Research Database
Displaying 141 - 160 of 261
To Masticate or Not: Useful Tips for Treating Forest, Woodland, and Shrubland Vegetation
Year: 2019
Forest managers use mastication to grind or shed vegetation to remove competition, prepare a site for natural or artificial regeneration, or release sapling-sized trees; or they use mastication to convert ladder fuels to surface fuels and enhance decomposition of biomass. However, determining the best mastication configuration within the context of management objectives and site limitations is challenging. This report synthesizes our current knowledge on mastication as a forest management tool. We found that excavators, skid steers, and tractors can all be carrier machines and different types…
Publication Type: Report
Designing Operationally Relevant Daily Large Fire Containment Strategies Using Risk Assessment Results
Year: 2019
In this study, we aim to advance the optimization of daily large fire containment strategies for ground-based suppression resources by leveraging fire risk assessment results commonly used by fire managers in the western USA. We begin from an existing decision framework that spatially overlays fire risk assessment results with pre-identified potential wildland fire operational delineations (PODs), and then clusters PODs into a response POD (rPOD) using a mixed integer program (MIP) model to minimize expected loss. We improve and expand upon this decision framework through enhanced fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Cost-effective fuel treatment planning: a theoretical justification and case study
Year: 2019
Modelling the spatial prioritisation of fuel treatments and their net effect on values at risk is an important area for applied work as economic damages from wildfire continue to grow. We model and demonstrate a cost-effective fuel treatment planning algorithm using two ecosystem services as benefits for which fuel treatments are prioritised. We create a surface of expected fuel treatment costs to incorporate the heterogeneity in factors affecting the revenue and costs of fuel treatments, and then prioritise treatments based on a cost-effectiveness ratio to maximise the averted loss of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Rethinking the wildland fire management system
Year: 2018
In the western United States and elsewhere, the need to change society’s relationship with wildfire is well-recognized. Suppressing fewer fires in fire-prone systems is promoted to escape existing feedback loops that lead to ever worsening conditions and increasing risks to responders and communities. Our primary focus is how to catalyze changes in fire manager behavior such that responses are safer, more effective, and capitalize on opportunities for expanded use of fire. We daylight deep-seated, systemic drivers of behavior, and in so doing, challenge ingrained ways of thinking and acting…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Living with Wildland Fire in America: Building New Bridges between Policy, Science, and Management
Year: 2018
In his October 26, 2017 commentary in these pages, Dr. Tom Zimmerman highlights a number of ongoing and future challenges faced by wildland fire management. To address these challenges he also identifies an important role for science and in particular management-relevant wildland fire research. Here, we first briefly elaborate on Dr. Zimmerman’s challenges and how they relate to new opportunities for the role of science. Second, we focus on three additional institutional or “cultural” barriers or divides that should be acknowledged and addressed when forging a path forward for wildland fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Synthesis of science to inform land management within the Northwest Forest Plan area: executive summary
Year: 2018
This is the executive summary of a three-volume science synthesis that addresses various ecological and social concerns regarding management of federal forests encompassed by the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). Land managers with the U.S. Forest Service provided questions that helped guide preparation of the synthesis. It builds on the 10-, 15-, and 20-year NWFP monitoring reports and synthesizes the vast body of relevant scientific literature that has accumulated in the 24 years since the NWFP was initiated. Here we summarize scientific findings and considerations for management that were…
Publication Type: Report
Forest landscapes as social-ecological systems and implications for management
Year: 2018
Many of the most pressing threats to forests result from complex interactions between multiple stressors and require management on large spatial and temporal scales. For this reason, many ecosystem managers have begun to recognize the need to consider the broader context of decisions, and how outcomes of past, present and future decisions in one location may interact with outcomes of such decisions in other locations nearby. The landscape has been put forth as an appropriate unit for such holistic approaches to management. However, as there are differing definitions of landscapes, it can be…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Toward Shared Stewardship Across Landscapes: An Outcome-Based Investment Strategy
Year: 2018
Managers and owners of forests across the Nation face urgent challenges, among them catastrophic wildfires, invasive species, drought, and epidemics of forest insects and disease. Of particular concern are longer fire seasons and the rising size and severity of wildfires, along with the expanding risk to communities, natural resources, and the safety of firefighters. Accordingly, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, we are rethinking our approach to land management. We will work closely with States to set landscape-scale priorities for targeted treatments in areas with the…
Publication Type: Report
A comparison of the US National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) with recorded fire occurrence and final fire size
Year: 2018
Most previous research has assessed the ability of the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) to portray fire activity at either single sites or on small spatial scales, despite it being a nation-wide system. This study seeks to examine the relationships between a set of NFDRS fire danger indices (Fire Danger Ratings, Staffing Level and the Ignition Component) and measures of fire activity (fire occurrence and final fire size) across the entire conterminous US over an 8-year period. We reveal that different regions of the US display different levels of correspondence between each of the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire risk reduction in the United States: Leadership staff perceptions of local fire department roles and responsibilities
Year: 2018
As wildland fires have had increasing negative impacts on a range of human values, in many parts of the United States (U.S.) and around the world, collaborative risk reduction efforts among agencies, homeowners, and fire departments are needed to improve wildfire safety and mitigate risk. Using interview data from 46 senior officers from local fire departments around the U.S., we examine how leadership staff view their departments’ roles and responsibilities in wildfire risk reduction. Overall, our findings indicate that local fire personnel are often performing a variety of mitigation tasks…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Cross-boundary cooperation for landscape management: Collective action and social exchange among individual private forest landowners
Year: 2018
The landscape is an ideal spatial extent for managing forests because many ecological processes and disturbances occur on such scales. Moreover, landscape-level decision-making processes can improve the efficiency of forest management, as when many owners of small parcels increase the economy of scale of their operations by jointly hiring labor or selling products. Despite the potential benefits of managing at the landscape level, cooperation on management activities across property boundaries is rare among private landowners and poorly understood. We used a comparative case study approach to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Policy Design to Support Forest Restoration: The Value of Focused Investment and Collaboration
Year: 2018
To address rapid change and complex environmental management challenges, governance approaches must support collective action across actors and jurisdictions, and planning at appropriate spatial extents to affect ecological processes. Recent changes in U.S. national forest policy incorporate new tools to facilitate collaborative landscape restoration, providing an opportunity to examine the relationship between policy design and governance change. Based on 151 interviews with agency personnel and partners, and a survey of 425 agency staff members, we investigated how two new policy approaches…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Severe fire weather and intensive forest management increase fire severity in a multi-ownership landscape
Year: 2018
Many studies have examined how fuels, topography, climate, and fire weather influence fire severity. Less is known about how different forest management practices influence fire severity in multi‐owner landscapes, despite costly and controversial suppression of wildfires that do not acknowledge ownership boundaries. In 2013, the Douglas Complex burned over 19,000 ha of Oregon & California Railroad (O&C) lands in Southwestern Oregon, USA. O&C lands are composed of a checkerboard of private industrial and federal forestland (Bureau of Land Management, BLM) with contrasting…
Publication Type: Journal Article
NWCG Smoke Management Guide for Prescribed Fire
Year: 2018
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 federal…
Publication Type: Report
Wildfires managed for restoration enhance ecological resilience
Year: 2018
Expanding the footprint of natural fire has been proposed as one potential solution to increase the pace of forest restoration programs in fire‐adapted landscapes of the western USA. However, studies that examine the long‐term socio‐ecological trade‐offs of expanding natural fire to reduce wildfire risk and create fire resilient landscapes are lacking. We used the model Envision to examine the outcomes that might result from increased area burned by what we call “restoration” wildfire in a landscape where the ecological benefits of wildfire are known, but the need to suppress high‐risk fires…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed Fire Policy Barriers and Opportunities: A Diversity of Challenges and Strategies Across the West
Year: 2018
We are conducting a project investigating policies that limit managers’ ability to conduct prescribed fire on US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in the 11 Western states. The goals for this phase of our work were to understand the extent to which various policies are limiting prescribed fire programs, strategies to maintain and increase prescribed fire activities, and opportunities for improving policies or policy implementation. To understand the diversity of challenges faced and strategies in use across the West, we conducted a legal analysis of the laws and…
Publication Type: Report
Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21st century
Year: 2018
The impacts of climatic changes on forests may appear gradually on time scales of years to centuries due to the long generation times of trees. Consequently, current forest extent may not reflect current climatic patterns. In contrast with these lagged responses, abrupt transitions in forests under climate change may occur in environments where alternative vegetation states are influenced by disturbances, such as fire. The Klamath forest landscape (northern California and southwest Oregon, USA) is currently dominated by high biomass, biodiverse temperate coniferous forests, but climate change…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Landscapes 101: Understanding Landscape Approaches to Forest Restoration and Management
Year: 2018
About Go Big or Go Home?: The goals of this research project were to analyze how public land managers and stakeholders in Oregon’s east Cascades can plan and manage at landscape scales using scientific research and participatory simulation modeling (Envision).
Publication Type: Report
The influence of incident management teams on the deployment of wildfire suppression resources
Year: 2017
Despite large commitments of personnel and equipment to wildfire suppression, relatively little is known about the factors that affect how many resources are ordered and assigned to wildfire incidents and the variation in resources across incident management teams (IMTs). Using detailed data on suppression resource assignments for IMTs managing the highest complexity wildfire incidents (Type 1 and Type 2), this paper examines daily suppression resource use and estimates the variation in resource use between IMTs. Results suggest that after controlling for fire and landscape characteristics,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Using an agent-based model to examine forest management outcomes in a fire-prone landscape in Oregon, USA.
Year: 2017
Fire-prone landscapes present many challenges for both managers and policy makers in developing adaptive behaviors and institutions. We used a coupled human and natural systems framework and an agent-based landscape model to examine how alternative management scenarios affect fire and ecosystem services metrics in a fire-prone multiownership landscape in the eastern Cascades of Oregon. Our model incorporated existing models of vegetation succession and fire spread and information from original empirical studies of landowner decision making. Our findings indicate that alternative management…
Publication Type: Journal Article