Research Database
Displaying 61 - 80 of 125
Minimize the bad days: Wildland fire response and suppression success
Year: 2022
• Effective wildland fire response and suppression are critical for reducing the size of frequent and severe wildfires, thereby reducing the risk of post-fire conversion to invasive annual grass-dominated plant communities. • Wildland firefighter safety and strategic deployment of resources are paramount for timely initial attack to prevent incidents from escalating. • By mobilizing a timely and safe initial response, early detection technologies, strategic networks of fuel breaks, and Rangeland Fire Protection Associations help “minimize the bad days” on the fireline and improve suppression…
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
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
Re-Envisioning Wildland Fire Governance: Addressing the Transboundary, Uncertain, and Contested Aspects of Wildfire
Year: 2022
Wildfire is a complex problem because of the diverse mix of actors and landowners involved, uncertainty about outcomes and future conditions, and unavoidable trade-offs that require ongoing negotiation. In this perspective, we argue that addressing the complex challenge of wildfire requires governance approaches designed to fit the nature of the wildfire problem. For instance, while wildfire is often described as a cross-boundary problem, understanding wildfire risk as transboundary highlights important political and institutional challenges that complicate collaboration across jurisdictions…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Comparing smoke emissions and impacts under alternative forest management regimes
Year: 2022
Smoke from wildfires has become a growing public health issue around the world but especially in western North America and California. At the same time, managers and scientists recommend thinning and intentional use of wildland fires to restore forest health and reduce smoke from poorly controlled wildfires. Because of the changing climate and management paradigms, the evaluation of smoke impacts needs to shift evaluations from the scale of individual fire events to long-term fire regimes and regional impacts under different management strategies. To confront this challenge, we integrated…
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
Recovering & rebuilding from Oregon's 2020 wildfires
Year: 2021
The recovery requires an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to meet people where they are, assess their needs, and work collaboratively for the best solutions in each community. In addition, it will be critical to listen to individuals in communities to gain a deep understanding of barriers and needs.
Publication Type: Government Report
Field measurements of PM2.5 infiltration factor and portable air cleaner effectiveness during wildfire episodes in US residences
Year: 2021
Wildfires have frequently occurred in the western United States (US) during the summer and fall seasons in recent years. This study measures the PM2.5 infiltration factor in seven residences recruited from five dense communities in Seattle, Washington, during a 2020 wildfire episode and evaluates the impacts of HEPA-based portable air cleaner (PAC) use on reducing indoor PM2.5 levels. All residences with windows closed went through an 18-to-24-h no filtration session, with five of seven following that period with an 18-to-24-h filtration session. Auto-mode PACs, which automatically adjust the…
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
Pre-season fire management planning: the use of Potential Operational Delineations to prepare for wildland fire events
Year: 2020
US fire scientists are developing Potential Wildfire Operational Delineations, also known as ‘PODs’, as a pre-fire season planning tool to promote safe and effective wildland fire response, strengthen risk management approaches in fire management and better align fire management objectives. PODs are a collaborative planning approach based on spatial analytics to identify potential wildfire control lines and assess the desirability of fire before ignition. They offer the opportunity to apply risk management principles with partners before the compressed timeframe of incident response. We…
Publication Type: Journal Article
NWCG Smoke Management Guide for Prescribed Fire
Year: 2020
The NWCG Smoke Management Guide for Prescribed Fire contains information on prescribed fire smoke management techniques, air quality regulations, smoke monitoring, modeling, communication, public perception of prescribed fire and smoke, climate change, practical meteorological approaches, and smoke tools. The primary focus of this document is to serve as the textbook in support of NWCG’s RX-410, Smoke Management Techniques course which is required for the position of Prescribed Fire Burn Boss Type 2 (RXB2). The Guide is useful to all who use prescribed fire, from private land owners to…
Publication Type: Report
Joint Fire Science Program 2019 Progress Report
Year: 2020
Congress created the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) in 1998 as a partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to identify and fund the research needs of the fire management community. Since that time, the JFSP has provided leadership to the fire community by identifying high-priority wildland fire science research needs that will enhance the decision making ability of fire and fuels managers, natural resource managers, and others to meet their management objectives. This progress report highlights a small sample of those research…
Publication Type: Report
Fostering collective action to reduce wildfire risk across property boundaries in the American West
Year: 2020
Large-scale, high-severity wildfires are a major challenge to the future social-ecological sustainability of fire-adapted forest ecosystems in the American West. Managing forests to mitigate this risk is a collective action problem requiring landowners and stakeholders within multi-ownership landscapes to plan and implement coordinated restoration treatments. Our research question is: how can we promote collective action to reduce wildfire risk and restore fire-resilient forests in the American West? To address this question we draw on collective action theory to produce an environmental…
Publication Type: Journal Article
How to measure the economic health cost of wildfires – A systematic review of the literature for northern America
Year: 2020
There has been an increasing interest in the economic health cost from smoke exposure from wildfires in the past 20 years, particularly in the north-western USA that is reflected in an emergent literature. In this review, we provide an overview and discussion of studies since 2006 on the health impacts of wildfire smoke and of approaches for the estimation of the associated economic cost. We focus on the choice of key variables such as cost estimators for determining the economic impact of mortality and morbidity effects. In addition, we provide an in-depth discussion and guidance on the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Burning without borders: Cooperatively managing wildfire risk in Northern Colorado
Year: 2020
Because wildfires don’t stop at ownership boundaries, managers from governmental and nongovernmental organizations in Northern Colorado are taking steps to pro-actively “co-manage” wildfire risk through the Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative (NCFC). For this research project, co-management refers to the collective actions taken by organizations to share the resources, costs, and burdens associated with managing fire risk across a large landscape. We examine factors that facilitated and limited wildfire risk co-management in a case study of the NCFC.
Publication Type: Report
Policy tools to address scale mismatches: insights from U.S. forest governance
Year: 2019
Recent literature has highlighted the growing array of scale mismatches in environmental governance and offered policy design principles for improved governance approaches. A next step is to develop our understanding of specific policy tools that can address scale mismatches. This paper reviews the range and importance of scale-related challenges and solutions in environmental governance, situating this discussion in the context of forest governance. We then tackle the matter of policy tools to address scale mismatches, by synthesizing findings from recent policy research on two…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland firefighter smoke exposure and risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality
Year: 2019
Wildland firefighters are exposed to wood smoke, which contains hazardous air pollutants, by suppressing thousands of wildfires across the U. S. each year. We estimated the relative risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality from existing PM2.5 exposure-response relationships using measured PM4 concentrations from smoke and breathing rates from wildland firefighter field studies across different exposure scenarios. To estimate the relative risk of lung cancer (LC) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality from exposure to PM2.5 from smoke, we used an existing exposure-response…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Air-quality challenges of prescribed fire in the complex terrain and wildland urban interface surrounding Bend, Oregon
Year: 2019
Prescribed fires in forest ecosystems can negatively impact human health and safety by transporting smoke downwind into nearby communities. Smoke transport to communities is known to occur around Bend, Oregon, United States of America (USA), where burning at the wildland–urban interface in the Deschutes National Forest resulted in smoke intrusions into populated areas. The number of suitable days for prescribed fires is limited due to the necessity for moderate weather conditions, as well as wind directions that do not carry smoke into Bend. To better understand the conditions leading to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Assessing relative differences in smoke exposure from prescribed, managed, and full suppression wildland fire
Year: 2019
A novel approach is presented to analyze smoke exposure and provide a metric to quantify health-related impacts. Our results support the current understanding that managing low-intensity fire for ecological benefit reduces exposure when compared to a high-intensity full suppression fire in the Sierra Nevada of California. More frequent use of fire provides an opportunity to mitigate smoke exposure for both individual events and future emission scenarios. The differences in relative exposure between high-intensity, low-intensity, and prescribed burn were significant (P value < 0.01).…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fine scale assessment of cross boundary wildfire events in the Western US
Year: 2019
We report a fine scale assessment of cross-boundary wildfire events for the western US. We used simulation modeling to quantify the extent of fire exchange among major federal, state, and private land tenures and mapped locations where fire ignitions can potentially affect populated places. We examined how parcel size effects the wildfire transmission and partitioned the relative amounts of transmitted fire between human and natural ignitions. We estimated that almost 90 % of the total predicted wildfire activity as measured by area burned originates from four land tenures (Forest Service,…
Publication Type: Journal Article