Participatory multi-criteria evaluation of landscape values to inform wildfire management

Gamboa, Gonzalo; Otero, Iago; Bueno, Conchy; Arilla, Etel; Ballart, Helena; Camprubí, Laura; Canaleta, Guillem; Tolosa, Gemma; Castellnou, Marc

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116762

Cited by 14 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…that may result in unwarranted fire danger in another subregion of the landscape. Providing a suite of scenario-based geospatial tools could allow resource managers to more readily visualize the tradeoffs of their decisions, particularly during times of drought or high precipitation [60,61].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping South Florida Daily Fire Risk for Decision Support Using Fuel Type, Water Levels, and Burn History

Jones

Vukomanovic

2023

Fire

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Mapping fire risk in South Florida depends on spatially varying water levels, fuel characteristics, and topography. When surface water levels recede below the lowest topographic features (cypress strands, marshes, etc.), the ecosystem loses its natural, wetted fire breaks, and landscape-level fire risk increases. We developed a geospatial method to generate daily, categorical fire risk maps; the maps visualize low-to-high risk areas using a newly developed 100 m DEM, modeled water levels, fuel types, and fire management units. We assigned fire risk by creating a water level distribution for each unique combination of fuel type and fire management unit; fire risk was then assigned for each pixel based on risk percentiles commonly used by fire management agencies. Assigning risk based on unique fuel types and management units helped avoid over- or under-assigning fire risk that may occur when applying landscape-level “average” risk relationships. Daily maps also incorporated (1) energy release component data to better estimate fuel moisture and (2) historical burn footprints to reduce risk in recently burned areas. Our data-driven approach generated at management-relevant spatial scales may enable more informed prescribed burn planning and may increase the efficiency of staff and resource allocation across the landscape on high-wildfire-risk days.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping South Florida Daily Fire Risk for Decision Support Using Fuel Type, Water Levels, and Burn History

Jones

Vukomanovic

2023

Fire

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“…The application of MCA and a simple WLC approach in GEE proved to be an efficient and flexible solution for the multi-indicator prioritization of watersheds. However, the method presents both advantages and limitations which depend on several factors: the quality of the input information, the scoring, weighting and aggregation processes, and the actors included [56].…”

Section: The Participatory Mca Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Criteria Prioritization of Watersheds for Post-Fire Restoration Using GIS Tools and Google Earth Engine: A Case Study from the Department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia

Fernandez,

Maillard,

Uyuni

et al. 2023

Water

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The Santa Cruz department in Bolivia is characterized by a wide range of ecosystems and by its richness in water resources. In recent years, extended drought caused by climate change has led to extensive fire events. Combined with deforestation, this is resulting in the degradation of the region’s ecosystems and water resources. To address restoration needs from both a land- and water-management perspective, this study proposes to prioritize restoration areas by applying a multi-criteria analysis (MCA) based on two main principles: (1) using the watershed as the main study unit and (2) involving stakeholders in the definition of priority watersheds. Local stakeholders selected criteria representing water resources, biophysical characteristics, land management, productive areas, and fire disaster threats, and reclassified the spatial information based on perceived importance. Different prioritization scenarios were developed and compared in a Google Earth Engine (GEE) application. Priority restoration areas largely depend on the weighting scheme. Focusing solely on past fires leads to prioritizing the south-east basins, while the conservation of the western watersheds becomes more important when increasing the weight of the water resources criteria. This study represents the first step in developing a participatory MCA tool at the watershed scale in Santa Cruz. Highlighting the impact of different prioritization criteria can support collective decision-making around land and watershed restoration.

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Informing proactive wildfire management that benefits vulnerable communities and ecological values

Lacey,

Suraci,

Littlefield

et al. 2024

People and Nature

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In response to mounting wildfire risks, land managers across the country will need to dramatically increase proactive wildfire management (e.g. fuel and forest health treatments). While human communities vary widely in their vulnerability to the impacts of fire, these discrepancies have rarely informed prioritizations for wildfire mitigation treatments. The ecological values and ecosystem services provided by forests have also typically been secondary considerations. To identify locations across the conterminous US where proactive wildfire management is likely to be effective at reducing wildfire severity and to yield co‐benefits for vulnerable communities and ecological values, we developed a set of spatial models that estimated wildfire mitigation potential (based on wildfire hazard and biophysical forest conditions) and either included or excluded information on vulnerable human communities, ecological values and ecosystem services. We then compared areas with high wildfire mitigation potential alone to refined ‘focal areas’ that overlaid social and ecological considerations to quantify the potential benefits of targeted wildfire mitigation treatments. Inclusion of social and ecological considerations substantially increased representation of vulnerable communities and ecological values in focal areas relative to the model that considered wildfire alone. For instance, restoration in these refined focal areas would cover 28% greater imperilled species richness, 45% greater water importance and 26% more families falling below the poverty line. By examining overlap between our refined focal areas and U.S. Forest Service top ranked firesheds (a prominent existing wildfire prioritization scheme), we show that our analysis can help to target wildfire mitigation efforts within firesheds to areas with particularly high social vulnerability and/or ecological value, providing an important compliment to a prioritization scheme based largely on risk to structures. Our results highlight the importance of considering ecological and social factors when implementing wildfire mitigation treatments and provide actionable guidance for integrating these considerations into existing prioritizations. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

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Participatory multi-criteria evaluation of landscape values to inform wildfire management

Cited by 14 publications

References 51 publications

Mapping South Florida Daily Fire Risk for Decision Support Using Fuel Type, Water Levels, and Burn History

Mapping South Florida Daily Fire Risk for Decision Support Using Fuel Type, Water Levels, and Burn History

Multi-Criteria Prioritization of Watersheds for Post-Fire Restoration Using GIS Tools and Google Earth Engine: A Case Study from the Department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia

Informing proactive wildfire management that benefits vulnerable communities and ecological values

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