Effectiveness of fuel treatments at the landscape scale PDF Download

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fire prevention
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
Maximizing the effectiveness of fuel treatments at the landscape scale is a key research and management need given the inability to treat all areas at risk from wildfire, and there is a growing body of scientific literature assessing this need. We synthesized existing scientific literature on landscape-scale fuel treatment effectiveness in North American ecosystems through a systematic literature review. We identified 127 studies that addressed this topic using one of three approaches: simulation modeling, empirical analysis, or case studies. Of these 127 studies, most focused on forested landscapes of the western United States. Together, they generally provided evidence that fuel treatments reduced negative outcomes of wildfire and in some cases promoted beneficial wildfire outcomes, although these effects diminished over time following treatment and were influenced by factors such as weather conditions at the time of fire. The simulation studies showed that fuel treatment extent, size, placement, timing, and prescription influenced the degree of effectiveness. Empirical studies, though limited in scope, provided evidence that fuel treatments were effective at reducing the rate of spread, progression, extent, or severity of actual wildfires both within and outside of treated areas. Case studies documented outcomes of specific wildfire events and contained managers’ evaluations of fuel treatment effectiveness. These case studies shared certain characteristics associated with changing a wildfire outcome, such as recency of treatment implementation, or strategic placement in relation to previous treatments or wildfires, suppression needs/infrastructure, or prevailing winds and topographic firebreaks. Across the three study types, the importance of treating multiple strata to reduce fuels contributing to fire spread and severity was emphasized. Fuel treatments contributed to fire suppression efforts by reducing costs and facilitating suppression activities such as fireline construction. We conclude that existing literature contains useful information that can inform future fuel treatment planning, but that additional research is needed in underrepresented ecosystems and underdeveloped topics including cost-benefit analysis, fuel treatment longevity, and interactions among fuel, topography, and climate that contribute toward influencing fuel treatment effectiveness. There is a need for more empirical studies that evaluate fuel treatments beyond treatment boundaries, simulation studies that examine conditions expected under future climate scenarios, and case studies that document manager experiences and what they view are indicators of effective landscape-scale fuel treatments.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Climatic changes
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Over the past century in the western United States, warming has produced larger and more severe wildfires than previously recorded. General circulation models and their ensembles project continued increases in temperature and the proportion of precipitation falling as rain. Warmer and wetter conditions may change forest successional trajectories by modifying rates of vegetation establishment, competition, growth, reproduction, and mortality. Many questions remain regarding how these changes will occur across landscapes and how disturbances, such as wildfire, may interact with changes to climate and vegetation. Forest management is used to proactively modify forest structure and composition to improve fire resilience. Yet, research is needed to assess how to best utilize mechanical fuel reduction and prescribed fire at the landscape scale. Human communities also exist within these landscapes, and decisions regarding how to manage forests must carefully consider how management will affect such communities. In this work, three aspects of forest management are analyzed: (1) climate effects on forest composition and wildfire activity; (2) efficacy of fuel management strategies toward reducing wildfire spread and severity; and, (3) local resident perspectives on forest management. Using a forest landscape model, simulations of forest dynamics were used to investigate relationships among climate, wildfire, and topography with long-term changes in biomass for a fire-prone dry-conifer landscape in eastern Oregon. Under climate change, wildfire was more frequent, more expansive, and more severe, and ponderosa pine expanded its range into existing shrublands and high-elevation zones. There was a near-complete loss of native high-elevation tree species, such as Engelmann spruce and whitebark pine. Loss of these species were most strongly linked to burn frequency; this effect was greatest at high elevations and on steep slopes. Fuel reduction was effective at reducing wildfire spread and severity compared to unmanaged landscapes. Spatially optimizing mechanical removal of trees in areas at risk for high-severity wildfire was equally effective as distributing tree removal across the landscape. Tripling the annual area of prescribed burns was needed to affect landscape-level wildfire spread and severity, and distributing prescribed burns across the study area was more effective than concentrating fires in high-risk areas. I conclude that forest management can be used to reduce wildfire activity in dry-mixed conifer forests and that spatially optimizing mechanical treatments in high-risk areas can be a useful tool for reducing the cost and ecological impact associated with harvest operations. While reducing the severity and spread of wildfire may slow some long-term species shifts, high sub-alpine tree mortality occurred under all climate and fuel treatment scenarios. Thus, while forest management may prolong the existence of sub-alpine forests, shifts in temperature, precipitation, and wildfire may overtake management within this century. The use of PPGIS was useful for delineating the range of forest management preferences within the local community, for identifying areas of agreement among residents who have otherwise polarized views, and for generating modeling inputs that reflect views that may not be obtained through extant official channels for public participation. Because the local community has concerns about the use of prescribed fire, more education and outreach is needed. This may increase public acceptance of the amounts of prescribed fire needed to modify wildfire trajectories under future climate conditions.

Author: Joe H. Scott
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fire management
Languages : en
Pages : 84

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This report describes a new set of standard fire behavior fuel models for use with Rothermels surface fire spread model and the relationship of the new set to the original set of 13 fire behavior fuel models. To assist with transition to using the new fuel models, a fuel model selection guide, fuel model crosswalk, and set of fuel model photos are provided.

Author: Frank A. Albini
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forest fires
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
This paper presents a brief survey of the research literature on wildfire behavior and effects and assembles formulae and graphical computation aids based on selected theoretical and empirical models. The uses of mathematical fire behavior models are discussed, and the general capabilities and limitations of currently available models are outlined.

Author: Elizabeth D. Reinhardt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Coarse woody debris
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
The Fire and Fuels Extension (FFE) to the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) simulates fuel dynamics and potential fire behavior over time, in the context of stand development and management. Existing models of fire behavior and fire effects were added to FVS to form this extension. New submodels representing snag and fuel dynamics were created to complete the linkages. This report contains four chapters. Chapter 1 states the purpose and chronicles some applications of the model. Chapter 2 details the model's content, documents links to the supporting science, and provides annotated examples of the outputs. Chapter 3 is a user's guide that presents options and examples of command usage. Chapter 4 describes how the model was customized for use in different regions. Fuel managers and silviculturists charged with managing fire-prone forests can use the FFEFVS and this document to better understand and display the consequences of alternative management actions.

Author: Stephen Richard Mitchell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Carbon sequestration
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Two forest management objectives being debated in the context of federally managed landscapes in the US Pacific Northwest involve a perceived trade-off between fire restoration and C sequestration. The former strategy would reduce fuel (and therefore C) that has accumulated through a century of fire suppression and exclusion that has led to extreme fire risk in some areas. The latter strategy would manage forests for enhanced C sequestration as a method of reducing atmospheric CO2 and associated threats from global climate change. We explored the tradeoff between these strategies by modeling their effects at both the stand and landscape-scale. We began with an assessment of the extent to which uncertainties in model parameter values, model structure, and field measurements can influence model performance. We adapted the generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) methodology for Biome-BGC, a widely used terrestrial ecosystem model. We found that the phenomenon of parameter equifinality exerted significant control on model performance, but that issues with model structure in the Biome-BGC model may present an even greater obstacle to model accuracy. We then examined the effects of fuel reduction on fire severity and the resulting long-term stand-level C storage by utilizing the STANDCARB model for three Pacific Northwest ecosystems: the east Cascades Ponderosa Pine forests, the west Cascades Western hemlock-Douglas fir forests, and the Coast Range Western hemlock- Sitka spruce forests. Finally, we then tested the extent to which various landscape-level fuel reduction treatments, when applied at various annual treatment areas, altered pyrogenic C emissions and long-term C storage in the east Cascades Ponderosa pine ecosystems. For this we employed the LANDCARB model, which models forests throughout a landscape on a stand-by-stand basis. Results from both the stand and landscape-level modeling indicate that, for fuel reduction treatments to be effective in reducing wildfire severity, they must be applied at higher frequencies and over larger areas than they are currently. Furthermore, fuel reduction treatments almost always reduce stand and landscape-level C storage, since reducing the fraction by which C is lost in a wildfire requires the removal of a much greater amount of C, since most of the C stored in forest biomass (stem wood, branches, coarse woody debris) remains unconsumed even by high-severity wildfires.

Author: Andrew T. Hudak
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forests and forestry
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
This report provides managers with the current state of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of fuel treatments for mitigating severe wildfire effects. A literature review examines the effectiveness of fuel treatments that had been previously applied and were subsequently burned through by wildfire in forests and rangelands. A case study focuses on WUI fuel treatments that were burned in the 2007 East Zone and Cascade megafires in central Idaho. Both the literature review and case study results support a manager consensus that forest thinning followed by some form of slash removal is most effective for reducing subsequent wildfire severity.

Author: Caroline Martorano
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forest thinning
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
Fuel reduction treatments are broadly implemented to reduce the risk of extreme wildfire. Yet, research on the long-term effectiveness and ecological consequences among these treatments is lacking. In this study, I examined short- and long-term changes in fuels and understory vegetation after treatment in chaparral and oak-dominated stands of Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. Treatments included mastication and spring burning, spring burning only, mastication only, and hand-thinning. Treatments were applied randomly to 1 to 2 units within each of 10 blocks. Two plots were established in each treatment unit and fuel and vegetation data was collected and analyzed at the block level (n=10). Results showed all treatments, except spring burn only, reduced live shrub height compared to the control. The combined mastication and spring burn treatment had up to 2.3 times higher live shrub density than the other treatments. Mechanical or manual only treatments promoted reductions in fine dead woody surface fuel loading compared to the control 15 years after treatment. There were subtle changes in the understory plant community, including an increase in species richness in the mastication and spring burn treatment and a decrease in species richness over time. The effects of fuel treatments on fuels and understory vegetation were highly varied with some level of trade-off in effectiveness. Optimal fuel treatments will likely depend on the specific site objectives. However, results from this study indicate that mastication and hand removal treatments can provide substantial decreases in live and dead fuel loading over the long- term without substantial changes to the understory plant community.

Author: Robert E. Keane
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319090151
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
A new era in wildland fuel sciences is now evolving in such a way that fire scientists and managers need a comprehensive understanding of fuels ecology and science to fully understand fire effects and behavior on diverse ecosystem and landscape characteristics. This is a reference book on wildland fuel science; a book that describes fuels and their application in land management. There has never been a comprehensive book on wildland fuels; most wildland fuel information was put into wildland fire science and management books as separate chapters and sections. This book is the first to highlight wildland fuels and treat them as a natural resource rather than a fire behavior input. Moreover, there has never been a comprehensive description of fuels and their ecology, measurement, and description under one reference; most wildland fuel information is scattered across diverse and unrelated venues from combustion science to fire ecology to carbon dynamics. The literature and data for wildland fuel science has never been synthesized into one reference; most studies were done for diverse and unique objectives. This book is the first to link the disparate fields of ecology, wildland fire, and carbon to describe fuel science. This just deals with the science and ecology of wildland fuels, not fuels management. However, since expensive fuel treatments are being planned in fire dominated landscapes across the world to minimize fire damage to people, property and ecosystems, it is incredibly important that people understand wildland fuels to develop more effective fuel management activities.

Author: Francisco Castro Rego
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030698157
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 670

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Book Description
This textbook provides students and academics with a conceptual understanding of fire behavior and fire effects on people and ecosystems to support effective integrated fire management. Through case studies, interactive spreadsheets programmed with equations and graphics, and clear explanations, the book provides undergraduate, graduate, and professional readers with a straightforward learning path. The authors draw from years of experience in successfully teaching fundamental concepts and applications, synthesizing cutting-edge science, and applying lessons learned from fire practitioners. We discuss fire as part of environmental and human health. Our process-based, comprehensive, and quantitative approach encompasses combustion and heat transfer, and fire effects on people, plants, soils, and animals in forest, grassland, and woodland ecosystems from around the Earth. Case studies and examples link fundamental concepts to local, landscape, and global fire implications, including social-ecological systems. Globally, fire science and integrated fire management have made major strides in the last few decades. Society faces numerous fire-related challenges, including the increasing occurrence of large fires that threaten people and property, smoke that poses a health hazard, and lengthening fire seasons worldwide. Fires are useful to suppress fires, conserve wildlife and habitat, enhance livestock grazing, manage fuels, and in ecological restoration. Understanding fire science is critical to forecasting the implication of global change for fires and their effects. Increasing the positive effects of fire (fuels reduction, enhanced habitat for many plants and animals, ecosystem services increased) while reducing the negative impacts of fires (loss of human lives, smoke and carbon emissions that threaten health, etc.) is part of making fires good servants rather than bad masters.