Research Database
Displaying 61 - 80 of 154
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
Growth of the wildland-urban interface within and around U.S. National Forests and Grasslands, 1990–2010
Year: 2022
The wildland-urban interface (WUI), where housing is in close proximity to or intermingled with wildland vegetation, is widespread throughout the United States, but it is unclear how this type of housing development affects public lands. We used a national dataset to examine WUI distribution and growth (1990–2010) in proximity to National Forests and created a typology to characterize each National Forest’s combination of WUI area and housing growth. We found that National Forests are hotspots for WUI growth, with a 38% increase in WUI area and 46% growth in WUI houses from 1990 to 2010, in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Reimagine fire science for the anthropocene
Year: 2022
Fire is an integral component of ecosystems globally and a tool that humans have harnessed for millennia. Altered fire regimes are a fundamental cause and consequence of global change, impacting people and the biophysical systems on which they depend. As part of the newly emerging Anthropocene, marked by human-caused climate change and radical changes to ecosystems, fire danger is increasing, and fires are having increasingly devastating impacts on human health, infrastructure, and ecosystem services. Increasing fire danger is a vexing problem that requires deep transdisciplinary, trans-…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Priorities and Effectiveness in Wildfire Management: Evidence from Fire Spread in the Western United States
Year: 2022
Costs of fighting wildfires have increased substantially over the past several decades. Yet surprisingly little is known about the effectiveness of wildfire suppression or how wildfire incident managers prioritize resources threatened within a wildfire incident. We investigate the determinants of wildfire suppression effort using a novel empirical strategy comparing over 1,400 historical fire perimeters to the spatial distribution of assets at risk. We find that fires are more likely to stop spreading as they approach homes, particularly when homes are of greater value. This effect persists…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Professional wildfire mitigation competency: a potential policy gap
Year: 2022
Studies show that effective strategies to mitigate the risk of structural damage in wildfires include defensible spaces and home hardening. Structures in the western United States are especially at risk. Several jurisdictions have adopted codes that require implementation of these strategies. However, construction and landscaping professionals are generally not required to obtain credentials indicating their competency in mitigating the risk of structural damage in a wildfire. We discuss the implications of this policy gap and propose a solution to bolster competency of professionals in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Using Structure Location Data to Map the Wildland–Urban Interface in Montana, USA
Year: 2022
The increasing wildfire activity and rapid population growth in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) have made more Americans exposed to wildfire risk. WUI mapping plays a significant role in wildfire management. This study used the Microsoft building footprint (MBF) and the Montana address/structure framework datasets to map the WUI in Montana. A systematic comparison of the following three types of WUI was performed: the WUI maps derived from the Montana address/structure framework dataset (WUI-P), the WUI maps derived from the MBF dataset (WUI-S), and the Radeloff WUI map derived from census…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Comparing particulate morphology generated from human- made cellulosic fuels to natural vegetative fuels
Year: 2022
Background: In wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires, particulates from the combustion of both natural vegetative fuels and engineered cellulosic fuels may have deleterious effects on the environment. Aims: The research was conducted to investigate the morphology of the particulate samples generated from the combustion of oriented strand board (OSB). Findings were compared to the particulate samples collected from the combustion of noble-fir branches. Methods: The exposure conditions were varied to induce either smouldering combustion or flaming combustion of the specimens. Particulate samples…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Relationships between building features and wildfire damage in California, USA and Pedrógão Grande, Portugal
Year: 2022
Background: Buildings in communities near wildlands, in the wildland–urban interface (WUI), can experience wildfire damage.Aims: To quantitatively assess the relationship between building features and damage, a building wildfire resistance index is developed and validated with the 2013–2017 CAL FIRE (DINS) database from California, USA, and the 2017 Pedrógão Grande Fire Complex post-fire investigation from Portugal.Methods: Three statistical dependence tests are compared to evaluate the relationship between selected building features and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Expanding wildland-urban interface alters forest structure and landscape context in the northern United States
Year: 2022
The wildland-urban interface (WUI), where housing intermingles with wildland vegetation, is the fastest-growing land use type in the United States. Given the ecological and social benefits of forest ecosystems, there is a growing need to more fully understand how such development alters the landscape context and structure of these WUI forests. In a space-for-time analysis we utilized land cover data, forest inventory plots, and housing density data over time to examine differences in forest characteristics of the northern US across three WUI change classes: (a) forest that has been in WUI…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Extreme fire spread events and area burned under recent and future climate in the western USA
Year: 2022
Aim: Wildfire activity in recent years is notable not only for an expansion of total area burned but also for large, single-day fire spread events that pose challenges to ecological systems and human communities. Our objectives were to gain new insight into the relationships between extreme single-day fire spread events, annual area burned, and fire season climate and to predict changes under future warming. Location: Fire-prone regions of the western USA. Time period: 2002–2020; a future +2°C scenario. Methods: We used a satellite-derived dataset of daily fire spread events and gridded…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Effectiveness of fitness training and psychosocial education intervention programs in wildland firefighting: a cluster randomised control trial
Year: 2022
Critical to effective fire management is the protection and preparedness of highly trained wildland firefighters who routinely face extreme physical and psychological demands. To date, there is limited scientific evidence of psychosocial education intervention effectiveness in this context. The objective of the current study is to utilise a cluster randomised control trial study design to evaluate fitness training and psychosocial education intervention programs across a wildland fire season. Wildland firefighters (n = 230) were randomly assigned by their work location to one of four…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Lifestyle and environmental factors may induce airway and systemic inflammation in firefighters
Year: 2022
Health status depends on multiple genetic and non-genetic factors. Nonheritable factors (such as lifestyle and environmental factors) have stronger impact on immune responses than genetic factors. Firefighters work is associated with exposure to air pollution and heat stress, as well as: extreme physical effort, mental stress, or a changed circadian rhythm, among others. All these factors can contribute to both, short-term and long-term impairment of the physical and mental health of firefighters. Increased levels of some inflammatory markers, such as pro-inflammatory cytokines or C-reactive…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Community Engagement With Proactive Wildfire Management in British Columbia, Canada: Perceptions, Preferences, and Barriers to Action
Year: 2022
Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) are increasingly threatening lives and livelihoods. These growing impacts have prompted a paradigm shift toward proactive wildfire management that prioritizes prevention and preparedness instead of response. Despite this shift, many communities remain unprepared for wildfires in the WUI due to diverse individual and social-political factors influencing engagement with proactive management approaches. The catastrophic fire seasons of 2017, 2018, and 2021 in British Columbia (BC), Canada, highlighted just how vulnerable communities continue to be…
Publication Type: Journal Article
An ecological perspective on living with fire in ponderosa pine forests of Oregon and Washington: Resistance, gone but not forgotten
Year: 2021
Wildland fires (WLF) have become more frequent, larger, and severe with greater impacts to society and ecosys- tems and dramatic increases in firefighting costs. Forests throughout the range of ponderosa pine in Oregon and Washington are jeopardized by the interaction of anomalously dense forest structure, a warming and dry- ing climate, and an expanding human population. These forests evolved with frequent interacting disturbances including low-severity surface fires, droughts, and biological disturbance agents (BDAs). Chronic low-severity disturbances were, and still are, critical to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Land use planning approaches in the wildland-urban interface: an analysis of four western states
Year: 2021
This report focuses on a critical aspect of working towardscommunity fire adaptation: analyzing effective land use policy and regulatory solutions in thewildland-urban interface (WUI). The WUI is any area where the built and natural environmentscreate a set of conditions that allow for the ignition and continued spread of wildfire. Theseverity of how wildfire impacts the WUI is influenced by a number of factors, such as whereand how homes, businesses, and infrastructure are developed, weather conditions, and theamount, type, and arrangement of vegetation.Land use planning plays a role in…
Publication Type: Report
Planning for future fire: Scenario analysis of an accelerated fuel reduction plan for the western United States
Year: 2021
Recent fire seasons brought a new fire reality to the western US, and motivated federal agencies to explore scenarios for augmenting current fuel management and forest restoration in areas where fires might threatencritical resources and developed areas. To support this effort, we modeled the scheduling of an accelerated forest and fuel management scenario on 76 western US national forests. Specifically, we modeled a 10-year ramp up of current forest and fuel management that targeted the source of wildfire exposure to developed areas andsimulated treatment in areas that accounted for 77% of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
“Us versus Them;” Local Social Fragmentation and Its Potential Effects on Building Pathways to Adapting to Wildfire
Year: 2021
As the need for wildfire adaptation for human populations in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) intensifies in the face of changes that have increased the number of wildfires that exceed 100 thousand acres, it is becoming more important to come to a better understanding of social complexity on the WUI landscape. It is just as important to further our understanding of the social characteristics of the individual human settlements that inhabit that landscape and attempt to craft strategies to improve wildfire adaptation that are commensurate with local values, management preferences, and local…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest Roads and Operational Wildfire Response Planning
Year: 2021
Supporting wildfire management activities is frequently identified as a benefit of forestroads. As such, there is a growing body of research into forest road planning, construction, andmaintenance to improve fire surveillance, prevention, access, and control operations. Of interesthere is how road networks directly support fire control operations, and how managers incorporatethat information into pre-season assessment and planning. In this communication we briefly reviewand illustrate how forest roads relate to recent advances in operationally focused wildfire decisionsupport. We focus on two…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The "strings attached" to community difference and potential pathways to fire adaptiveness in the wildland urban interface
Year: 2021
This article identifies specific social characteristics in two wildland urban interface communities that may have significant impacts on the ability of those communities to adapt to wildfire. Researchers used a mixed-methods approach to triangulate results to identify potential views and motives surrounding three important behaviors and values related to crafting potential strategies to mitigate wildfire risk. The analysis of quantitative data in the form of responses to Likert-type questions and qualitative data in the form of responses to questions asked during focus group sessions yielded…
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