Research Database
Displaying 101 - 111 of 111
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
On the use of a firebrand generator to investigate the ignition of structures in WUI fires
Year: 2013
An experimental apparatus has been constructed to generate a controlled and repeatable size and mass distribution of glowing firebrands. The present study reports on a series of experiments conducted in order to characterize the performance of this firebrand generator. Firebrand generator characterization and subsequent structural ignition experiments were performed at the Fire Research Wind Tunnel Facility (FRWTF) at the Building Research Institute (BRI) in Tsukuba, Japan. The firebrand generator was fed with mulch generated from Korean Pine trees. To produce repeatable initial conditions…
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
Estimation of Wildfire Size and Risk Changes Due to Fuels Treatments
Year: 2012
Human land use practices, altered climates, and shifting forest and fire management policies have increased the frequency of large wildfires several-fold. Mitigation of potential fire behaviour and fire severity have increasingly been attempted through pre-fire alteration of wildland fuels using mechanical treatments and prescribed fires. Despite annual treatment of more than a million hectares of land, quantitative assessments of the effectiveness of existing fuel at reducing the size of actual wildfires or how they might alter the risk of burning across landscapes are currently lacking.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Reducing hazardous fuels on nonindustrial private forests: factors influencing landowner decisions
Year: 2011
In mixed-ownership landscapes, fuels conditions on private lands have implications for fire risk on public lands and vice versa. The success of efforts to mitigate fire risk depends on the extent, efficacy, and coordination of treatments on nearby ownerships. Understanding factors in forest owners’ decisions to address the risk of wildland fire is therefore important. This research uses logistic regression to analyze mail survey data and identify factors in forest owners’ decisions to reduce hazardous fuels in the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) ecosystem on the east side of Oregon. Results…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Reducing Fire Risk on Your Forest Property
Year: 2010
Whether you own a few acres or thousands, this publication will help you reduce the potential for wildfire damage on your property while improving overall forest health and wildlife habitat. Although these actions won’t prevent a wildfire from coming onto your property, they can make it more fire resistant. In other words, by following the guidelines in this publication you can reduce a fire’s severity so that most trees survive and firefighters are better able to attack and extinguish the blaze. While this publication provides suggestions for making your property more fire-resistant, it does…
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
A Homeowner’s Guide to Fire-Resistant Home Construction
Year: 2006
Defending homes from fast-spreading high-intensity wildfires is one of the most difficult and dangerous duties for wildland firefighters. Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE) feels strongly that informing homeowners about fire-resistant construction materials will help wildland firefighters better protect communities, and reduce some of the risks to firefighter safety. Moreover, when rural homes and communities are better prepared for wildland fire, then more options and opportunities open up to properly manage fires to restore forests and grasslands degraded from past…
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