Application of Wildfire Risk Assessment Results to Wildfire Response Planning in the Southern Sierra Nevada, California, USA

Thompson, Matthew P.; Bowden, Phil; Brough, April; Scott, Jill R.; Gilbertson-Day, Julie W.; Taylor, Alan R.; Anderson, Jennifer; Haas, Jessica R.

doi:10.3390/f7030064

Cited by 87 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Implementing such treatment regimens could potentially increase encounter rates and help expedite restoration of forest ecosystems. In addition, risk-based decision support tools are being developed to identify low-risk opportunities for the management of unplanned ignitions [51,52]. Integrating these two approaches could aid local fuel treatment planning efforts by identifying priority areas for active restoration where managed fire can occur without posing an excessive risk to resources, assets, and ecological values.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Fuel Treatment Effectiveness: Characterizing Interactions between Fire and Treatments in the US

Barnett

Parks

Miller

et al. 2016

Forests

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Abstract:In the United States, fuel reduction treatments are a standard land management tool to restore the structure and composition of forests that have been degraded by past management. Although treatments can have multiple purposes, their principal objective is to create landscape conditions where wildland fire can be safely managed to help achieve long-term land management goals. One critique is that fuel treatment benefits are unlikely to transpire due to the low probability that treated areas will be burned by a subsequent fire within a treatment's lifespan, but little quantitative information exists to corroborate this argument. We summarized the frequency, extent, and geographic variation of fire and fuel treatment interactions on federal lands within the conterminous United States (CONUS). We also assessed how the encounters between fuel treatments and fires varied with treatment size, treatment age, and number of times treated. Overall, 6.8% of treatment units evaluated were encountered by a subsequent fire during the study period, though this rate varied among ecoregions across the CONUS. Larger treatment units were more likely to be encountered by a fire, and treatment units were most frequently burned within one year of the most recent treatment, the latter of which is likely because of ongoing maintenance of existing treatments. Our results highlight the need to identify and prioritize additional opportunities to reduce fuel loading and fire risk on the millions of hectares of federal lands in the CONUS that are in need of restoration.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Fuel Treatment Effectiveness: Characterizing Interactions between Fire and Treatments in the US

Barnett

Parks

Miller

et al. 2016

Forests

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“…Our results provide further support for the potential for wildland fires to act as a fuel treatment, in order to reduce the potential for ignition and spread of future fires, especially where the landscape may benefit from fire, or where a burned area may serve as a barrier to protect highly valued resources such as municipal watersheds [34,88,89]. While this work demonstrates the potential to leverage managed lightning fires as a restoration tool, many questions remain about where and when such fires would be likely to meet ecological goals in terms of acreage burned, fire severity and effect on highly valued resources.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…The Sierra National Forest was an early adopter and innovator of spatial risk assessment and strategic pre-fire planning processes that have and will continue to be closely replicated on other National Forests throughout the country [34]. Fire managers identified zones in this National Forest where moderated suppression responses are desirable for ecological objectives, i.e., this case study landscape reflects exactly the type of context where the modeling efforts we develop could provide useful information to guide future response strategy development.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Spatial risk assessment can play an important role in informing the spectrum of management and mitigation decisions. For example, probabilistic fire simulation modeling can serve as the underpinning for assessment of risk to highly valued resources, and subsequent delineation of zones where unplanned ignitions can be used as a tool for fuel reduction and forest restoration with low risk [34]. These assessments can further be coupled with spatially-explicit information on factors related to responder safety and suppression difficulty to improve fire management operations [35,36].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In between lies a rich array of managed fire options, consisting of those where fire suppression actions are taken based on location of the fire, time of season, cause of ignition or other factors. These locations and times can be evaluated before the ignition occurs through a spatial fire planning process [33,34]. Notice that "no fire" is not an option on the continuum: although many land management agencies have at times during their histories tried to eliminate fire While the continuum provides an organizing framework for modeling choices around when and where to suppress fires, models that characterize fire spread and the moderating effects of suppression actions on fire spread are also necessary [37].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Model-Based Framework to Evaluate Alternative Wildfire Suppression Strategies

Riley

Thompson

Scott³

et al. 2018

Resources

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Abstract:The complexity and demands of wildland firefighting in the western U.S. have increased over recent decades due to factors including the expansion of the wildland-urban interface, lengthening fire seasons associated with climate change, and changes in vegetation due to past fire suppression and timber harvest. In light of these changes, the use of more wildland fire on the landscape could reduce fuels and form barriers to the spread of future fires while performing forest restoration in some areas. However, the risks, costs and benefits of changing fire response strategy have not been quantified. Here, we identify gaps regarding the ability to simulate alternative wildfire suppression strategies, due to a number of factors including limited data collected on fireline construction, as well as synergies between firefighting resources and resource effectiveness. We present a fire management continuum: at one end lies full suppression of all fires under all circumstances, and at the opposite end lies no suppression of any fires regardless of location or time in season, with a wide array of managed fire options falling in between. Next, we demonstrate the proof-of-concept using a stochastic fire simulation model, FSim, to simulate two alternative fire suppression strategies close to opposite ends of this continuum for the Sierra National Forest of California: (1) business-as-usual, which equates to nearly full fire suppression; and (2) full suppression of human-caused fires and no suppression actions on lightning-caused fires. Results indicate that fire management strategy can substantially affect the number of large fires and landscape burn probabilities, both of which were shown to increase under the second scenario. However, temporal feedbacks are expected to play an important role: we show that increases in burned area substantially limit ignition potential and the extent of subsequent fires within the first five to ten years, especially under the second scenario. While subject to current data gaps and limitations in fire modeling, the methodology presented here can be used to simulate a number of alternative fire suppression strategies, including decisions to suppress or not suppress fires based on location, time of season or other factors. This method also provides basic inputs needed to estimate risks, costs and benefits of various alternative suppression strategies in future work. In future work, uncertainties resulting from current limitations in knowledge can be addressed using techniques such as scenario planning in order to provide land managers with a set of possible fire outcomes.

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Impacts of different land management histories on forest change

Collins

Fry

Lydersen

et al. 2017

Ecological Applications

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Many western North American forest types have experienced considerable changes in ecosystem structure, composition, and function as a result of both fire exclusion and timber harvesting. These two influences co-occurred over a large portion of dry forests, making it difficult to know the strength of either one on its own or the potential for an interaction between the two. In this study, we used contemporary remeasurements of a systematic historical forest inventory to investigate forest change in the Sierra Nevada. The historical data opportunistically spanned a significant land management agency boundary, which protected part of the inventory area from timber harvesting. This allowed for a robust comparison of forest change between logged and unlogged areas. In addition, we assessed the effects of recent management activities aimed at forest restoration relative to the same areas historically, and to other areas without recent management. Based on analyses of 22,007 trees (historical, 9,573; contemporary, 12,434), live basal area and tree density significantly increased from 1911 to the early 2000s in both logged and unlogged areas. Both shrub cover and the proportion of live basal area occupied by pine species declined from 1911 to the early 2000s in both areas, but statistical significance was inconsistent. The most notable difference between logged and unlogged areas was in the density of large trees, which declined significantly in logged areas, but was unchanged in unlogged areas. Recent management activities had a varied impact on the forest structure and composition variables analyzed. In general, areas with no recent management activities experienced the greatest change from 1911 to the early 2000s. If approximating historical forest conditions is a land management goal the documented changes in forest structure and composition from 1911 to the early 2000s indicate that active restoration, including fire use and mechanical thinning, is needed in many areas.

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Application of Wildfire Risk Assessment Results to Wildfire Response Planning in the Southern Sierra Nevada, California, USA

Cited by 87 publications

References 35 publications

Beyond Fuel Treatment Effectiveness: Characterizing Interactions between Fire and Treatments in the US

Beyond Fuel Treatment Effectiveness: Characterizing Interactions between Fire and Treatments in the US

A Model-Based Framework to Evaluate Alternative Wildfire Suppression Strategies

Impacts of different land management histories on forest change

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