Measuring Initial Attack Suppression Effectiveness through Burn Probability

Abstract

Most wildfires in North America are quickly extinguished during initial attack (IA), the first phase of suppression. While rates of success are high, it is not clear how much IA suppression reduces annual fire risk across landscapes. This study introduces a method of estimating IA effectiveness by pairing burn probability (BP) analysis with containment probability calculations based on initial fire intensity, spread rate, and crew response time. The method was demonstrated on a study area in Kootenay National Park, Canada by comparing burn probabilities with and without modeled IA suppression. Results produced landscape-level analyses of three variables: burn probability, suppression effectiveness, and conditional escape probability. Overall, IA reduced mean study area BP by 78% as compared to a no-suppression scenario, but the primary finding was marked spatial heterogeneity. IA was most effective in recently burned areas (86% reduction), whereas mature, contiguous fuels moderated its influence (50%). Suppression was least effective in the designated wildfire exclusion zone, suggesting supplementary management approaches may be appropriate. While the framework includes assumptions about IA containment, results offer new insight into emergent risk patterns and how management strategies alter them. Managers can adopt these methods to anticipate, quantify, and compare fine-scale policy outcomes.

A classification scheme to determine wildfires from the satellite record in the cool grasslands of southern Canada: considerations for fire occurrence modelling and warning criteria

“…In addition to this likely grassland and cropland expansion, projections of increasingly common critical fire weather conditions (Wang et al, 2015) are likely to shift the fire regime to one of more open fuel burning. However, no change in the rate of fire detections (undifferentiated between wildfires and agricultural burning) has been detected between 1981-2000 (Riaño et al, 2007) nor 1998-2015 (Andela et al, 2017) in the region.…”

Exposure of the Canadian wildland–human interface and population to wildland fire, under current and future climate conditions

“…Therefore, we can expect increasing impacts of wildland fires on people and their built environment. This will bring increased pressures on fire management agencies in the future, challenging their capacities (Wotton and Stocks 2006;Podur and Wotton 2010;Reimer et al 2019) and escalating their suppression costs (Hope et al 2016).…”

Detecting critical nodes in forest landscape networks to reduce wildfire spread

“…Recent computational advances permit simulation of ignitions, fuel distribution, impacts of terrain and weather, and generate many plausible fire spread patterns [86]. Fire simulation models have been used to evaluate fuel treatment projects [55,88] and evaluate fire suppression strategies [77,88]. Examples of popular fire models include the Canadian Burn-P3 model [78], the FSim model in the USA [80], and the Australian Phoenix model [89].…”

“…We applied the CND model in the Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, Canada. The park is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Canadian Rocky Mountains (Fig 3) and covers a subalpine and alpine region with elevations between 1200 and 3400 m above sea level (Fig 4a) [88]. Forests at lower elevations in the area are dominated by Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii), subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa), white spruce (Picea glauca), and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and are replaced by alpine tundra at upper elevations [91].…”