Research Database
Displaying 61 - 80 of 90
U.S. federal fire and forest policy: emphasizing resilience in dry forests
Year: 2016
Current U.S. forest fire policy emphasizes short-term outcomes versus long-term goals. This perspective drives managers to focus on the protection of high-valued resources, whether ecosystem-based or developed infrastructure, at the expense of forest resilience. Given these current and future challenges posed by wildland fire and because the U.S. Forest Service spent >50% of its budget on fire suppression in 2015, a review and reexamination of existing policy is warranted. One of the most difficult challenges to revising forest fire policy is that agency organizations and decision making…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The relationship of mindfulness and self-compassion to desired wildland fire leadership
Year: 2015
A quantitative approach was adopted to explore facets of mindfulness and self-compassion in relation to their ability to predict crewmembers’ perceptions of their supervisors’ leadership capabilities. The sample comprised 43 wildland fire crews consisting of their primary supervisors (n = 43) and crewmembers (n = 246). A partial least-squares path modelling approach was employed to test hypotheses regarding the relationships among mindfulness, self-compassion and leadership. Findings revealed that supervisor scores on mindfulness were significant predictors of crewmember-rated scores of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Principles of effective USA Federal Fire Management Plans
Year: 2015
Federal fire management plans are essential implementation guides for the management of wildland fire on federal lands. Recent changes in federal fire policy implementation guidance and fire science information suggest the need for substantial changes in federal fire management plans of the United States. Federal land management agencies are also undergoing land management planning efforts that will initiate revision of fire management plans across the country. Using the southern Sierra Nevada as a case study, we briefly describe the underlying framework of fire management plans, assess their…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Historical northern spotted owl habitat and old-growth dry forests maintained by mixed-severity wildfires
Year: 2015
Context: Reconstructing historical habitat could help reverse declining animal populations, but detailed, spatially comprehensive data are rare. For example, habitat for the federally threatened Northern spotted owl (NSO; Strix occidentalis caurina) was thought historically rare because low-severity fires kept forests open and habitat restricted to fire refugia, but spatial historical data are lacking. Objectives: Here I use public land-surveys to spatially reconstruct NSO habitat and old-growth forests in dry forests in Oregon's Eastern Cascades in the late-1800s. I used reconstructions of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Development and application of a probabilistic method for wildfire suppression cost modeling
Year: 2015
Wildfire activity and escalating suppression costs continue to threaten the financial health of federal land management agencies. In order to minimize and effectively manage the cost of financial risk, agencies need the ability to quantify that risk. A fundamental aim of this research effort, therefore, is to develop a process for generating risk-based metrics for annual suppression costs. Our modeling process borrows from actuarial science and the process of assigning insurance premiums based on distributions for the frequency and magnitude of claims, generating parameterized probability…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The economic benefit of localised, short-term, wildfire-potential information
Year: 2015
Wildfire-potential information products are designed to support decisions for prefire staging of movable wildfire suppression resources across geographic locations. We quantify the economic value of these information products by defining their value as the difference between two cases of expected fire-suppression expenditures: one in which daily information about spatial variation in wildfire-potential is used to move fire suppression resources throughout the season, and the other case in which daily information is not used and fire-suppression resources are staged in their home locations all…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Assessing the Compatibility of Fuel Treatments, Wildfire Risk, and Conservation of Northern Spotted Owl Habitats and Populations in the Eastern Cascades: A Multi-Scale Analysis
Year: 2014
National Forests in the dry forest provinces on the east‐side of the Oregon and Washington Cascades have been managed under the guidelines of local Forest Plans and the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), both of which specify large areas of late‐successional reserves (LSRs). In contrast, the recently‐released USDI Fish and Wildlife Service Revised Recovery Plan (RRP) for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) calls for development of dynamic and shifting mosaics in the dry forests, and retention of LSRs in moist forests of eastern Cascades of Oregon and Washington, to address NSO habitat and wildfire…
Publication Type: Report
Understanding evacuation preferences and wildfire mitigations among Northwest Montana residents
Year: 2014
There is currently insufficient information in the United States about residents’ planned evacuation actions during wildfire events, including any intent to remain at or near home during fire events. This is incompatible with growing evidence that select populations at risk from wildfire are considering alternatives to evacuation. This study explores the evacuation preferences of wildland–urban interface residents in Flathead County, Montana, USA. We compare the performance of wildfire mitigation and fuel reduction actions across groups of residents with different primary evacuation…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Closing the feedback loop: evaluation and adaptation in collaborative resource management
Year: 2013
This sourcebook provides answers from the field— strategies and tools that some collaborative resource management groups have used to systematically evaluate their work and adapt plans and management actions based on what they have learned. The examples described in this document are drawn from rapid assessments of nine collaborative resource management groups and informed by organizational and social learning, evaluation, and adaptive management concepts.
Publication Type: Report
Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and preparing for wildfire in the wildland-urban interface
Year: 2013
Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America’s wildland areas. However, the rising number of homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), associated impacts on lives and property from wildfire, and escalating costs of wildfire management have led to an urgent need for communities to become "fire-adapted." We present maps of the conterminous United States that illustrate historical natural fire regimes, the wildland-urban interface, and the number and location of structures burned since 1999. We outline a sampler of actions, programs, and community planning and…
Publication Type: Report
Lessons Learned from Waldo Canyon: FAC mitigation assessment team report
Year: 2013
The Waldo Canyon fire presented the first opportunity for partners in the national Fire Adapted Communities (FAC) Coalition to collectively assess the performance of mitigation practices in Colorado Springs in a post-fire environment and to compare the results to the mitigation strategy recommended by the Fire Adapted Communities program. The assessment was conducted from July 18-20, 2012, by a FAC Wildfire Mitigation Assessment Team, which included two sets of researchers: structural assessment and forestry experts and social science and public education experts, accompanied by staff from…
Publication Type: Report
Assessing the compatability of fuel treatments, wildfire risk, and conservation of Northern spotted owl habitats and populations in the eastern Cascades: A multi-scale analysis
Year: 2013
National Forests in the dry forest provinces on the east-side of the Oregon and Washington Cascades have been managed under the guidelines of local Forest Plans and the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), both of which specify large areas of late-successional reserves (LSRs). In contrast, the recently-released USDI Fish and Wildlife Service Revised Recovery Plan (RRP) for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) calls for development of dynamic and shifting mosaics in the dry forests, and retention of LSRs in moist forests of eastern Cascades of Oregon and Washington, to address NSO habitat and wildfire…
Publication Type: Report
Allowing a wildfire to burn: estimating the effect on future suppression costs
Year: 2013
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. In this study, we estimated one component of that benefit – the expected present value of the reduction in suppression costs for subsequent fires arising from the fuel treatment effect of a current fire. To that end, we…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Photo Series for Quantifying Natural Fuels Volume XI : Eastern Oregon Sagebrush - Steppe and Spotted Owl Nesting Habitat in the Pacific Northwest
Year: 2012
Three series of photographs display a range of natural conditions and fuel loadings for sagebrush-steppe types that are ecotonal with grasses, western juniper, and ponderosa pine in eastern Oregon, and one series of photographs displays a range of natural conditions and fuel loadings for northern spotted owl nesting habitat in forest types in Washington and Oregon. Each group of photos includes inventory information summarizing vegetation composition, structure, and loading; woody material loading and density by size class; forest floor depth and loading; and various site characteristics. The…
Publication Type: Report
Building a Citizen-Agency Partnership Among Diverse Interests: The Colville National Forest and Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition Experience
Year: 2012
Concerns about forest health and the threat of wildfire across the Western United States increasingly provide the impetus for communities to find land management solutions that serve multiple interests. Funding and procedural changes over the past decade have positioned federal agencies to put greater emphasis on multistakeholder partnerships and public outreach efforts. Partnerships build slowly over time, but can result in a healthier resource, reduced fire risk, greater stability for agency planning processes, and more resilient communities. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders…
Publication Type: Report
The push and pull of climate change causes heterogeneous shifts in avian elevational ranges
Year: 2012
Projected effects of climate change on animal distributions primarily focus on consequences of temperature and largely ignore impacts of altered precipitation. While much evidence supports temperature-driven range shifts, there is substantial heterogeneity in species' responses that remains poorly understood. We resampled breeding ranges of birds across three elevational transects in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, USA, that were extensively surveyed in the early 20th century. Presence absence comparisons were made at 77 sites and occupancy models were used to separate significant range shifts…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Development of Risk Matrices for Evaluating Climatic Change Responses of Forested Habitats
Year: 2012
We present an approach to assess and compare risk from climate change among multiple species through a risk matrix, in which managers can quickly prioritize for species that need to have strategies developed, evaluated further, or watched. We base the matrix upon earlier work towards the National Climate Assessment for potential damage to infrastructures from climate change. Risk is defined here as the product of the likelihood of an event occurring and the consequences or impact of that event. In the context of species habitats, the likelihood component is related to the potential changes in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Northwest Forest Plan -- The First 15 Years: Status and Trends of Northern Spotted Owl Populations and Habitats
Year: 2011
This is the second in a series of periodic monitoring reports on northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) population and habitat trends on federally administered lands since implementation of the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994.Here we summarize results from a population analysis that included data from long-term demographic studies during 1985–2008. This data was analyzed separately by study area, and also in a meta-analysis across all study areas to assess temporal and spatial patterns in fecundity, apparent survival, recruitment, and annual rates of population change. Estimated…
Publication Type: Report
Reducing hazardous fuels on nonindustrial private forests: factors influencing landowner decisions
Year: 2011
In mixed-ownership landscapes, fuels conditions on private lands have implications for fire risk on public lands and vice versa. The success of efforts to mitigate fire risk depends on the extent, efficacy, and coordination of treatments on nearby ownerships. Understanding factors in forest owners’ decisions to address the risk of wildland fire is therefore important. This research uses logistic regression to analyze mail survey data and identify factors in forest owners’ decisions to reduce hazardous fuels in the ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) ecosystem on the east side of Oregon. Results…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evaluating Soil Risks Associated With Severe Wildfire and Ground-Based Logging
Year: 2011
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. Our logic-based analysis of forested soil polygons on the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest was designed and implemented with the Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system to evaluate risks to soil properties and productivity associated with moderate to severe wildfire and unmitigated use of ground-…
Publication Type: Report