Research Database
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3
Are wildfire risk mitigators more prepared to evacuate? Insights from communities in the Western United States
Year: 2025
As the realized experiences of wildfires threatening communities increase, the importance of proactive evacuation preparation and wildfire risk mitigation on private property to reduce the loss of lives and property is shaping wildfire policy and programs. To date, research has focused on pre-wildfire evacuation preparation and risk mitigation independently. This paper examines the substitutability or complementarity of these proactive risk-reducing actions. If mitigation and evacuation preparedness are substitutes, wildfire education programs may take a life-over-property approach. However,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Location, Location, Location: The Influence of Local Social Complexity on Risk Reduction Strategies in a WUI Settlement
Year: 2025
This research builds from existing scholarship to highlight the important role social complexity plays on managing and mitigating wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface. Researchers employed in-depth interviews to uncover similarities and differences in land and wildfire management preferences among what would appear to many to be a relatively homogenous population in a valley on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah. In spite of demographic similarities, researchers found meaningful and complex differences with regard to the local social context of subpopulations within the drainage.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Impact of Thinning Strategy, Surface Fuel Loading and Burning Conditions on Fuel Treatment Efficacy in Ponderosa Pine Dominated Forests of the Southern Rocky Mountains
Year: 2025
Managers across the western US seek effective fuel treatment strategies to mitigate hazardous fuel loads and risks of high severity fire in dry conifer forests. Conventional fuel hazard reduction treatments emphasis reducing canopy fuel continuity and surface fuel loading using an even spaced, thin-from-below approach, with pile or broadcast burning of residual surface fuels. Such treatments often result in forest structures that differ from the historical conditions. Ecological restoration treatments emphasize enhancing structural heterogeneity but may produce less fire-resistant stands…
Publication Type: Journal Article