fuels

Fuel treatments are commonly applied to increase resilience to wildfire in dry and historically frequent-fire forests of western North America. The long-term effects of fuel treatments on forest structure, fuel profiles (amount and configuration of fuels), and potential wildfire behavior are not well known relative to short-term effects.

Wildfire futures and aboveground carbon (C) dynamics associated with forest restoration programs that integrate resource objective wildfire as part of a larger treatment strategy are not well understood.

We integrated a mechanistic wildfire simulation system with an agent-based landscape change model to investigate the feedbacks among climate change, population growth, development, landowner decision-making, vegetative succession, and wildfire.

Fuels reduction projects are an increasing focus of policy, funding, and management actions aimed at reducing wildfire risk to human populations while improving landscape health. This research used in-depth interviews to explore variable support or opposition to three fuels-reduction projects occurring in the same region of north central Washington State, USA.

Background In California’s mixed-conifer forests, fuel reduction treatments can successfully reduce fire severity, bolster forest resilience, and make lasting changes in forest structure. However, current understanding of the duration of treatment effectiveness is lacking robust empirical evidence.

Foliar moisture content influences crown fire ignition and behaviour. Some spatial variation in foliar moisture is attributable to differences in stand conditions but evidence describing this role is lacking or contradicting. Aims.

We developed and applied a spatial optimization algorithm to prioritize forest and fuel management treatments within a proposed linear fuel break network on a 0.5 million ha Western US national forest.

The methodology used by the First Street Foundation Wildfire Model (FSF-WFM) to compute estimates of the 30-year, climate-adjusted aggregate wildfire hazard for the contiguous United States at 30 m horizontal resolution is presented.