Research Database
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12
The national Fire and Fire Surrogate study: Effects of fuel treatments in the Western and Eastern United States after 20 years
Year: 2025
The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was initiated more than two decades ago with the goal of evaluating the ecological impacts of mechanical treatments and prescribed fire in different ecosystems across the United States. Since then, 4 of the original 12 sites remain active in managing and monitoring the original FFS study which provides a unique opportunity to look at the long-term effects of these treatments in different regions. These sites include California (Blodgett Forest Research Station), Montana (Lubrecht Experimental Forest), North Carolina (Green River Game Land), and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed fire, managed burning, and previous wildfires reduce the severity of a southwestern US gigafire
Year: 2025
In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies. We evaluated the effects of previous fuels reduction treatments, including prescribed fire and wildfire managed for resource benefit, and other wildfires on the burn severity of the 2022 Black Fire in southwestern New Mexico, USA. The Black Fire burned over 131,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Carbon, climate, and natural disturbance: a review of mechanisms, challenges, and tools for understanding forest carbon stability in an uncertain future
Year: 2024
In this review, we discuss current research on forest carbon risk from natural disturbance under climate change for the United States, with emphasis on advancements in analytical mapping and modeling tools that have potential to drive research for managing future long-term stability of forest carbon. As a natural mechanism for carbon storage, forests are a critical component of meeting climate mitigation strategies designed to combat anthropogenic emissions. Forests consist of long-lived organisms (trees) that can store carbon for centuries or more. However, trees have finite lifespans, and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Parcel-Level Risk Affects Wildfire Outcomes: Insights from Pre-Fire Rapid Assessment Data for Homes Destroyed in 2020 East Troublesome Fire
Year: 2024
Parcel-level risk (PLR) describes how wildfire risk varies from home to home based on characteristics that relate to likely fire behavior, the susceptibility of homes to fire, and the ability of firefighters to safely access properties. Here, we describe the WiRē Rapid Assessment (RA), a parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessment tool designed to evaluate PLR with a small set of measures for all homes in a community. We investigate the relationship between 2019 WiRē RA data collected in the Columbine Lake community in Grand County, Colorado, and whether assessed homes were destroyed in the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Informing proactive wildfire management that benefits vulnerable communities and ecological values
Year: 2024
- In response to mounting wildfire risks, land managers across the country will need to dramatically increase proactive wildfire management (e.g. fuel and forest health treatments). While human communities vary widely in their vulnerability to the impacts of fire, these discrepancies have rarely informed prioritizations for wildfire mitigation treatments. The ecological values and ecosystem services provided by forests have also typically been secondary considerations.
- To identify locations across the conterminous US where proactive wildfire management is likely to be effective…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Efficacy of Red Flag Warnings in Mitigating Human-Caused Wildfires across the Western United States
Year: 2024
Red flag warnings (RFWs) are issued by the U.S. National Weather Service to alert fire and emergency response agencies of weather conditions that are conducive to extreme wildfire growth. Distinct from most weather warnings that aim to reduce exposure to anticipated hazards, RFWs may also mitigate hazards by reducing the occurrence of new ignitions. We examined the efficacy of RFWs as a means of limiting human-caused wildfire ignitions. From 2006 to 2020, approximately 8% of wildfires across the western United States and 19% of large wildfires (≥40 ha) occurred on days with RFWs. Although the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate change mitigation-adaptation relationships in forest management: perspectives from the fire-prone American West
Year: 2024
Minimizing negative impacts of climate change on human and natural systems requires mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to new climate conditions. Forestry provides grounds to study the relationship between these two concepts: carbon flux and storage are ecosystem services of forests, while forests are growing increasingly vulnerable to climate-driven disturbances. We examined the practice and interplay of mitigation and adaptation in the American West, which is a testbed for the conceptual balance between carbon cycling and growing climate-related risk given its abundance…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Managing fire-prone forests in a time of decreasing carbon carrying capacity
Year: 2024
Changing climatic conditions are increasing overstory tree mortality in forests globally. This restructuring of the distribution of biomass is making already flammable forests more combustible, posing a major challenge for managing the transition to a lower biomass state. In western US dry conifer forests, tree density resulting from over a century of fire-exclusion practices has increased the risk of high-severity wildfire and susceptibility to climate-driven mortality. Reducing dead fuel loads will require new approaches to mitigate risk to the remaining live trees by preparing forests to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Changes in wildfire occurrence and risk to homes from 1990 through 2019 in the Southern Rocky Mountains, USA
Year: 2023
Wildfires and housing development have increased since the 1990s, presenting unique challenges for wildfire management. However, it is unclear how the relative influences of housing growth and changing wildfire occurrence have altered risk to homes, or the potential for wildfire to threaten homes. We used a random forests model to predict burn probability in relation to weather variables at 1-km resolution and monthly intervals from 1990 through 2019 in the Southern Rocky Mountains ecoregion. We quantified risk by combining the predicted burn probabilities with decadal housing density. We…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exploring relationships between perceived suppression capabilities and resident performance of wildfire mitigations
Year: 2022
Increased wildfire activity has led to renewed interest in enhancing local capacity to reduce wildfire risk in residential areas. Local fire departments (LFDs) are often the first responders to rural wildfires. However, LFDs may also struggle to address service demands in the growing wildland urban interface, including increasing numbers of wildfire incidents and changes in area socio-demographics (e.g., aging populations) or culture (e.g., decreasing volunteerism, new residents). We used a mixed-mode survey (n = 770) to explore rural perceptions of various fire service organizations (FSOs),…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Using mental models to understand trade-offs in wildfire risk mitigation
Year: 2019
Throughout much of the Pacific Northwest, the interplay between environmental and social change not only contributes to wildfire risk, but also complicates efforts to mitigate it. As fire-prone landscapes become increasingly economically and culturally diverse, wildfire risk mitigation decisions have implications for a correspondingly broader set of values, resulting in greater potential for trade-offs (that is, actions that enhance some values but adversely affect others)....
Publication Type: Report
Community wildfire preparedness: a global state-of-the-knowledge summary of social science research
Year: 2015
This article builds on findings from a synthesis of fire social science research that was published from 2000 to 2010 to understand what has been learned more recently about public response to wildfires. Two notable changes were immediately noted in the fairly substantial number of articles published between 2011 and 2014. First, while over 90% of the articles found in the initial synthesis were US-based studies, roughly half of the articles published since 2010 have been conducted outside the USA, the majority from Australia. Second, while the primary focus of earlier studies was on pre-fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article