Increased wildfire activity (e.g. number of starts, area burned, fire behaviour) across the western United States in recent decades has heightened interest in resolving climate–fire relationships.
Research has found that community wildfire protection planning can make significant contributions to wildfire mitigation and preparedness, but can the planning process and resulting Community Wildfire Protection Plans make a difference to wildfire response and recovery?
Where a legacy of aggressive wildland fire suppression has left forests in need of fuel reduction, allowing wildland fire to burn may provide fuel treatment benefits, thereby reducing suppression costs from subsequent fires. The least-cost-plus-net-value-change model of wildland fire economics includes benefits of wildfire in a framework for evaluating suppression options.
Despite the importance of effective communication about forest and fuel management, little is known about how best to frame information to facilitate public understanding and increase support.
This guide describes the benefits, opportunities, and trade-offs concerning fuel treatments in the dry mixed conifer forests of northern California and the Klamath Mountains, Pacific Northwest Interior, northern and central Rocky Mountains, and Utah.
Declining forest health attributed to associations between extensive bark beetle-caused tree mortality, accumulations of hazardous fuels, wildfire, and climate change have catalyzed changes in forest health and wildfire protection policies of land management agencies.
Risk analysis evolved out of the need to make decisions concerning highly stochastic events, and is well suited to analyse the timing, location and potential effects of wildfires.
The 12-site National Fire and Fire Surrogate study (FFS) was a multivariate experiment that evaluated ecological consequences of alternative fuel-reduction treatments in seasonally dry forests of the US. Each site was a replicated experiment with a common design that compared an un-manipulated control, prescribed fire, mechanical and mechanical + fire treatments.
Fuel reduction treatments to reduce fire risk have become commonplace in the fire adapted forests of western North America. These treatments generate significant woody debris, or slash, and burning this material in piles is a common and inexpensive approach to reducing fuel loads.
Rehabilitation and timber-salvage activities after wildfire require rapid planning and rational decisions. Identifying areas with high risk for erosion and soil productivity losses is important. Moreover, allocation of corrective and mitigative efforts must be rational and prioritized.