CHANS: (1) informal institutions (e.g., cultural norms, knowledge system and fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Efficacy of resource objective wildfires for restoration of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests in northern Arizona
Year: 2017
Current conditions in dry forests of the western United State have given rise to policy mandates for accelerated ecological restoration on U.S. National Forest System and other public lands. In southwestern ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Laws.) forests, mechanized tree thinning and prescribed fire are common restoration treatments but are not acceptable for all sites. Currently there is much interest in managing naturally ignited fires to accomplish restoration objectives but few studies have systematically examined the efficacy of such “resource objective” wildfires for restoring historical…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Health benefits and costs of filtration interventions that reduce indoor exposure to PM2.5 during wildfires
Year: 2017
Increases in hospital admissions and deaths are associated with increases in outdoor air particles during wildfires. This analysis estimates the health benefits expected if interventions had improved particle filtration in homes in Southern California during a 10-day period of wildfire smoke exposure. Economic benefits and intervention costs are also estimated. The six interventions implemented in all affected houses are projected to prevent 11% to 63% of the hospital admissions and 7% to 39% of the deaths attributable to wildfire particles. The fraction of the population with an admission…
Publication Type: Journal Article
An empirical machine learning method for predicting potential fire control locations for pre-fire planning and operational fire management
Year: 2017
During active fire incidents, decisions regarding where and how to safely and effectively deploy resources to meet management objectives are often made under rapidly evolving conditions, with limited time to assess management strategies or for development of backup plans if initial efforts prove unsuccessful. Under all but the most extreme fire weather conditions, topography and fuels are significant factors affecting potential fire spread and burn severity. We leverage these relationships to quantify the effects of topography, fuel characteristics, road networks and fire suppression effort…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Decomposition Rates for Hand-Piled Fuels
Year: 2017
Hand-constructed piles in eastern Washington and north-central New Mexico were weighed periodically between October 2011 and June 2015 to develop decay-rate constants that are useful for estimating the rate of piled biomass loss over time. Decay-rate constants (k) were determined by fitting negative exponential curves to time series of pile weight for each site. Piles at the Washington site (k = 0.027/year) decomposed significantly more slowly than piles at the New Mexico site (k = 0.064/year). Significant differences in k for each site may be a function of a between-site variation in pile…
Publication Type: Report