Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction

Background

Introduction: Growing concerns about fire across the western United States, and commensurate emphasis on treating expansive areas over the next 2 decades, have created a need to develop tools for managers to assess management benefits and impacts across spatial scales.

In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies.

The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was initiated more than two decades ago with the goal of evaluating the ecological impacts of mechanical treatments and prescribed fire in different ecosystems across the United States.

Background: The increasing size and severity of western U.S. wildfires in recent years has generated greater attention towards post-wildfire response and recovery. Post-fire governance requires coordinating response and recovery capacities across jurisdictions, landscapes, and time scales.

In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies.

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.

In Washington State in the US, the story of the Washington Department of Natural Resources’ (WA DNR) work to manage increased wildfire threat and the resulting internal and external shifts in agency policy and practices is the subject of this analysis.

Background: Climate change is a strong contributing factor in the lengthening and intensification of wildfire seasons, with warmer and often drier conditions associated with increasingly severe impacts.

Background