Development and Application of the Fireshed Registry

Abstract

The Fireshed Registry is an interactive geospatial data portal providing access to data describing past, present, and future trends regarding wildfire exposure to communities and forest and fuel management. The registry employs a nested spatial framework that organizes landscape variation in wildfire risk to developed areas into containers or "firesheds" and displays these data on a background of maps on management and disturbances, including past and predicted wildfire events and their potential impacts. It was built in close cooperation with USDA Forest Service staff and establishes a nationally consistent, all-lands, scalable framework for classifying fireshed conditions in terms of underlying wildfire transmission and the potential to mitigate exposure and risk. Foremost, the framework provides a foundation for communication and coordination with external agencies and partners for cross-boundary collaboration and can potentially improve agency national reporting and monitoring of programs. The registry provides the Forest Service with a planning framework for tracking changes in fireshed conditions with respect to wildfire exposure at forest, regional, and national scales. We describe the process of building the system, sources of data, and its application within the agency for decision support and reporting for multiple ongoing programs related to forest and landscape management.

Matching the scales of planning and environmental risk: an evaluation of Community Wildfire Protection Plans in the western US

“…In particular, recent US federal efforts to address and mitigate wildfire exposure to communities have focused on regional "firesheds" to delineate and prioritize wildfire mitigation efforts over the coming decade (USDA Forest Service 2022). Defined as contiguous regions with shared wildfire risks, firesheds used in these efforts averaged 100,000 ha in size (Evers et al 2020;Ager et al 2021). By comparison, we found the spatial match for CWPP boundaries peaked at around 50,000 ha.…”

Identifying opportunity hot spots for reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in western US conifer forests

“…We estimated social adaptive capacity and vulnerability at the pixel-level, whereas planning, implementing, and maintaining treatments occurs across broader landscapes. To reconcile these different To aggregate pixel-level findings to broader and more management-relevant spatial extents, we used nested spatial units from the fireshed spatial hierarchy [91,92]. Highlighted in blue are the widespread opportunities for using proactive forest management to reduce the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss at both the (a) project area and (b) fireshed levels.…”

“…At the fireshed level, we estimated that 308 opportunity hot spots exist, which could be prioritized and treated proactively to reduce the greatest risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss. scales, we aggregated our findings to the spatial unit of a 'fireshed' [91,92]-a term and spatial hierarchy used for evaluating wildfire risk to human communities and adopted by the US Forest Service's Wildfire Crisis Strategy [2]. Specifically, we adopted two nested planning units: project areas at ∼10 000 hectares and firesheds at ∼100 000 hectares [91,92].…”

“…scales, we aggregated our findings to the spatial unit of a 'fireshed' [91,92]-a term and spatial hierarchy used for evaluating wildfire risk to human communities and adopted by the US Forest Service's Wildfire Crisis Strategy [2]. Specifically, we adopted two nested planning units: project areas at ∼10 000 hectares and firesheds at ∼100 000 hectares [91,92]. When planning, implementing, and maintaining treatments, the objective is not necessarily to treat an entire fireshed, but to prioritize and strategically place treatments at locations with carbon most vulnerable to wildfire-caused loss.…”

“…Figure 4.To aggregate pixel-level findings to broader and more management-relevant spatial extents, we used nested spatial units from the fireshed spatial hierarchy[91,92]. Highlighted in blue are the widespread opportunities for using proactive forest management to reduce the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss at both the (a) project area and (b) fireshed levels.…”