Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20
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
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
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
Crowded and Thirsty: Fire exclusion leads to greater drought sensitivity in mixed-conifer forests
Year: 2020
Wildfires were a frequent source of disturbance in forests of the Western United States prior to Euro-American settlement. Following a series of catastrophic wildfires in the Northern Rockies in 1910, the U.S. Forest Service adopted a broad wildfire suppression policy that has resulted in forests thick with small trees. These crowded trees compete for nutrients and water and experience increased drought stress in summer.In recent decades, many trees have died following drought, bark beetle outbreaks, and severe wildfire. A link between this mortality and increasing susceptibility to drought…
Publication Type: Report
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
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
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
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
Making monitoring count: project design for active adaptive management
Year: 2013
Ongoing environmental change requires that managers develop strategies capable of achieving multiple objectives in an uncertain future. Active adaptive management (AAM) offers a robust approach to reducing uncertainty while also considering diverse stakeholder perspectives. Important features of AAM include recognition of learning as a management objective, integration of monitoring throughout all aspects of project design and implementation, and use of experimental design in project planning. These features facilitate collaborator engagement and adaptive management based on credible…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Research and development supporting risk-based wildfire effects prediction for fuels and fire management: status and needs
Year: 2013
Wildland fire management has moved beyond a singular focus on suppression, calling for wildfire management for ecological benefit where no critical human assets are at risk. Processes causing direct effects and indirect, long-term ecosystem changes are complex and multidimensional. Robust risk-assessment tools are required that account for highly variable effects on multiple values-at-risk and balance competing objectives, to support decision making. Providing wildland fire managers with risk-analysis tools requires a broad scientific foundation in fire behaviour and effects prediction as…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate change tipping points: A point of no return?
Year: 2013
Summer 2012 saw records fall for intensity of drought and number, size, and cost of wildfires in the Central and Western United States, and the climate forecast calls for more of the same in the near and distant future. When wildfire breaks out, emergency responders decide their immediate strategy based on past experience and quick judgment calls. But in the long term, land managers need to plan for a warmer climate on a time scale of decades, or even a century or more, to better reflect the life span of trees and forests. Studies supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) are…
Publication Type: Report
Relationships between climate and macroscale area burned in the western United States
Year: 2013
Increased wildfire activity (e.g. number of starts, area burned, fire behaviour) across the western United States in recent decades has heightened interest in resolving climate–fire relationships. Macroscale climate–fire relationships were examined in forested and non-forested lands for eight Geographic Area Coordination Centers in the western United States, using area burned derived from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity dataset (1984–2010). Fire-specific biophysical variables including fire danger and water balance metrics were considered in addition to standard climate variables of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed fire in North America forests and woodlands: history, current practice, and challenges
Year: 2013
Whether ignited by lightning or by Native Americans, fire once shaped many North American ecosystems. Euro–American settlement and 20th-century fire suppression practices drastically altered historic fire regimes, leading to excessive fuel accumulation and uncharacteristically severe wildfires in some areas and diminished flammability resulting from shifts to more fire-sensitive forest species in others. Prescribed fire is a valuable tool for fuel management and ecosystem restoration, but the practice is fraught with controversy and uncertainty. Here, we summarize fire use in the forests and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland Fire management: Are actively managed forests more resilient than passively managed forests?
Year: 2013
Large areas of federal lands in the western states are currently at high risk of severe wildfire and have many insect and disease problems, indicating a significant decline in forest health and resilience. Although research studies have not been done that would measure whether actively managed forests are more resilient to wildfires than passively managed forests, results from studies of hazardous fuels treatment effectiveness and the economic benefits from avoided costs of future wildfire suppression due to fuels treatment can be used to support an affirmative reply to the question. If a…
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
Do carbon offsets work? The role of forest management in greenhouse gas mitigation
Year: 2013
As forest carbon offset projects become more popular, professional foresters are providing their expertise to support them. But when several members of the Society of American Foresters questioned the science and assumptions used to design the projects, the organization decided to convene a task force to examine whether these projects can provide the intended climate benefits. The report details reasons to look for other solutions to greenhouse gas emission challenges. After synthesizing the latest available science, the authors challenge the underlying assumptions used to establish most…
Publication Type: Report
Trial by fire: Community Wildfire Protection Plans put to the test
Year: 2013
Research has found that community wildfire protection planning can make significant contributions to wildfire mitigation and preparedness, but can the planning process and resulting Community Wildfire Protection Plans make a difference to wildfire response and recovery? In case studies conducted in four USA communities with Community Wildfire Protection Plans in place when wildfires occurred, we saw a range of Community Wildfire Protection Plan projects designed to change the path and intensity of the wildfires. In most of our communities, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan and planning…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Projected Future Changes in Vegetation in Western North America in the Twenty-First Century
Year: 2013
Rapid and broad-scale forest mortality associated with recent droughts, rising temperature, and insect outbreaks has been observed over western North America (NA). Climate models project additional future warming and increasing drought and water stress for this region. To assess future potential changes in vegetation distributions in western NA, the Community Earth System Model (CESM) coupled with its Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) was used under the future A2 emissions scenario. To better span uncertainties in future climate, eight sea surface temperature (SST) projections provided…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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
Examination of the wind speed limit function in the Rothermel surface fire spread model
Year: 2013
The Rothermel surface fire spread model includes a wind speed limit, above which predicted rate of spread is constant. Complete derivation of the wind limit as a function of reaction intensity is given, along with an alternate result based on a changed assumption. Evidence indicates that both the original and the revised wind limits are too restrictive. Wind limit is based in part on data collected on the 7 February 1967 Tasmanian grassland fires. A reanalysis of the data indicates that these fires might not have been spreading in fully cured continuous grasslands, as assumed. In addition,…
Publication Type: Journal Article