Global patterns in fire leverage: the response of annual area burnt to previous fire

Price, Owen; Pausas, Juli G.; Govender, Navashni; Flannigan, Mike D.; Fernandes, Paulo M.; Brooks, Matthew L.; Bird, Rebecca Bliege

doi:10.1071/wf14034

Cited by 76 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 51 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Leverage varies according to the annual extent of wildfire, extent of fuel treatment and the rate at which fuel loads recover (Price 2012). Leverage has been analysed on individual burns (Loehle 2004) and across landscapes (Boer et al 2009;Price et al 2012;Price et al 2015a). In a bioregional analysis of south-eastern Australia, Price et al (2015b) found no evidence of leverage within the study area's bioregion for the period 1970-2010.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is there an inherent conflict in managing fire for people and conservation?

Bentley

Penman

2017

Int. J. Wildland Fire

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Wildfires are a natural disturbance in many ecosystems, creating challenges for land management agencies who need to simultaneously reduce risk to people and maintain ecological values. Here we use the PHOENIX RapidFire fire behaviour simulator to compare fuel treatment strategies that meet the twin objectives of reducing wildfire risk to human settlements and a fire sensitive endangered species, the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) in south-eastern Australia. The local koala population is in decline and a conservation management plan is being prepared to exclude wildfire for a 10-year period to assist with population recovery. Twelve scenarios developed by the land management agencies were compared using four indicators: wildfire size; burn probability; impact from exposure to fire; and treatment cost. Compared with the current risk setting, three treatment scenarios were found to reduce wildfire size and burn probability concurrently to both people and koalas. These strategies worked by increasing the landscape area treated, which came with increased financial cost. However, the impact from exposure to fire for both property and koala habitat remains high. Additional complementary strategies beyond landscape fuel reductions are needed to reduce impact from exposure in the event of a wildfire.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is there an inherent conflict in managing fire for people and conservation?

Bentley

Penman

2017

Int. J. Wildland Fire

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A similar increase in total area burnt due to prescribed burning is likely to occur in many regions globally (Price et al, 2015). However, this does not necessarily mean that the smoke impact is 3 times greater because less fuel is consumed in a prescribed fire.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Local and regional smoke impacts from prescribed fires

Price

Horsey

Jiang³

2016

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Smoke from wildfires poses a significant threat to affected communities. Prescribed burning is conducted to reduce the extent and potential damage of wildfires, but produces its own smoke threat. Planners of prescribed fires model the likely dispersion of smoke to help manage the impacts on local communities. Significant uncertainty remains about the actual smoke impact from prescribed fires, especially near the fire, and the accuracy of smoke dispersal models.To address this uncertainty, a detailed study of smoke dispersal was conducted for one small (52 ha) and one large (700 ha) prescribed fire near Appin in New South Wales, Australia, through the use of stationary and handheld pollution monitors, visual observations and rain radar data, and by comparing observations to predictions from an atmospheric dispersion model. The 52 ha fire produced a smoke plume about 800 m high and 9 km long. Particle concentrations (PM 2.5 ) reached very high peak values (> 400 µg m −3 ) and high 24 h average values (> 100 µg m −3 ) at several locations next to or within ∼ 500 m downwind from the fire, but low levels elsewhere. The 700 ha fire produced a much larger plume, peaking at ∼ 2000 m altitude and affecting downwind areas up to 14 km away. Both peak and 24 h average PM 2.5 values near the fire were lower than for the 52 ha fire, but this may be because the monitoring locations were further away from the fire. Some lofted smoke spread north against the ground-level wind direction. Smoke from this fire collapsed to the ground during the night at different times in different locations. Although it is hard to attribute particle concentrations definitively to smoke, it seems that the collapsed plume affected a huge area including the towns of Wollongong, Bargo, Oakdale, Camden and Campbelltown (∼ 1200 km 2 ). PM 2.5 concentrations up to 169 µg m −3 were recorded on the morning following the fire. The atmospheric dispersion model accurately predicted the general behaviour of both plumes in the early phases of the fires, but was poor at predicting fine-scale variation in particulate concentrations (e.g. places 500 m from the fire). The correlation between predicted and observed varied between 0 and 0.87 depending on location. The model also completely failed to predict the night-time collapse of the plume from the 700 ha fire.This study provides a preliminary insight into the potential for large impacts from prescribed fire smoke to NSW communities and the need for increased accuracy in smoke dispersion modelling. More research is needed to better understand when and why such impacts might occur and provide better predictions of pollution risk.

show abstract

“…Numerous recent fires in the western U.S. have been managed in part or in whole for ecological benefit (henceforth "restoration fires"), including over 12 fires in 2017 totaling more than 60,000 ha of burned area (Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management, personal communication). Both modeling and empirical studies support these actions by showing that wild and prescribed fires can limit growth and lower severity of future fires and losses (Collins et al 2009, Arkle et al 2012, North et al 2012, Houtman et al 2013, Hoff et al 2014, Parks et al 2014, 2015a, Price et al 2015 and facilitate suppression efforts (Moghaddas and Craggs 2007, Syphard et al 2011b, Cochrane et al 2012, Thompson et al 2016. However, despite these and other studies, including landscape simulation research in which alternative fire management studies are simulated over time Mladenoff 2007, Spies et al 2014), research is nonexistent on how landscape fire regimes and suppression budgets might change following long-term changes in fire policy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We hypothesized that at some level of fire activity, fuels would begin limiting the growth of fires in subsequent years and reduce area burned and fire intensity because the consumption of fuels by wildfire would exceed accretion by forest growth and succession. We were specifically interested in evidence for tipping points (Adams 2013) and other discontinuities in fire feedbacks, and the overall leverage (Price et al 2015) of fire to reduce future fire. We also hypothesized that increased fire would lead to impacts on ecological values including habitat for species dependent on specific types of old growth forest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of accelerated wildfire on future fire regimes and implications for the United States federal fire policy

Ager¹,

Barros²,

Preisler³

et al. 2017

E&S

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

. 2017. Effects of accelerated wildfire on future fire regimes and implications for the United States federal fire policy. Ecology and Society 22 (4) ABSTRACT. Wildland fire suppression practices in the western United States are being widely scrutinized by policymakers and scientists as costs escalate and large fires increasingly affect social and ecological values. One potential solution is to change current fire suppression tactics to intentionally increase the area burned under conditions when risks are acceptable to managers and fires can be used to achieve long-term restoration goals in fire adapted forests. We conducted experiments with the Envision landscape model to simulate increased levels of wildfire over a 50-year period on a 1.2 million ha landscape in the eastern Cascades of Oregon, USA. We hypothesized that at some level of burned area fuels would limit the growth of new fires, and fire effects on the composition and structure of forests would eventually reduce future fire intensity and severity. We found that doubling current rates of wildfire resulted in detectable feedbacks in area burned and fire intensity. Area burned in a given simulation year was reduced about 18% per unit area burned in the prior five years averaged across all scenarios. The reduction in area burned was accompanied by substantially lower fire severity, and vegetation shifted to open forest and grass-shrub conditions at the expense of old growth habitat. Negative fire feedbacks were slightly moderated by longer-term positive feedbacks, in which the effect of prior area burned diminished during the simulation. We discuss trade-offs between managing fuels with wildfire versus prescribed fire and mechanical fuel treatments from a social and policy standpoint. The study provides a useful modeling framework to consider the potential value of fire feedbacks as part of overall land management strategies to build fire resilient landscapes and reduce wildfire risk to communities in the western U.S. The results are also relevant to prior climate-wildfire studies that did not consider fire feedbacks in projections of future wildfire activity.

show abstract

Global patterns in fire leverage: the response of annual area burnt to previous fire

Cited by 76 publications

References 51 publications

Is there an inherent conflict in managing fire for people and conservation?

Is there an inherent conflict in managing fire for people and conservation?

Local and regional smoke impacts from prescribed fires

Effects of accelerated wildfire on future fire regimes and implications for the United States federal fire policy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About