Research Database
Displaying 81 - 100 of 107
Forest fire policy: change conventional thinking of smoke management to prioritize long-term air quality and public health
Year: 2016
Wildland fire smoke is inevitable. Size and intensity of wildland fires are increasing in the western USA. Smoke-free skies and public exposure to wildland fire smoke have effectively been postponed through suppression. The historic policy of suppression has systematically both instilled a public expectation of a smoke-free environment and deferred emissions through increased forest fuel loads that will lead to an eventual large spontaneous release. High intensity fire smoke is impacting a larger area including high density urban areas. Policy change has largely attempted to provide the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Living on a flammable planet: interdisciplinary, cross-scalar and varied cultural lessons, prospects and challenges
Year: 2016
Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-economic, political, ecological and climatic processes at various spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of 2 days, the authors discussed how communities could live with fire challenges at local, national and transnational scales. Exploiting our diverse, international and interdisciplinary expertise, we outline generalizable properties of fire-adaptive communities in varied settings where cultural knowledge of fire is rich and diverse. At the national scale, we discussed policy and management…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Health and Environmental Impacts of Smoke from Vegetation Fires: A Review
Year: 2016
Smoke exposure is often an inevitable side effect of open vegetation fires (both planned and wild) and is an important public health concern. The objective of this paper is to summarize state-of-the-art knowledge on health and environmental impacts of smoke from vegetation fires, to identify research gaps, and to provide needed information to researchers, land managers, policymakers, health care workers, and the general public. The main components of vegetation fire smoke and their characterizations are identified and evaluated. Concentrations, emission ratios, and emission factors of smoke…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Places where wildfire potential and social vulnerability coincide in the coterminous United States
Year: 2016
The hazards-of-place model posits that vulnerability to environmental hazards depends on both biophysical and social factors. Biophysical factors determine where wildfire potential is elevated, whereas social factors determine where and how people are affected by wildfire. We evaluated place vulnerability to wildfire hazards in the coterminous US. We developed a social vulnerability index using principal component analysis and evaluated it against existing measures of wildfire potential and wildland–urban interface designations. We created maps showing the coincidence of social vulnerability…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Review of the health effects of wildland fire smoke on wildland firefighters and the public
Year: 2016
Each year, the general public and wildland firefighters in the US are exposed to smoke from wildland fires. As part of an effort to characterize health risks of breathing this smoke, a review of the literature was conducted using five major databases, including PubMed and MEDLINE Web of Knowledge, to identify smoke components that present the highest hazard potential, the mechanisms of toxicity, review epidemiological studies for health effects and identify the current gap in knowledge on the health impacts of wildland fire smoke exposure. Respiratory events measured in time series studies as…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Long-term dead wood changes in a Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forest: habitat and fire hazard implications
Year: 2015
Dead trees play an important role in forests, with snags and coarse woody debris (CWD) used by many bird and mammal species for nesting, resting, or foraging. However, too much dead wood can also contribute to extreme fire behavior. This tension between dead wood as habitat and dead wood as fuel has raised questions about appropriate quantities in fire-dependent forested ecosystems. Three plots installed in mixed conifer forest of the central Sierra Nevada in 1929 illustrate how amounts and sizes of dead wood have changed through time as a result of logging and fire exclusion. Diameter of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire smoke and public health risk
Year: 2015
Wildfire activity is predicted to increase with global climate change, resulting in longer fire seasons and larger areas burned. The emissions from fires are highly variable owing to differences in fuel, burning conditions and other external environmental factors. The smoke that is generated can impact human populations spread over vast geographical areas. Wildfire smoke is a complex mixture of pollutants that can undergo physical and chemical transformation processes during transport and can have major impacts on air quality and public health. This review looks at the main features of smoke…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Categorizing the social context of the wildland urban interface: Adaptive capacity for wildfire and community "archetypes"
Year: 2015
Understanding the local context that shapes collective response to wildfire risk continues to be a challenge for scientists and policymakers. This study utilizes and expands on a conceptual approach for understanding adaptive capacity to wildfire in a comparison of 18 past case studies. The intent is to determine whether comparison of local social context and community characteristics across cases can identify community "archetypes" that approach wildfire planning and mitigation in consistently different ways. Identification of community archetypes serves as a potential strategy for…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Put the wet stuff on the hot stuff': The legacy and drivers of conflict surrounding wildfire suppression
Year: 2015
Existing research demonstrates that wildfire events can lead to conflict among local residents and outside professionals involved in wildfire management or suppression. What has been missing in thewildfire literature is a more explicit understanding of the social dynamics that influence such conflict in rural or agricultural communities and their long-term legacy for future wildfire management. Authorsconducted interviews with local residents of a southeastern Washington community in 2012 to better understand conflict surrounding management of the 2006 Columbia Complex Fire. We utilize…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland firefighter safety zones: a review of past science and summary of future needs
Year: 2014
Current wildland firefighter safety zone guidelines are based on studies that assume flat terrain, radiant heating, finite flame width, constant flame temperature and high flame emissivity. Firefighter entrapments and injuries occur across a broad range of vegetation, terrain and atmospheric conditions generally when they are within two flame heights of the fire. Injury is not confined to radiant heating or flat terrain; consequently, convective heating should be considered as a potential heating mode. Current understanding of energy transport in wildland fires is briefly summarised, followed…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Examining fire-prone forest landscapes as coupled human and natural systems
Year: 2014
Fire-prone landscapes are not well studied as coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and present many challenges for understanding and promoting adaptive behaviors and institutions. Here, we explore how heterogeneity, feedbacks, and external drivers in this type of natural hazard system can lead to complexity and can limit the development of more adaptive approaches to policy and management. Institutions and social networks can counter these limitations and promote adaptation. We also develop a conceptual model that includes a robust characterization of social subsystems for a fire-prone…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Beyond reducing fire hazard: fuel treatment impacts on overstory tree survival
Year: 2014
Fuel treatment implementation in dry forest types throughout the western United States is likely to increase in pace and scale in response to increasing incidence of large wildfires. While it is clear that properly implemented fuel treatments are effective at reducing hazardous fire potential, there are ancillary ecological effects that can impact forest resilience either positively or negatively depending on the specific elements examined, as well as treatment type, timing, and intensity. In this study, we use overstory tree growth responses, measured seven years after the most common fuel…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire behavior in masticated fuels: A review
Year: 2014
Mastication is an increasingly common fuels treatment that redistributes “ladder” fuels to the forest floor to reduce vertical fuel continuity, crown fire potential, and fireline intensity, but fuel models do not exist for predicting fire behavior in these fuel types. Recent fires burning in masticated fuels have behaved in unexpected and contradictory ways, likely because the shredded, compact fuel created when trees and shrubs are masticated contains irregularly shaped pieces in mixtures quite different from other woody fuels. We review fuels characteristics and fire behavior in masticated…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire and the Future of Water Supply
Year: 2014
In many parts of the world, forests provide high quality water for domestic, agricultural, industrial, and ecological needs, with water supplies in those regions inextricably linked to forest health. Wildfires have the potential to have devastating effects on aquatic ecosystems and community drinking water supply through impacts on water quantity and quality. In recent decades, a combination of fuel load accumulation, climate change, extensive droughts, and increased human presence in forests have resulted in increases in area burned and wildfire severity—a trend predicted to continue. Thus,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Smoke management of wildfire and prescribed fire: understanding public preferences and trade-offs
Year: 2014
Smoke from forest fires is a serious and increasing land management concern. However, a paucity of information exists that is specific to public perceptions of smoke. This study used conjoint analysis, a multivariate technique, to evaluate how four situational factors (i.e., smoke origin, smoke duration, health impact, and advanced warning) influence public tolerance of smoke in the northern Rocky Mountains and south-central United States. Separate analyses were performed for subgroups, based on community type, level of fire preparedness, demographics, and smoke experience, to explore…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Source of Sediment Hazards on Steep Slopes
Year: 2014
On steep slopes between 30-45 degrees, loose soil is stored behind plant “dams.” After a fire, > 75% of stored sediment is rapidly released to the channel system by dry ravel (the rolling, bouncing, and sliding of individual particles). The postfire hazard from stored sediment can be calculated at the catchment scale if the size and distribution of vegetation cover are known.
Publication Type: Report
The climate-wildfire-air quality system: interactions and feedbacks across spatial and temporal scales
Year: 2014
Future climate change and its effects on social and ecological systems present challenges for preserving valued ecosystem services, including local and regional air quality. Wildfire is a major source of air-quality impact in some locations, and a substantial contributor to pollutants of concern, including nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which are regulated to protect public and environmental health. Since climate change is expected to increase total area burned by wildfire and wildfires affect air quality, which is regulated, there is a need to define and study climate, wildfire, and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mapping multiple forest threats in the northwestern United States
Year: 2013
US forestlands are increasingly subject to disturbances including wildfire, insects and disease, and urban and exurban development. Devising strategies for addressing these “forest threats“ depends on anticipating where individual disturbances are most likely and where they might occur in combination. However, many spatial data sets describing forest threats are produced at fine scales but are intended only for coarse-scale planning and policy purposes. We demonstrate one way to combine and display forest threat data at their appropriate spatial scales, using spatial data characterizing…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Living in a tinderbox: wildfire risk perceptions and mitigating behaviors
Year: 2013
The loss of homes to wildfires is an important issue in the USA and other countries. Yet many homeowners living in fire-prone areas do not undertake mitigating actions, such as clearing vegetation, to decrease the risk of losing their home. To better understand the complexity of wildfire risk-mitigation decisions and the role of perceived risk, we conducted a survey of homeowners in a fire-prone area of the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. We examine the relationship between perceived wildfire risk ratings and risk-mitigating behaviours in two ways. First, we model wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
ArcFuels10 System Overview
Year: 2013
Fire behavior modeling and geospatial analyses can provide tremendous insight for land managers as they grapple with the complex problems frequently encountered in wildfire risk assessments and fire and fuels management planning. Fuel management often is a particularly complicated process in which the benefits and potential impacts of fuel treatments need to be demonstrated in the context of land management goals and public expectations. The fuel treatment planning process is complicated by the lack of data assimilation among fire behavior models and weak linkages to geographic information…
Publication Type: Report