Research and Publications
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This rapid review investigates recent evidence (post-2009) regarding the effectiveness of public health messaging during smoke events. Principal results were: 1) Smoke-related public health messages are communicated via a variety of channels, but limited evidence is available regarding their effectiveness for the general public or at-risk groups. 2) Messages that use simple language are more commonly recalled, understood, and complied with. Compliance differs according to socio-demographic characteristics. 3) At-risk groups may be advised to stay indoors before the general population, in order to protect the most vulnerable people in a community.
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For this study, researchers organized two workshops to investigate how traditional and western knowledge can be used to enhance wildland fire and fuels management and research. Tribal members, managers, and researchers were engaged to formulate solutions regarding the main topics identified as important to tribal and other land managers: cross-jurisdictional work, fuels reduction strategies, and wildland fire management and research involving traditional knowledge. A key conclusion from the workshops is that successful management of wildland fire and fuels requires collaborative partnerships that share traditional and western fire knowledge through culturally sensitive consultation, coordination, and communication for building trust. We present a framework for developing these partnerships based on workshop discussions.
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In this chapter, we identify and classify sources of uncertainty using an established analytical framework, and summarize results graphically in an uncertainty matrix. Our analysis facilitates characterization of the underlying nature of each source of uncertainty (inherent system variability versus limited knowledge), the location where it manifests within the modeling process (inputs, parameters, model structure, etc.), and its magnitude or level (on a continuum from complete determinism to total ignorance). We adapt this framework to the wildfire context by identifying different planning horizons facing fire managers (near‐, mid‐, and long‐term) as well as modeling domains that correspond to major factors influencing fire activity (fire behavior, ignitions, landscape, weather, and management). Our results offer a high‐level synthesis that ideally can provide a sound informational basis for evaluating current modeling efforts and that can guide more in‐depth analyses in the future. Key findings include: (1) uncertainties compound and magnify as the planning horizon lengthens; and (2) while many uncertainties are due to variability, gaps in basic fire-spread theory present a major source of knowledge uncertainty.
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This study suggests that policy and management have focused primarily on specified resilience approaches aimed at resistance to wildfire and restoration of areas burned by wildfire through fire suppression and fuels management. These strategies are inadequate to address a new era of western wildfires. In contrast, policies that promote adaptive resilience to wildfire, by which people and ecosystems adjust and reorganize in response to changing fire regimes to reduce future vulnerability, are needed.
Key aspects of an adaptive resilience approach are:
- recognizing that fuels reduction cannot alter regional wildfire trends;
- targeting fuels reduction to increase adaptation by some ecosystems and residential communities to more frequent fire;
- actively managing more wild and prescribed fires with a range of severities;
- incentivizing and planning residential development to withstand inevitable wildfire.
These strategies represent a shift in policy and management from restoring ecosystems based on historical baselines to adapting to changing fire regimes and from unsustainable defense of the wildland–urban interface to developing fire-adapted communities. We propose an approach that accepts wildfire as an inevitable catalyst of change and that promotes adaptive responses by ecosystems and residential communities to more warming and wildfire.
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This study was designed to quantify how the properties (size, shape, and fuel chemistry) of masticated fuels change with age and how these changes affect their burn characteristics (flame height, rate of spread, heat flux, and below fuel bed temperatures).
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These abstracts summarize rangeland management topics in the West.
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In this study, new parameterization schemes for erodibility were developed for the application of RHEM on undisturbed and disturbed rangelands. In most cases, only one erodibility parameter (KSS) is needed to run the model, minimizing the error that can be generated from the parameterization process.
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This guide is designed to provide direction on the critique and modification of LANDFIRE geospatial data products for local applications. It is not so much a “cookbook” or “how-to” guide, as the specifics vary greatly by data product, intended use, scale, and location. Rather, it presents primary considerations for using and modifying the data for use in local applications and provide examples and demonstrations of available tools and methods for completing common critique and modification tasks.
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Abstracts of Recent Papers on Climate Change and Land Management in the West, Prepared by Louisa Evers, Science Liaison and Climate Change Coordinator, BLM, OR-WA State Office.
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This study used a genecological approach to explore genetic variation for survival in Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush). It found evidence of adaptive genetic variation for survival. Plants from areas with the coldest winters had the highest levels of survival, while populations from warmer and drier sites had the lowest levels of survival. Survival was lowest, 36%, in the garden that was prone to the lowest minimum temperatures. These results suggest the importance of climatic driven genetic differences and their effect on survival. Understanding how genetic variation is arrayed across the landscape, and its association with climate can greatly enhance the success of restoration and conservation.