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

Barnett, Kate; Parks, Sean A.; Miller, Carol; Naughton, Helen T.

doi:10.3390/f7100237

Cited by 61 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…We developed cumulative distribution curves for avoided area burned and avoided suppression costs, which illustrate substantial variation across simulated fire seasons. Results presented here largely corroborate findings from other related studies: opportunities for mechanical treatment can be limited because of land designation, slope, access, and other factors; fire-treatment encounters are relatively rare phenomena, but when they do occur can result in substantial changes in fire behavior both within and outside of treated areas; however, median annual reductions in area burned and suppression costs are zero [25,26,31,33,40].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

“…Similar to [40], we defined a fire-treatment encounter as the geospatial intersection of a simulated fire perimeter with at least one treated pixel. We found the number of treated pixels burned by each fire using [78], overlaying each perimeter with a raster of all treated pixels for each of the six treated landscapes.…”

Section: Fire-treatment Encounters and Changes In Burn Probabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Expanding the footprint of treated areas and being more strategic in the choice of where to implement treatments are two key themes for improving treatment efficacy [37][38][39]. A critical variable determining treatment efficacy is the rate at which unplanned fires encounter fuel treatments [40]. Encounter rates generally increase with increasing fire frequency, increasing area burned, and, important for our purposes here, increasing area treated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modeling Fuel Treatment Leverage: Encounter Rates, Risk Reduction, and Suppression Cost Impacts

Thompson

Riley

Loeffler

et al. 2017

Forests

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Abstract:The primary theme of this study is the cost-effectiveness of fuel treatments at multiple scales of investment. We focused on the nexus of fuel management and suppression response planning, designing spatial fuel treatment strategies to incorporate landscape features that provide control opportunities that are relevant to fire operations. Our analysis explored the frequency and magnitude of fire-treatment encounters, which are critical determinants of treatment efficacy. Additionally, we examined avoided area burned, avoided suppression costs, and avoided damages, and combined all three under the umbrella of leverage to explore multiple dimensions with which to characterize return on investment. We chose the Sierra National Forest, California, USA, as our study site, due to previous work providing relevant data and analytical products, and because it has the potential for large, long-duration fires and corresponding potential for high suppression expenditures. Modeling results generally confirmed that fire-treatment encounters are rare, such that median suppression cost savings are zero, but in extreme years, savings can more than offset upfront investments. Further, reductions in risk can expand areas where moderated suppression response would be appropriate, and these areas can be mapped in relation to fire control opportunities.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Section: Fire-treatment Encounters and Changes In Burn Probabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modeling Fuel Treatment Leverage: Encounter Rates, Risk Reduction, and Suppression Cost Impacts

Thompson

Riley

Loeffler

et al. 2017

Forests

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“…Individual fuel treatments are generally smaller than this (Barnett et al. ), although the cumulative total and configuration of treatments is important in altering landscape burn patterns (Finney et al. ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence of fuels management and fire weather influencing fire severity in an extreme fire event

Lydersen

Collins

Brooks

et al. 2017

Ecological Applications

123

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Following changes in vegetation structure and pattern, along with a changing climate, large wildfire incidence has increased in forests throughout the western United States. Given this increase, there is great interest in whether fuels treatments and previous wildfire can alter fire severity patterns in large wildfires. We assessed the relative influence of previous fuels treatments (including wildfire), fire weather, vegetation, and water balance on fire-severity in the Rim Fire of 2013. We did this at three different spatial scales to investigate whether the influences on fire severity changed across scales. Both fuels treatments and previous low to moderate-severity wildfire reduced the prevalence of high-severity fire. In general, areas without recent fuels treatments and areas that previously burned at high severity tended to have a greater proportion of high-severity fire in the Rim Fire. Areas treated with prescribed fire, especially when combined with thinning, had the lowest proportions of high severity. The proportion of the landscape burned at high severity was most strongly influenced by fire weather and proportional area previously treated for fuels or burned by low to moderate severity wildfire. The proportion treated needed to effectively reduce the amount of high severity fire varied by spatial scale of analysis, with smaller spatial scales requiring a greater proportion treated to see an effect on fire severity. When moderate and high-severity fire encountered a previously treated area, fire severity was significantly reduced in the treated area relative to the adjacent untreated area. Our results show that fuels treatments and low to moderate-severity wildfire can reduce fire severity in a subsequent wildfire, even when burning under fire growth conditions. These results serve as further evidence that both fuels treatments and lower severity wildfire can increase forest resilience.

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“…In many locations, the biophysical solution might well be more fire, not less: the choices lie around where and under what conditions to leverage prescribed and managed fires [18,19]. Mechanical treatment alone is insufficient to reduce fuels without the use of prescribed fires [20], is limited in spatial scope compared to the scale of many wildfires [18,21] and is constrained by practical factors including access in many areas [22,23]. Therefore, an increasing role exists for using unplanned ignitions to manage fuels in selected areas and under selected conditions [24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Cited by 61 publications

References 48 publications

Modeling Fuel Treatment Leverage: Encounter Rates, Risk Reduction, and Suppression Cost Impacts

Modeling Fuel Treatment Leverage: Encounter Rates, Risk Reduction, and Suppression Cost Impacts

Evidence of fuels management and fire weather influencing fire severity in an extreme fire event

A Model-Based Framework to Evaluate Alternative Wildfire Suppression Strategies

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