Post-fire Environment & Management
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The SCIENCE X webinar series brings together scientists and land management experts from across U.S. Forest Service research stations and beyond to explore the latest science and best practices for addressing large natural resource challenges across the country.
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Across fires and NGOs, NGO management and wellbeing, coordination and disaster experiences emerge as common barriers and enablers of relief and recovery. In many cases, local NGOs’ participation in wildfire relief and recovery included simultaneous expansion of an organisation’s mission and activities and negative impacts on staff mental health. Under the rapidly evolving circumstances of relief and the prolonged burdens of recovery, personal relationships across NGOs and government agencies significantly improved coordination of assistance to communities. Finally, interviewees expressed greater confidence when responding to wildfires if they had previous experience with a disaster, although the COVID-19 pandemic presented distinct challenges on top of pre-existing long-term recovery work.
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Wildfire can significantly alter the hydrologic response of a watershed to the extent that even modest rainstorms can produce dangerous flash floods and debris flows. The USGS conducts post-fire debris-flow hazard assessments for select fires in the Western U.S. We use geospatial data related to basin morphometry, burn severity, soil properties, and rainfall characteristics to estimate the probability and volume of debris flows that may occur in response to a design storm.
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Communities across the United States and the globe rely on clean water flowing from forested watersheds. But these water source areas are impacted by the effects of wildfire. To help water providers and land managers prepare for impacts from wildfire on water supplies, the U.S. Geological Survey is working to measure and predict post-fire water quality and quantity.
Webinar recording.
The increasing incidence of large wildfires with extensive stand-replacing effects across the southwestern United States is altering the contemporary forest management template within historically frequent-fire conifer forests. While management of fire-excluded forests continues to be a priority for land managers, an increasing fraction of western conifer forests have recently burned. Many of these burned landscapes contain complex mosaics of surviving forest and severely-burned patches without surviving or regenerating conifer trees. In such complex landscapes, postfire management decisions may be more effective when based on a spatially-explicit assessment of the mosaic of surviving forest and severely burned patches. Such a decision-making framework includes detailed considerations both for postfire fuels management, e.g., edge hardening of surviving forest patches and repeat burning, and for postfire reforestation, e.g., nucleation planting strategies to establish “islands” of seed trees, spatial planning to optimize reforestation success, tradeoffs between intensive and extensive tree planting, and improving nursery capacity. The decision-making framework developed here can be integrated with existing postfire management infrastructure to optimize allocation of limited resources while not abandoning recently burned landscapes, which will continue to expand in a future of increasing fire activity.
Salvage Science Summit Fall 2021 – Panel Discussion Day 1
Salvage Science Summit Fall 2021 – Panel Discussion Day 2
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Based on our review of the scientific evidence, a range of proactive management actions are justified and necessary to keep pace with changing climatic and wildfire regimes and declining forest heterogeneity after severe wildfires. Science-based adaptation options include the use of managed wildfire, prescribed burning, and coupled mechanical thinning and prescribed burning as is consistent with land management allocations and forest conditions. Although some current models of fire management in wNA are averse to short-term risks and uncertainties, the long-term environmental, social, and cultural consequences of wildfire management primarily grounded in fire suppression are well documented, highlighting an urgency to invest in intentional forest management and restoration of active fire regimes.
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Results of our study suggest that post-fire vegetation structure and woody fuels play an important role in subsequent fire severity patterns and ultimately influence the resilience of post-fire landscapes to future fire. In areas where high-severity reburn is undesirable, managers should consider treatments that reduce the density and continuity of vegetation, standing snags, and large woody surface fuels. In areas where proactive reforestation
is necessary, planting in areas that are in rough or mesic terrain may reduce the likelihood of high-severity reburn. The results of our study also suggest that active post-fire management may be necessary in areas that have burned at low to moderate severity in order to maintain or promote the restorative benefits of an initial fire or to restore the dominance of fire resilient tree species.
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Life from the Ashes explored the positive and negative impacts of prescribed and natural fire related to insects and other invertebrates in landscapes across North America. The symposium provided research and practical insights to inform natural areas professionals as they manage landscapes with fire.
This program was provided in a collaboration between the Natural Areas Association (NAA) and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation (Xerces). NAA serves those dedicated to the management and restoration of biologically important natural areas in North America. Xerces is an international nonprofit organization that protects the natural world through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitats. Protecting nature requires reliable science to inform practices on-the-ground and a network of stewards who work tirelessly to protect, manage and restore land and water biodiversity.