Research Database
Displaying 161 - 180 of 359
The Costs and Costs Avoided From Wildfire Fire Management—A Conceptual Framework for a Value of Information Analysis
Year: 2022
Wildfire is an integral part of many ecosystems, and wildland fires also have the potential for costly impacts to human health and safety, and damage to structures and natural resources. Public land managers use various strategies for managing landscape conditions that can affect wildfire, broadly: fuel treatment (and other pre-fire risk mitigation), fire suppression, and post-fire landscape rehabilitation. However, with any of these strategies there is considerable uncertainty in the outcomes that managers can obtain, and thus on the societal costs and benefits associated with wildland fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Strategic Partnerships to Leverage Small Wins for Fine Fuels Management
Year: 2022
Rangeland wildfire is a wicked problem that cuts across a mosaic of public and private rangelands in the western United States and countless countries worldwide. Fine fuel accumulation in these ecosystems contributes to large-scale wildfires and undermines plant communities’ resistance to invasive annual grasses and resilience to disturbances such as fire. Yet it can be difficult to implement fuels management practices, such as grazing, in socially and politically complex contexts such as federally managed rangelands in the United States. In this Research-Partnership Highlight, we argue that…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Economic Value of Fuel Treatments: A Review of the Recent Literature for Fuel Treatment Planning
Year: 2022
This review synthesizes the scientific literature on fuel treatment economics published since 2013 with a focus on its implications for land managers and policy makers. We review the literature on whether fuel treatments are financially viable for land management agencies at the time of implementation, as well as over the lifespan of fuel treatment effectiveness. We also review the literature that considers the broad benefits of fuel treatments across multiple sectors of society. Most studies find that fuel treatments are not financially viable for land management agencies based on revenue…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Human- and lightning-caused wildland fire ignition clusters in British Columbia, Canada
Year: 2022
Wildland fire is a common occurrence in western Canada, with record-setting area burned recorded in British Columbia (BC) in the past decade. Here, we used the unsupervised machine learning algorithm HDBSCAN to identify high-density clusters of both human- and lightning- caused wildfire ignitions in BC using data from 2006 to 2020. We found that human-caused ignition clusters tended to occur around population centres, First Nations communities, roads and valleys, and were more common in the southern half of the province, which is more populated. Lightning-ignition clusters were generally…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Professional wildfire mitigation competency: a potential policy gap
Year: 2022
Studies show that effective strategies to mitigate the risk of structural damage in wildfires include defensible spaces and home hardening. Structures in the western United States are especially at risk. Several jurisdictions have adopted codes that require implementation of these strategies. However, construction and landscaping professionals are generally not required to obtain credentials indicating their competency in mitigating the risk of structural damage in a wildfire. We discuss the implications of this policy gap and propose a solution to bolster competency of professionals in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Characterization of Fire-Management Research: A Bibliometric Review of Global Networks and Themes
Year: 2022
Although humans have interacted with wildfires for millennia, a science-based approach to fire management has evolved in recent decades. This paper reviews the development of firemanagement research, focusing on publications that use this term in their title, abstract, or keywords identified on the Scopus platform. This resulted in the identification of 5624 documents published between 1973 and 2021. Publication rates have particularly increased since 2010. The paper details the characteristics of this body of the literature, including the main authors, institutions, and countries.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Designing forest restoration projects to optimize the application of broadcast burning
Year: 2022
Active forest restoration programs on western US national forests face multiple challenges to meet their broad ecological goals while designing projects that generate sufficient revenue to build and maintain private forest management capacity needed to expand the scale and scope of treatments. We explored ways to design projects where admixing of treatments along gradients of dry and moist mixed conifer forest types could maximize financial viability while including substantial area where broadcast burning could be applied in conjunction with other treatments. In general, we found that…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Large wildfire driven increases in nighttime fire activity observed across CONUS from 2003–2020
Year: 2022
Despite the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of wildfires, little attention has been paid to the spatiotemporal patterns of nighttime fire activity across the conterminous United States (CONUS). Daytime fire radiative power (FRP) detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) was nearly evenly split (54% vs. 46%) between inside and outside wildfires from 2003 to 2020. In contrast, 94% of nighttime FRP was detected within wildfires, of which 95% was detected within large wildfires (> 2023 ha). Nighttime proportions (i.e., the proportion of total summed FRP…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Indigenous Fire Stewardship: Federal/Tribal Partnerships for Wildland Fire Research and Management
Year: 2021
Over millennia, many indigenous and Tribal peoples in North America’s fire-prone ecosystems developed sophisticated relationships with wildland fire that continue today. This article introduces philosophical, conceptual, and operational approaches to working with American Indians through research and management partnerships in the fields of wildland fire, forestry, and fuels, with applications to climate change and forest landscape restoration strategies (Mansourian and others 2019). Of central importance are respectful collaborative relationships among the various parties (Tribes, agencies,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Planning for future fire: Scenario analysis of an accelerated fuel reduction plan for the western United States
Year: 2021
Recent fire seasons brought a new fire reality to the western US, and motivated federal agencies to explore scenarios for augmenting current fuel management and forest restoration in areas where fires might threaten critical resources and developed areas. To support this effort, we modeled the scheduling of an accelerated forest and fuel management scenario on 76 western US national forests. Specifically, we modeled a 10-year ramp up of current forest and fuel management that targeted the source of wildfire exposure to developed areas and simulated treatment in areas that accounted for 77% of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate and wildfire adaptation of inland Northwest US forests
Year: 2021
After a century of intensive logging, federal forest management policies were developed in the 1990s to protect remaining large trees and old forests in the western US. Today, due to rapidly changing ecological conditions, new threats and uncertainties, and scientific advancements, some policy provisions are being re-evaluated in interior Oregon and Washington. The case for re- evaluation is clearest where small- to large-sized, immature, fast-growing, fire-intolerant trees have filled in forests after both a long period of fire exclusion and the harvest of large, old trees. This infilling…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Disturbance shapes the US forest governance frontier: A review and conceptual framework for understanding governance change
Year: 2021
Conflict in US forest management for decades centered around balancing demands from forested ecosystems, with a rise in place-based collaborative governance at the end of the twentieth century. By the early 2000s, it was becoming apparent that not only had the mix of players involved in forest management changed, but so had the playing field, as climate-driven disturbances such as wildfire and insect and disease outbreaks were becoming more extensive and severe. In this conceptual review paper, we argue that disturbance has become the most prominent driver of governance change on US national…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire and climate change adaptation of western North American forests: a case for intentional management
Year: 2021
We review science-based adaptation strategies for western North American (wNA) forests that include restoring active fire regimes and fostering resilient structure and composition of forested landscapes. As part of the review, we address common questions associated with climate adaptation and realignment treatments that run counter to a broad consensus in the literature. These include the following: (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? (3) Can forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Communicating with the public about wildland fire: A resource for practitioners to plan engagement strategies
Year: 2021
This infographic summarizes recommendations from a review of 32 research studies about communicating with the public about wildland fire and smoke
Publication Type: Journal Article
Perceptions of wildland fire smoke
Year: 2021
With exposure to wildland fire smoke projected to further increase (Barbero et al. 2015) there is a clear need for efforts to better mitigate or adapt to smoke impacts in high-risk areas. Such efforts relyon an understanding of how people perceive, plan for, and respond to smoke. This synthesis compiles published scholarly literature on how individuals perceive wildland fire smoke to offer an overview of current knowledge on wildland fire smoke perceptions.It is intended to serve as a documentation of the scope, parameters, and gaps of research to date in this field.
Publication Type: Report
A Mixed Methods Literature Review and Framework for Decision Factors That May Influence the Utilization of Managed Wildfire on Federal Lands, USA
Year: 2021
There is increasing discussion in the academic and agency literature, as well as popular media, about the need to address the existing deficit of beneficial fire on landscapes. One approach allowable under United States federal wildland fire policy that could help address this condition is by deliberately managing wildfire with a strategy other than full suppression (hereafter referred to as ‘managed wildfire’). To improve the understanding of the managed fire decision-making process, we conducted a mixed methods review of the existing literature. This review spanned 1976 to 2013 and used…
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
Evidence for widespread changes in the structure, composition, and fire regimes of western North American forests
Year: 2021
Implementation of wildfire- and climate-adaptation strategies in seasonally dry forests of western North America is impeded by numerous constraints and uncertainties. After more than a century of resource and land use change, some question the need for proactive management, particularly given novel social, ecological, and climatic conditions. To address this question, we first provide a framework for assessing changes in landscape conditions and fire regimes. Using this framework, we then evaluate evidence of change and lack of change in contemporary conditions relative to those maintained by…
Publication Type: Journal Article
An ecological perspective on living with fire in ponderosa pine forests of Oregon and Washington: Resistance, gone but not forgotten
Year: 2021
Wildland fires (WLF) have become more frequent, larger, and severe with greater impacts to society and ecosys- tems and dramatic increases in firefighting costs. Forests throughout the range of ponderosa pine in Oregon and Washington are jeopardized by the interaction of anomalously dense forest structure, a warming and dry- ing climate, and an expanding human population. These forests evolved with frequent interacting disturbances including low-severity surface fires, droughts, and biological disturbance agents (BDAs). Chronic low-severity disturbances were, and still are, critical to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Adapting western North American forests to climate change and wildfires: ten common questions
Year: 2021
We review science-based adaptation strategies for western North American (wNA) forests that include restoring active fire regimes and fostering resilient structure and composition of forested landscapes. As part of the review, we address common questions associated with climate adaptation and realignment treatments that run counter to a broad consensus in the literature. These include: (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? (3) Can forest thinning and…
Publication Type: Journal Article