Research Database
Displaying 21 - 40 of 131
Metals in Wildfire Suppressants
Year: 2024
Frequent and severe wildfires have led to increased application of fire suppression products (long-term fire retardants, water enhancers, and Class A foams) in the American West. While fire suppressing products used on wildfires must be approved by theU.S. Forest Service, portions of their formulations are trade secrets.Increased metals content in soils and surface waters at the wildland-urban interface has been observed after wildfires but has primarily been attributed to ash deposition or anthropogenic impact from nearby urban areas. In this study, metal concentrations in several fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Before the fire: predicting burn severity and potential post-fire debris-flow hazards to conservation populations of the Colorado River Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii pleuriticus)
Year: 2024
Background: Colorado River Cutthroat Trout (CRCT; Oncorhynchus clarkii pleuriticus) conservation populations may be at risk from wildfire and post-fire debris flows hazards. Aim: To predict burn severity and potential post-fire debris flow hazard classifications to CRCT conservation populations before wildfires occur. Methods: We used remote sensing, spatial analyses, and machine learning to model 28 wildfire incidents (2016–2020) and spatially predict burn severity from pre-wildfire environmental factors to evaluate the likelihood…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Predicting daily firefighting personnel deployment trends in the western United States
Year: 2024
Projected increases in wildfire frequency, size, and severity may further stress already scarce firefighting resources in the western United States that are in high demand. Machine learning is a promising field with the ability to model firefighting resource usage without compromising dataset size or complexity. In this study, the Categorical Boosting (CatBoost) model was used with historical (2012-2020) wildfire data to train three models that calculate predicted daily counts of 1) total assigned personnel (total personnel), 2) assigned personnel that are at the fire (ground personnel), and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Backfire: the settler-colonial logic and legacy of Smokey Bear
Year: 2024
Since the 1940s, the United States Forest Service’s (USFS) national fire suppression efforts have been bolstered by a public-facing ad campaign led by the Ad Council, most notably through the iconic rise of Smokey Bear. The consequences of decades of strict fire suppression, promulgated and solidified by this highly successful campaign, have been ecologically disastrous, and especially detrimental for fire-dependent Indigenous communities and ecosystems. Scholars have examined the Smokey campaign’s racialized, nationalist discourse, yet none have grappled with the campaign’s settler colonial…
Publication Type: Journal Article
External drivers of changes in wildland firefighter safety policies and practices
Year: 2024
Background: Firefighter safety is a top priority in wildland fire response and management. Existing explanations emphasise how land management agency initiatives to change organisational culture, usually inspired by fatality incidents, contribute to changes both in formal safety policies and informal safety practices. Aims: This paper identifies external factors that lead to changes in wildland firefighter safety policies and practices. Methods: This paper uses qualitative data from a long-term ethnographic research project. Data include…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Quantifying Aspect-Dependent Snowpack Response to High-Elevation Wildfire in the Southern Rocky Mountains
Year: 2024
Increasing wildfire frequency and severity in high-elevation seasonal snow zones presents a considerable water resource management challenge across the western United States (U.S.). Wildfires can affect snowpack accumulation and melt patterns, altering the quantity and timing of runoff. While prior research has shown that wildfire generally increases snow melt rates and advances snow disappearance dates, uncertainties remain regarding variations across complex terrain and the energy balance between burned and unburned areas. Utilizing paired in situ data sources within the 2020 Cameron Peak…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Visibility-informed mapping of potential firefighter lookout locations using maximum entropy modelling
Year: 2024
BackgroundSituational awareness is an essential component of wildland firefighter safety. In the US, crew lookouts provide situational awareness by proxy from ground-level locations with visibility of both fire and crew members.AimsTo use machine learning to predict potential lookout locations based on incident data, mapped visibility, topography, vegetation, and roads.MethodsLidar-derived topographic and fuel structural variables were used to generate maps of visibility across 30 study areas that possessed lookout location data. Visibility…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Severity of a megafire reduced by interactions of wildland fire suppression operations and previous burns
Year: 2024
Burned area and proportion of high severity fire have been increasing in the western USA, and reducing wildfire severity with fuel treatments or other means is key for maintaining fire-prone dry forests and avoiding fire-catalyzed forest loss. Despite the unprecedented scope of firefighting operations in recent years, their contribution to patterns of wildfire severity is rarely quantified. Here we investigate how wildland fire suppression operations and past fire severity interacted to affect severity patterns of the northern third of the 374 000 ha Dixie Fire, the largest single fire in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Multiple social and environmental factors affect wildland fire response of full or less-than-full suppression
Year: 2024
Wildland fire incident commanders make wildfire response decisions within an increasingly complex socio-environmental context. Threats to human safety and property, along with public pressures and agency cultures, often lead commanders to emphasize full suppression. However, commanders may use less-than-full suppression to enhance responder safety, reduce firefighting costs, and encourage beneficial effects of fire. This study asks: what management, socioeconomic, environmental, and fire behavior characteristics are associated with full suppression and the less-than-full suppression methods…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mental Health and Traumatic Occupational Exposure in Wildland Fire Dispatchers
Year: 2024
Wildland fire dispatchers play a key role in wildland fire management and response organization; however, to date, wildland fire studies have largely focused on the physical hazards and, to a lesser extent, mental health hazards of wildland firefighting operational personnel, and dispatcher studies have primarily focused on 911 and police dispatchers. Studies of other dispatchers have provided some limited insight into potential strains impacting this workforce, including work-related fatigue, burnout, and traumatic exposure. However, the specific job hazards that are faced by wildland fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Stream chemical response is mediated by hydrologic connectivity and fire severity in a Pacific Northwest forest
Year: 2024
Large-scale wildfires are becoming increasingly common in the wet forests of the Pacific Northwest (USA), with predicted increases in fire prevalence under future climate scenarios. Wildfires can alter streamflow response to precipitation and mobilize water quality constituents, which pose a risk to aquatic ecosystems and downstream drinking water treatment. Research often focuses on the impacts of high-severity wildfires, with stream biogeochemical responses to low- and mixed-severity fires often understudied, particularly during seasonal shifts in hydrologic connectivity between hillslopes…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Characterising ignition precursors associated with high levels of deployment of wildland fire personnel
Year: 2024
BackgroundAs fire seasons in the Western US intensify and lengthen, fire managers have been grappling with increases in simultaneous, significant incidents that compete for response resources and strain capacity of the current system.AimsTo address this challenge, we explore a key research question: what precursors are associated with ignitions that evolve into incidents requiring high levels of response personnel?MethodsWe develop statistical models linking human, fire weather and fuels related factors with cumulative and peak personnel…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Retention of highly qualified wildland firefighters in the Western United States
Year: 2024
Federal agencies responsible for wildland fire management face increasing needs for personnel as fire seasons lengthen and fire size continues to grow, yet federal agencies have struggled to recruit and retain firefighting personnel. While many have speculated that long seasons, challenging working conditions, and low wages contribute to recruitment and retention challenges, there has been…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Water utility engagement in wildfire mitigation in watersheds in the western United States
Year: 2023
Scaling up climate-adaptation in wildfire-prone watersheds requires innovative partnerships and funding. Water utilities are one stakeholder group that could play a role in these efforts. The overarching purpose of this study was to understand water utility engagement in wildfire mitigation efforts in the western United States. We conducted an online survey of water utilities in nine states and received 173 useable responses. While most (68%) respondents were concerned or very concerned about future wildfire events and the impact of wildfire on their operations, only 39% perceived their…
Economic Impacts of Fire, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Big Lie: discursive risk analysis and wildland firefighter safety in the Western United States
Year: 2023
While increased length and intensity of wildfire seasons in many places have led to more concern about wildland firefighter safety, we believe ethnography has been underutilized as a method within this domain. In response, we begin building a shared idiom for ethnographic engagement with wildland firefighter safety and similar occupations. We draw on ethnographic approaches to late industrialism to develop a method called discursive risk analysis (DRA) as an initial stage in a broader collaborative and generative research practice. By collaborative, we mean cooperation among stakeholder,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Creating Fire-Adapted Communities Through Recovery: Case Studies from the United States and Australia
Year: 2023
Wildfires can be devastating for social and ecological systems, but the recovery period after wildfire presents opportunities to reduce future risk through adaptation. We use a collective case study approach to systematically compare social and ecological recovery following four major fire events in Australia and the United States: the 1998 wildfires in northeastern Florida; the 2003 Cedar fire in southern California; the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, southeastern Australia; and the 2011 Bastrop fires in Texas. Fires spurred similar policy changes, with an emphasis on education,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Lightning-Ignited Wildfires in the Western United States: Ignition Precipitation and Associated Environmental Conditions
Year: 2023
Cloud-to-ground lightning with minimal rainfall (“dry” lightning) is a major wildfire ignition source in the western United States (WUS). Although dry lightning is commonly defined as occurring with <2.5 mm of daily-accumulated precipitation, a rigorous quantification of precipitation amounts concurrent with lightning-ignited wildfires (LIWs) is lacking. We combine wildfire, lightning and precipitation data sets to quantify these ignition precipitation amounts across ecoprovinces of the WUS. The median precipitation for all LIWs is 2.8 mm but varies with vegetation and fire characteristics…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Measuring the long-term costs of uncharacteristic wildfire: a case study of the 2010 Schultz Fire in Northern Arizona
Year: 2023
Background
Wildfires often have long-lasting costs that are difficult to document and are rarely captured in full.
Aims
We provide an example for measuring the full costs of a single wildfire over time, using a case study from the 2010 Schultz Fire near Flagstaff, Arizona, to enhance our understanding of the long-term costs of uncharacteristic wildfire.
Methods
We conducted a partial remeasurement of a 2013 study on the costs of the Schultz Fire by updating government and utility expenditures, conducting a survey of affected homeowners, estimating costs to ecosystem services and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modeling Wildland Firefighters’ Assessments of Structure Defensibility
Year: 2023
In wildland–urban interface areas, firefighters balance wildfire suppression and structure protection. These tasks are often performed under resource limitations, especially when many structures are at risk. To address this problem, wildland firefighters employ a process called “structure triage” to prioritize structure protection based on perceived defensibility. Using a dataset containing triage assessments of thousands of structures within the Western US, we developed a machine learning model that can improve the understanding of factors contributing to assessed structure defensibility.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Proportion of forest area burned at high-severity increases with increasing forest cover and connectivity in western US watersheds
Year: 2023
Context In western US forests, the increasing frequency of large high-severity fires presents challenges for society. Quantifying how fuel conditions influence high-severity area is important for managing risks of large high-severity fires and understanding how they are changing with climate change. Fuel availability and heterogeneity influence high-severity fire probability, but heterogeneity is insensitive to some aspects of forest connectivity that are important to potential high-severity fire transmission and thus high-severity area. Objectives To quantify the effects of fuel availability…
Publication Type: Journal Article