Theory and Practice of Wildland Fuels Management

Abstract

Fuel treatments have become an indispensable tool for managing fire in North American wildland ecosystems. Historical perspective and extant practices provide insights into current theory and areas of future emphasis. Managers have better understanding of treatment practices as researchers have provided clearer understanding of fire behavior in treated vs. untreated areas and enhanced wisdom about ecological effects in a variety of fire regimes. Even so, recent breakthroughs in the theory and practice of fuels management have been limited, and significant knowledge gaps remain, particularly fuel and treatment quantification. In general, the theory behind fuel treatments has lagged actual practice as implementation has preceded scientific understanding. Until the late twentieth century, fuel hazard reduction was considered incidental to forest management activities such as timber harvesting (exception: southern California and other shrubland ecosystems). Fuel treatment usage has expanded in response to devastating wildfires despite limited insights regarding effectiveness. Extant procedures for analyzing treatment efficacy (i.e., computer modeling, retrospective analyses of wildfires encountering treated areas, and experimentation) likewise suffer from analytical shortcomings. Fundamental questions related to efficacy remain, especially linkage to treatment objectives as affected by fire behavior, treatment intensity, and values at risk. Future research needs include a generalized, cohesive theory on the role of fuels in combustion dynamics, and improved effectiveness metrics at project and landscape scales.

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

“…These approaches can be generally characterized as preventing human-caused ignitions [17,18], preparing for and responding to unplanned ignitions [19][20][21], and, our focus here, implementing hazardous fuel and forest restoration treatments in advance of fires [22,23]. Adopting "fire-safe" principles [24] that reduce surface fuel loads, increase height to live crown, and decrease crown density have been shown to alter fire behavior and enhance responder safety [25][26][27].…”

Midterm fuel structure recovery and potential fire behaviour in a Pinus pinaster Ait. forest in northern central Spain after thinning and mastication

“…Scott and Reinhardt 2001;Agee and Skinner 2005;Stephens and Moghaddas 2005;Contreras et al 2012;Stephens et al 2012;Kreye et al 2014a;Corona et al 2015), reducing fire severity and its associated impacts (Reinhardt et al 2008;Prichard et al 2010;McIver et al 2013) and also facilitating fire suppression activities (Moghadas and Craggs 2007). The ultimate goal is to manipulate forest structure to reduce post-fire tree mortality and the possibility of a large standreplacement fire (Kobziar et al 2009;Omi 2015).…”

Assessing Landscape Vulnerability to Wildfire in the USA

“…When considering landscape resilience, fuel treatments can be implemented to mitigate exposure to wildfire and to create systems adapted to a broader sensitivity range to support key ecosystem goods and services. Fuel treatments are designed to reduce or redistribute surface and canopy fuels to alter fire behavior and effects [131][132][133]. Implementation of fuel treatments is typically done to aid in fire control (strategically placed to reduce hazard) or for ecosystem maintenance/restoration (designed to sustain fire-prone ecosystems by treating fuels so fire can be reintroduced) to facilitate resilience to wildfire [132].…”

“…Fuel treatments are designed to reduce or redistribute surface and canopy fuels to alter fire behavior and effects [131][132][133]. Implementation of fuel treatments is typically done to aid in fire control (strategically placed to reduce hazard) or for ecosystem maintenance/restoration (designed to sustain fire-prone ecosystems by treating fuels so fire can be reintroduced) to facilitate resilience to wildfire [132]. Regardless of the treatment strategy, wildfire simulation models can be used to test the impact of fuel treatments on near-term exposure and sensitivity in the same way mentioned above.…”