Research Database
Displaying 41 - 60 of 101
Governing wildfires: toward a systematic analytical framework
Year: 2022
Despite recent research, a systematic approach to understanding wildfire governance is lacking. This article addresses this deficit by systematically reviewing governance theories and concepts applied so far in the academic literature on wildfires as a step toward achieving their more effective and holistic management. We engage our findings with the wider governance literature to unlock new thinking on wildfires as a process and outcome. This comparative approach enables us to propose a novel framework for analyzing wildfire governance based on four pillars: (1) actor participation in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Multi-Objective Scheduling of Fuel Treatments to Implement a Linear Fuel Break Network
Year: 2022
We developed and applied a spatial optimization algorithm to prioritize forest and fuel management treatments within a proposed linear fuel break network on a 0.5 million ha Western US national forest. The large fuel break network, combined with the logistics of conducting forest and fuel management, requires that treatments be partitioned into a sequence of discrete projects, individually implemented over the next 10–20 years. The original plan for the network did not consider how linear segments would be packaged into projects and how projects would be prioritized for treatments over time,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Mixed Methods Literature Review and Framework for Decision Factors That May Influence the Utilization of Managed Wildfire on Federal Lands, USA
Year: 2021
There is increasing discussion in the academic and agency literature, as well as popular media, about the need to address the existing deficit of beneficial fire on landscapes. One approach allowable under United States federal wildland fire policy that could help address this condition is by deliberately managing wildfire with a strategy other than full suppression (hereafter referred to as ‘managed wildfire’). To improve the understanding of the managed fire decision-making process, we conducted a mixed methods review of the existing literature. This review spanned 1976 to 2013 and used…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Disturbance shapes the US forest governance frontier: A review and conceptual framework for understanding governance change
Year: 2021
Conflict in US forest management for decades centered around balancing demands from forested ecosystems, with a rise in place-based collaborative governance at the end of the twentieth century. By the early 2000s, it was becoming apparent that not only had the mix of players involved in forest management changed, but so had the playing field, as climate-driven disturbances such as wildfire and insect and disease outbreaks were becoming more extensive and severe. In this conceptual review paper, we argue that disturbance has become the most prominent driver of governance change on US national…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Episodic occurrence of favourable weather constrains recovery of a cold desert shrubland after fire
Year: 2021
1. Key to the long-term resilience of dryland ecosystems is the recovery of foundation plant species following disturbance. In ecosystems with high interannual weather variability, understanding the influence of short-term environmental conditions on establishment of foundation species is essential for identifying vulnerable landscapes and developing restoration strategies. We asked how annual environmental conditions affect post-fire establishment of Artemisia tridentata, a shrub species that dominates landscapes across much of the western United States, and evaluated the influence of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Existing Improvements in Simulation of Fire–Wind Interaction and Its Effects on Structures
Year: 2021
This work provides a detailed overview of existing investigations into the fire–wind interaction phenomena. Specifically, it considers: the fanning effect of wind, wind direction and slope angle, and the impact of wind on fire modelling, and the relevant analysis (numerical and experimental) techniques are evaluated. Recently, the impact of fire on buildings has been widely analysed. Most studies paid attention to fire damage evaluation of structures as well as structure fire safety engineering, while the disturbance interactions that influence structures have been neglected in prior studies…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate and wildfire adaptation of inland Northwest US forests
Year: 2021
After a century of intensive logging, federal forest management policies were developed in the 1990s to protect remaining large trees and old forests in the western US. Today, due to rapidly changing ecological conditions, new threats and uncertainties, and scientific advancements, some policy provisions are being re-evaluated in interior Oregon and Washington. The case for re- evaluation is clearest where small- to large-sized, immature, fast-growing, fire-intolerant trees have filled in forests after both a long period of fire exclusion and the harvest of large, old trees. This infilling…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Contrasting the role of human- and lightning-caused wildfires on future fire regimes on a Central Oregon landscape
Year: 2021
Climate change is expected to increase fire activity in many regions of the globe, but the relative role of human vs. lightning-caused ignitions on future fire regimes is unclear. We developed statistical models that account for the spatiotemporal ignition patterns by cause in the eastern slopes of the Cascades in Oregon, USA. Projected changes in energy release component from a suite of climate models were used with our model to quantify changes in frequency and extent of human and lightning-caused fires and record-breaking events based on sizes of individual fires between contemporary (2006…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire decision support tools: an exploratory study of use in the United States
Year: 2020
In the United States, many decision support tools exist to provide fire managers with weather and fire behaviour information to inform and facilitate risk-based decision-making. Relatively little is known about how managers use these tools in the field and when and how they may serve to influence decisions. To address this gap, we conducted exploratory interviews with 27 wildfire management and fire weather professionals across the United States. Results reveal that barriers to the use of decision support tools are structural and social. Specifically, fire weather and behaviour models may not…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Weather, Risk, and Resource Orders on Large Wildland Fires in the Western US
Year: 2020
Our results suggest that weather is a primary driver of resource orders over the course of extended attack efforts on large fires. Incident Management Teams (IMTs) synthesize information about weather, fuels, and order resources based on expected fire growth rather than simply reacting to observed fire growth. Background and Objectives: Weather conditions are a well-known determinant of fire behavior and are likely to become more erratic under climate change. Yet, there is little empirical evidence demonstrating how IMTs respond to observed or expected weather conditions. An understanding of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Pre-season fire management planning: the use of Potential Operational Delineations to prepare for wildland fire events
Year: 2020
US fire scientists are developing Potential Wildfire Operational Delineations, also known as ‘PODs’, as a pre-fire season planning tool to promote safe and effective wildland fire response, strengthen risk management approaches in fire management and better align fire management objectives. PODs are a collaborative planning approach based on spatial analytics to identify potential wildfire control lines and assess the desirability of fire before ignition. They offer the opportunity to apply risk management principles with partners before the compressed timeframe of incident response. We…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Making the Transition from Science Delivery to Knowledge Coproduction in Boundary Spanning: A Case Study of the Alaska Fire Science Consortium
Year: 2019
Boundary organizations facilitate two-way, sustained interaction and communication between research and practitioner spheres, deliver existing science, and develop new, actionable scientific information to address emerging social–ecological questions applicable to decision-making. There is an increasing emphasis on the role of boundary organizations in facilitating knowledge coproduction, which is collaborative research with end users to develop actionable scientific information for decision-making. However, a deeper understanding of how boundary organizations and knowledge coproduction work…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Use of Science and Modeling by Practitioners in Landscape-Scale Management Decisions
Year: 2019
Scientific knowledge and tools have central roles in contemporary federal forest programs that promote restoration in large landscapes and across ownerships. Although we know much about the role of science in decisionmaking and ways that science can be better linked to practice, we know less about manager perspectives about science and science tools, and the perceived role of both in planning. We surveyed Forest Service resource managers in the western United States to address this knowledge gap. Respondents engaged most frequently with science via reading research publications; direct…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Risk Management and Analytics in Wildfire Response
Year: 2019
Purpose of Review The objectives of this paper are to briefly review basic risk management and analytics concepts, describe their nexus in relation to wildfire response, demonstrate real-world application of analytics to support response decisions and organizational learning, and outline an analytics strategy for the future. Recent Findings Analytics can improve decision-making and organizational performance across a variety of areas from sports to business to real-time emergency response. A lack of robust descriptive analytics on wildfire incident response effectiveness is a bottleneck for…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest Service fire management and the elusiveness of change
Year: 2019
There is broad recognition that fire management in the United States must fundamentally change and depart from practices that have led to an over-emphasis on suppression and limited the presence of fire in forested ecosystems. In this paper, we look at competing problem definitions in US Forest Service policy for fire management, the presence of goal ambiguity, and how these factors can explain why changes in fire management have been elusive, despite policy change. We consider US Forest Service fire policies, performance incentives, and decision-making processes for two sides of the agency:…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Severe Fire Danger Index: A Forecastable Metric to Inform Firefighter and Community Wildfire Risk Management
Year: 2019
Despite major advances in numerical weather prediction, few resources exist to forecast wildland fire danger conditions to support operational fire management decisions and community early-warning systems. Here we present the development and evaluation of a spatial fire danger index that can be used to assess historical events, forecast extreme fire danger, and communicate those conditions to both firefighters and the public. It uses two United States National Fire Danger Rating System indices that are related to fire intensity and spread potential. These indices are normalized, combined, and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Collaborations and capacities to transform fire management
Year: 2019
Wildfires bring stark attention to interactions among climate change, fire, forests, and livelihoods, prompting urgent calls for change from policy-makers and the public. Management options vary, but in many fire-adapted forests, the message from the scientific community is clear: Adapt to living with fire, reduce fuels and homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and strategically restore fire to ecosystems (1–4). Yet, changes to fire management outcomes have been elusive. For example, across the primarily public forestlands of the U.S. West, prescribed fires (intentionally lighted fires…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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
Human-related ignitions concurrent with high winds promote large wildfires across the USA
Year: 2018
Large wildfires (>40 ha) account for the majority of burned area across the contiguous United States (US) and appropriate substantial suppression resources. A variety of environmental and social factors influence wildfire growth and whether a fire overcomes initial attack efforts and becomes a large wildfire. However, little is known about how these factors differ between lightning-caused and human-caused wildfires. This study examines differences in temperature, vapour pressure deficit, fuel moisture and wind speed for large and small lightning- and human-caused wildfires during the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
High-severity fire: Evaluating its key drivers and mapping its probability across western US forests
Year: 2018
Wildland fire is a critical process in forests of the western United States (US). Variation in fire behavior, which is heavily influenced by fuel loading, terrain, weather, and vegetation type, leads to heterogeneity in fire severity across landscapes. The relative influence of these factors in driving fire severity, however, is poorly understood. Here, we explore the drivers of high-severity fire for forested ecoregions in the western US over the period 2002–2015. Fire severity was quantified using a satellite-inferred index of severity, the relativized burn ratio. For each ecoregion, we…
Publication Type: Journal Article