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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Whether ignited by lightning or by Native Americans, fire once shaped many North American ecosystems.
Assisted migration (AM) is often presented as a strategy to save species that are imminently threatened by rapid climate change. This conception of AM, which has generated considerable controversy, typically proposes the movement of narrowly distributed, threatened species to suitable sites beyond their current range limits.
An important consideration in forest management to mitigate climate change is the balance between forest carbon (C) storage and ecological sustainability.
Despite the importance of effective communication about forest and fuel management, little is known about how best to frame information to facilitate public understanding and increase support.
This guide describes the benefits, opportunities, and trade-offs concerning fuel treatments in the dry mixed conifer forests of northern California and the Klamath Mountains, Pacific Northwest Interior, northern and central Rocky Mountains, and Utah.