Research Database
Displaying 121 - 140 of 279
Governing wildfires: toward a systematic analytical framework
Year: 2022
Despite recent research, a systematic approach to understanding wildfire governance is lacking. This article addresses this deficit by systematically reviewing governance theories and concepts applied so far in the academic literature on wildfires as a step toward achieving their more effective and holistic management. We engage our findings with the wider governance literature to unlock new thinking on wildfires as a process and outcome. This comparative approach enables us to propose a novel framework for analyzing wildfire governance based on four pillars: (1) actor participation in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Adapting western North American forests to climate change and wildfires: ten common questions
Year: 2021
We review science-based adaptation strategies for western North American (wNA) forests that include restoring active fire regimes and fostering resilient structure and composition of forested landscapes. As part of the review, we address common questions associated with climate adaptation and realignment treatments that run counter to a broad consensus in the literature. These include: (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? (3) Can forest thinning and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Keepers of the Flame: Supporting the Revitalization of Indigenous Cultural Burning
Year: 2021
The revitalization of cultural burning is a priority for many Native American tribes and for agencies and organizations that recognize the cultural and ecological importance of this practice. Traditional fire practitioners are working to resist the impact of settler colonialism and reestablish cultural burning to promote traditional foods and materials, exercise their sovereignty in land management, and strengthen their communities’ cultural, physical and emotional wellbeing. Despite broad support for cultural burning, the needs of practitioners are often poorly understood by non-Native…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Stop going around in circles: towards a reconceptualisation of disaster risk management phases
Year: 2021
Purpose The way that disasters are managed, or indeed mis-managed, is often represented diagrammatically as a “disaster cycle”. The cyclical aspects of the disaster (risk) management concept, comprised of numerous operational phases, have, in recent years, been criticised for conceptualising and representing disasters in an overly simplistic way that typically starts with a disaster “event” – and subsequently leads onto yet another disaster. Such cyclical thinking has been proven to not be very useful for the complexities associated with understanding disasters and their risks. This paper…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Communicating with the public about wildland fire preparation, response, and recovery
Year: 2021
This literature review synthesizes empirical research about wildland fire communication to provide practitioners, such as land managers, public health and safety officials, community groups, and others working with the public, evidence-based recommendations for communication work. Key findings demonstrate that it is important to recognize communication as a context-specific and dynamic process, not a linear pathway or prescription, or one-size-fits-all approach. We found that practitioners engaging in this work may be most effective when they get to know their diverse publics, engage in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire and climate change adaptation of western North American forests: a case for intentional management
Year: 2021
Forest landscapes across western North America (wNA) have experienced extensive changes over the last two centuries, while climatic warming has become a global reality over the last four decades. Resulting interactions between historical increases in forested area and density and recent rapid warming, increasing insect mortality, and wildfire burned areas, are now leading to substantial abrupt landscape alterations. These outcomes are forcing forest planners and managers to identify strategies that can modify future outcomes that are ecologically and/or socially undesirable. Past forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evidence for widespread changes in the structure, composition, and fire regimes of western North American forests
Year: 2021
Implementation of wildfire- and climate-adaptation strategies in seasonally dry forests of western North America is impeded by numerous constraints and uncertainties. After more than a century of resource and land use change, some question the need for proactive management, particularly given novel social, ecological, and climatic conditions. To address this question, we first provide a framework for assessing changes in landscape conditions and fire regimes. Using this framework, we then evaluate evidence of change and lack of change in contemporary conditions relative to those maintained by…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Disturbance shapes the US forest governance frontier: A review and conceptual framework for understanding governance change
Year: 2021
Conflict in US forest management for decades centered around balancing demands from forested ecosystems, with a rise in place-based collaborative governance at the end of the twentieth century. By the early 2000s, it was becoming apparent that not only had the mix of players involved in forest management changed, but so had the playing field, as climate-driven disturbances such as wildfire and insect and disease outbreaks were becoming more extensive and severe. In this conceptual review paper, we argue that disturbance has become the most prominent driver of governance change on US national…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate and wildfire adaptation of inland Northwest US forests
Year: 2021
After a century of intensive logging, federal forest management policies were developed in the 1990s to protect remaining large trees and old forests in the western US. Today, due to rapidly changing ecological conditions, new threats and uncertainties, and scientific advancements, some policy provisions are being re-evaluated in interior Oregon and Washington. The case for re- evaluation is clearest where small- to large-sized, immature, fast-growing, fire-intolerant trees have filled in forests after both a long period of fire exclusion and the harvest of large, old trees. This infilling…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire and climate change adaptation of western North American forests: a case for intentional management
Year: 2021
We review science-based adaptation strategies for western North American (wNA) forests that include restoring active fire regimes and fostering resilient structure and composition of forested landscapes. As part of the review, we address common questions associated with climate adaptation and realignment treatments that run counter to a broad consensus in the literature. These include the following: (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? (3) Can forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest Restoration and Fuels Reduction: Convergent or Divergent?
Year: 2021
For over 20 years, forest fuel reduction has been the dominant management action in western US forests. These same actions have also been associated with the restoration of highly altered frequent-fire forests. Perhaps the vital element in the compatibility of these treatments is that both need to incorporate the salient characteristics that frequent fire produced—variability in vegetation structure and composition across landscapes and the inability to support large patches of high-severity fire. These characteristics can be achieved with both fire and mechanical treatments. The possible key…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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 threaten critical 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 and simulated treatment in areas that accounted for 77% of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Network governance in the use of prescribed fire: roles for bridging organizations and other actors in the Western United States
Year: 2021
Dangerous wildfire conditions continue to threaten people and ecosystems across the globe and cooperation is critical to meeting the outsized need for increased prescribed burning in wildfire risk reduction work. Despite the benefits of using prescribed fire to mitigate wildfire risks, prescribed fire implementation is still challenging. Collaboration and capacity-building can help address policy and capacity barriers inhibiting prescribed fire. We conducted 53 interviews across four case studies in the western United States where federal land management agencies and cooperative actors are…
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
Insights and suggestions for certified prescribed burn manager programs
Year: 2020
Prescribed burning is an effective method to reduce hazardous fuels and restore ecological conditions across a variety of ecosystems. Twenty-one states have laws or policies that direct state agencies to oversee formal training programs to certify individuals in safe burning techniques. Fifteen of these states have active certified prescribed burn manager programs (CPBM). Michigan and Oregon did not implement certification programs due to lack of funding, and California, Minnesota, Washington, and West Virginia are currently developing CPBM programs. The Washington State Legislature charged…
Publication Type: Report
Wildfire decision support tools: an exploratory study of use in the United States
Year: 2020
In the United States, many decision support tools exist to provide fire managers with weather and fire behaviour information to inform and facilitate risk-based decision-making. Relatively little is known about how managers use these tools in the field and when and how they may serve to influence decisions. To address this gap, we conducted exploratory interviews with 27 wildfire management and fire weather professionals across the United States. Results reveal that barriers to the use of decision support tools are structural and social. Specifically, fire weather and behaviour models may not…
Publication Type: Journal Article
After the fire: Perceptions of land use planning to reduce wildfire risk in eight communities across the United States
Year: 2020
Wildfire losses are increasing across the United States, and yet land use planning to reduce wildfire risk is not federally mandated and is rarely used by local jurisdictions. We examined local government staff and leaders’ perceptions of land use planning and regulations to reduce wildfire risk, in a range of communities, after wildfire risk had been made evident with the loss of homes due to wildfire. Although policy after fire was largely unchanged we found local leaders had devoted substantial attention to the subject of land use planning. Communities were dealing with a number of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Effects of post-fire management on dead woody fuel dynamics and stand structure in a severely burned mixed-conifer forest, in northeastern Washington State, USA
Year: 2020
The increasing amount of high-severity wildfire in historical low and mixed-severity fire regimes in western US forests has created a need to better understand the ecological effects of different post fire management approaches. For three different salvage prescriptions, we quantified change in stand structural metrics (snag densities and snag basal areas), dead woody fuel loadings, tree regeneration survival, and percentage change in vegetation cover before and after post-fire logging 1 year after the 2015 Stickpin Wildfire on the Colville National Forest in northeastern Washington State, USA. In a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Bridging the research-management gap: landscape science in practice on public lands in the western United States
Year: 2020
Landscape science relies on foundational concepts of landscape ecology and seeks to understand the physical, biological, and human components of ecosystems to support land management decision-making. Incorporating landscape science into land management decisions, however, remains challenging. Many lands in the western United States are federally owned and managed for multiple uses, including recreation, conservation, and energy development. We argue for stronger integration of landscape science into the management of these public lands. We open by outlining the relevance of landscape science…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Put Fire to Work
Year: 2020
Put Fire to Work is a prescribed fire outreach toolkit for partners and practitionersin Washington and the Pacific Northwest. We invite you to explore, engage and collaborate, and play an active role in bringing good fire back home. This has been put together by the Washington Prescribed Fire Council in collaboration with numerous partners. It has several tools and resources for communication with public and partners about prescribed fire.
Publication Type: Website