Research and Publications
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Fires in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) are an important issue globally. To understand the change of WUI, we develop a 9 km worldwide unified wildland-urban interface database for 2001–2020 with Random Forest models and satellite data. We find that WUI has been increasing in all populated continents from 2001 to 2020 and the global relative increase is 24%, with the largest relative increase (∼59%) over Africa. Global total fire counts decrease by 10% from 2005 to 2020, whereas the WUI fraction of fire counts increases by 23%. The global total burned area decreases by 22% from 2005 to 2020, whereas the WUI fraction of burned area increases by 35%. These are mainly due to the expansion of WUI area. On all the populated continents, the WUI fractions of fire counts are higher than the WUI fractions of burned area, implying that WUI fires tend to have smaller sizes than wildland fires. We also project future WUI changes for the years 2030 and 2040, together with the projection of future fire burned area under different shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP) scenarios in the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2). The projected global WUI fraction (excluding Antarctica and the oceans) is 5.9% in 2040 compared to 4.8% in 2020. The global WUI fraction of burned area is projected to increase from now to 2040 under most scenarios analyzed in this study, unless the WUI area stays at the 2020 level together with the projected burned area under SSP4-4.5. This study is a first step to understanding the changes of WUI fires at the global scale and demonstrates a growing importance of WUI fires. The global multi-year WUI and WUI fire datasets developed in this study can facilitate future work quantifying the impacts of WUI fires on air quality and climate.
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The team, led by researcher Elise Zarri and supported by Working Lands for Wildlife and the Bureau of Land Management, found that birds whose habitat needs aligned closely with Greater Sage-grouse—Sage Thrashers, Vesper Sparrows, and Brewer’s Sparrows—successfully raised more offspring in areas where encroaching conifers had been removed. The data demonstrated that even though sagebrush habitat management was undertaken on behalf of one particular species of conservation concern, other species in the area benefited—indicating that Greater Sage-grouse may serve as an “umbrella” species for conservation of other organisms within its ecosystem.
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While inconvenient for your average hiker or boater, major shifts in the weather can be deadly for firefighters. Longer and more intense fire seasons make accurate and timely weather predictions crucial to firefighter safety. To answer this need, the Fire Weather Alert System (FWAS) was developed by Jason Forthofer, Research Mechanical Engineer, and Natalie Wagenbrenner, Research Meteorologist, both from the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory. The FWAS is a mobile app that gathers weather data from many sources into a single convenient space and provides firefighters with individualized, easy-to-use, and timely weather alerts on their phones.
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Legal, operational, and administrative factors have hindered the implementation of proposed wildland fire risk reduction management actions. Investing in steep-slope systems, expanding use of temporary roads, and revising administrative rules to allow for appropriately tailored mechanical thinning in special conservation areas are possible ways to meet fuel reduction treatment objectives of the USDA Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy in twenty-one landscapes across the western United States. Broadening the land base available for mechanical treatment allows for flexibility to develop treatment plans that optimize across the multiple dimensions of effective landscape-scale fuel treatment design and restore fire as a key ecosystem process.
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During plan development, we recommend that Strategic Fire Zones (SFZs) be identified in large blocks (≥ 2,000 ha) of Federal forest lands, buffered (≥ 1–2.4 km) from the wildland-urban interface for the reintroduction of beneficial fire. In SFZs, lightning ignitions, as well as prescribed and cultural burns, would be used to reduce fuels and restore ecosystem services. Although such Zones have been successfully established in a limited number of western National Parks and Wilderness Areas, we identify extensive remote areas in the western US (8.3–12.7 million ha), most outside of wilderness (85–88%), where they could be established. Potential wildland fire Operational Delineations or PODs would be used to identify SFZ boundaries. We outline steps to identify, implement, monitor, and communicate the use and benefits of SFZs.
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Large forest fires have far-reaching impacts on the environment, human health, infrastructure and the economy. Forest fires become large when all forest types across a landscape are dry enough to burn. Mesic forests are the slowest to dry and can act as a barrier to fire growth when they are too wet to burn. Therefore, identifying the factors influencing fire occurrence in mesic forests is important for gauging fire risk across large landscapes. We quantified the key factors influencing the likelihood that an active wildfire would propagate through mesic forest. We analyzed 35 large forest fires (> 2500 ha) that occurred in Victoria, Australia where mesic and drier eucalypt forests are interspersed across mountainous terrain. We used a random forest model to evaluate 15 meteorological, topographic and disturbance variables as potential predictors of fire occurrence. These variables were extracted for points within burnt and unburnt patches of mesic forest. The likelihood of an active wildfire spreading through mesic forest increased by 65 % as vapor pressure deficit (VPD, i.e., atmospheric dryness) rose from 2.5 to 7 kPa. Other variables had substantially less influence (< 20 % change in fire occurrence) and their effects were further reduced when VPD was very high (> 6.5 kPa). Mesic forests were less likely to burn in areas with lower aridity, shallower slopes, and more sheltered topographic positions. Mesic forests 13–15 years following stand-replacing disturbance had 6 % higher chance of burning than long undisturbed forests (50 years post-disturbance). Overall, we show that topography and disturbance history cannot substantially counter the effects of high VPD. Therefore, the effectiveness of mesic forest as a barrier to the development of large forest fires is weakening as the climate warms. Our analysis also identifies areas less likely to burn, even under high VPD conditions. These areas could be prioritized as wildfire refugia.
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This qualitative case study evaluates manager and researcher perceptions of the impact of a place-based, collaborative knowledge co-development process and examines the outcomes of that co-development for changes to management approaches. The USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) Rocky Mountain Research Station General Technical Report 373 (GTR-373) is a codeveloped science synthesis that functions as a boundary object providing a framework for planning, designing, and implementing management action for restoration of ponderosa and dry mixed-conifer forests. The process of creating and socializing the GTR-373 framework fostered continual knowledge exchange and engagement between researchers and managers across different organizations and levels of decision-making. This built trust in the information, improved justification for management action, developed a common foundation for cross-boundary implementation, and increased communication. The framework has been applied across jurisdictions and has been used as a foundational tool for training staff and designing projects. However, adapting the GTR-373 framework across scales remains challenging.
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In this study, we combine climate projections with information on prescribed burning windows for ecoregions across the contiguous United States (CONUS) to compute the number of days when meteorological conditions allow for the safe and effective application of prescribed fire under present-day (2006–2015) and future climate (2051–2060) conditions. The resulting projections, which cover 57% of all vegetated area across the CONUS, indicate fewer days with conditions suitable for prescribed burning across ecoregions of the eastern United States due to rising maximum daily temperatures, but opportunities increase in the northern and northwestern United States, driven primarily by rising minimum temperatures and declining wind speeds.
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Fire suppression is the primary management response to wildfires in many areas globally. By removing less-extreme wildfires, this approach ensures that remaining wildfires burn under more extreme conditions. Here, we term this the “suppression bias” and use a simulation model to highlight how this bias fundamentally impacts wildfire activity, independent of fuel accumulation and climate change. We illustrate how attempting to suppress all wildfires necessarily means that fires will burn with more severe and less diverse ecological impacts, with burned area increasing at faster rates than expected from fuel accumulation or climate change. Over a human lifespan, the modeled impacts of the suppression bias exceed those from fuel accumulation or climate change alone, suggesting that suppression may exert a significant and underappreciated influence on patterns of fire globally. Managing wildfires to safely burn under low and moderate conditions is thus a critical tool to address the growing wildfire crisis.
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Step by step home hazard assessment, preparedness, and evacuation options.