The chemical composition of aerosols from Wildland fires: Current state of the science and possible new directions.

EPA Science Inventory

Wildland fire emits a substantial quantity of aerosol to the atmosphere. These aerosols typically comprise a complex mixture of organic matter and refractory elemental or black carbon with a relatively minor contribution of inorganic matter from soils and plant micronutrients. Id...

External human factors in incident management team decisionmaking and their effect on large fire suppression expenditures

Treesearch

Janie Canton-Tompson; Krista M. Gebert; Brooke Thompson; Greg Jones; David Calkin; Geoff Donovan

2008-01-01

Large wildland fires are complex, costly events influenced by a vast array of physical, climatic, and social factors. Changing climate, fuel buildup due to past suppression, and increasing populations in the wildland-urban interface have all been blamed for the extreme fire seasons and rising suppression expenditures of recent years. With each high-cost year comes a...

From leaves to landscape: A multiscale approach to assess fire hazard in wildland-urban interface areas.

PubMed

Ghermandi, Luciana; Beletzky, Natacha A; de Torres Curth, Mónica I; Oddi, Facundo J

2016-12-01

The overlapping zone between urbanization and wildland vegetation, known as the wildland urban interface (WUI), is often at high risk of wildfire. Human activities increase the likelihood of wildfires, which can have disastrous consequences for property and land use, and can pose a serious threat to lives. Fire hazard assessments depend strongly on the spatial scale of analysis. We assessed the fire hazard in a WUI area of a Patagonian city by working at three scales: landscape, community and species. Fire is a complex phenomenon, so we used a large number of variables that correlate a priori with the fire hazard. Consequently, we analyzed environmental variables together with fuel load and leaf flammability variables and integrated all the information in a fire hazard map with four fire hazard categories. The Nothofagus dombeyi forest had the highest fire hazard while grasslands had the lowest. Our work highlights the vulnerability of the wildland-urban interface to fire in this region and our suggested methodology could be applied in other wildland-urban interface areas. Particularly in high hazard areas, our work could help in spatial delimitation policies, urban planning and development of plans for the protection of human lives and assets. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Assessing the Role and Impact of Geospatial Data for Wildland Fire Management Decisions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klein, E. A.; Lev, S. M.

2016-12-01

The 2015 Wildland and Fire Science and Technology Task Force Final Report, produced by the National Science and Technology Council, Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Sustainability, Subcommittee on Disaster Reduction, highlighted the increasing frequency of large wildfires and the growing demand for science to inform critical resource decisions to manage, mitigate, respond to, and recover from wildland fires. Federal spending on fire suppression from 2005-2015 has more than doubled despite policy changes that prioritize the mitigation of fire risks through the use of fuel treatments, prescribed fire, and management of naturally occurring wildfires to protect life and property. Fire suppression policies over the last century have created forests primed for severe fire, and in the face of a changing climate, the benefits of re-introducing fire into once fire-resilient ecosystems are clear. There are a range of complex factors and regional variation associated with wildland fire risk that complicate our understanding and effective management of this hazard. Data derived from Earth-observing (EO) systems and networks are a crucial input for managers when making decisions about fire suppression and fuel management. EO data can also be used to develop pre- and post-fire metrics that can aid in the evaluating the effectiveness of wildland fire management decisions. A value-tree method for mapping the role of EO systems and networks in delivering societal benefit through key Federal objectives related to wildland fire management will be presented. The value-tree methodology utilizes input from subject matter experts to assess the availability and usability of data and data products and to evaluate the impact of individual EO data inputs for achieving wildland fire management objectives. The results provide a qualitative assessment of the value of the data for the objectives described and identify critical gaps and continuity issues associated with improvements to and continuous delivery of societal benefit.

A sub-grid, mixture-fraction-based thermodynamic equilibrium model for gas phase combustion in FIRETEC: development and results

Treesearch

M. M. Clark; T. H. Fletcher; R. R. Linn

2010-01-01

The chemical processes of gas phase combustion in wildland fires are complex and occur at length-scales that are not resolved in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models of landscape-scale wildland fire. A new approach for modelling fire chemistry in HIGRAD/FIRETEC (a landscape-scale CFD wildfire model) applies a mixture– fraction model relying on thermodynamic...

The role of trust in residents’ fire wise actions

Treesearch

Jim Absher; Jerry J. Vaske

2011-01-01

Residents’ trust in the managing agency has been heralded as a necessary precursor to success in preventing wildland fire losses in the wildland–urban interface. Trust, however, is a complex concept. Homeowners’ specific fire wise actions may not be easily linked to general measures of trust. This article uses two distinct trust indices to predict residents’ intention...

Interactions among livestock grazing, vegetation type, and fire behavior in the Murphy Wildland Fire Complex in Idaho and Nevada, July 2007

USGS Publications Warehouse

Launchbaugh, Karen; Brammer, Bob; Brooks, Matthew L.; Bunting, Stephen C.; Clark, Patrick; Davison, Jay; Fleming, Mark; Kay, Ron; Pellant, Mike; Pyke, David A.

2008-01-01

A series of wildland fires were ignited by lightning in sagebrush and grassland communities near the Idaho-Nevada border southwest of Twin Falls, Idaho in July 2007. The fires burned for over two weeks and encompassed more than 650,000 acres. A team of scientists, habitat specialists, and land managers was called together by Tom Dyer, Idaho BLM State Director, to examine initial information from the Murphy Wildland Fire Complex in relation to plant communities and patterns of livestock grazing. Three approaches were used to examine this topic: (1) identify potential for livestock grazing to modify fuel loads and affect fire behavior using fire models applied to various vegetation types, fuel loads, and fire conditions; (2) compare levels of fuel consumed within and among major vegetation types; and (3) examine several observed lines of difference and discontinuity in fuel consumed to determine what factors created these contrasts. The team found that much of the Murphy Wildland Fire Complex burned under extreme fuel and weather conditions that likely overshadowed livestock grazing as a factor influencing fire extent and fuel consumption in many areas where these fires burned. Differences and abrupt contrast lines in the level of fuels consumed were affected mostly by the plant communities that existed on a site before fire. A few abrupt contrasts in burn severity coincided with apparent differences in grazing patterns of livestock, observed as fence-line contrasts. Fire modeling revealed that grazing in grassland vegetation can reduce surface rate of spread and fire-line intensity to a greater extent than in shrubland types. Under extreme fire conditions (low fuel moisture, high temperatures, and gusty winds), grazing applied at moderate utilization levels has limited or negligible effects on fire behavior. However, when weather and fuel-moisture conditions are less extreme, grazing may reduce the rate of spread and intensity of fires allowing for patchy burns with low levels of fuel consumption. The team suggested that targeted grazing to accomplish fuel objectives holds promise but requires detailed planning that includes clearly defined goals for fuel modification and appropriate monitoring to assess effectiveness. It was recommended that a pilot plan be devised to strategically place grazed blocks across a landscape to create fuel-reduction bands capable of influencing fire behavior. Also suggested was the development of a general technical report that highlights information and examples of how livestock grazing influences fire extent, severity, and intensity. Finally, the team encouraged continued research and monitoring of the effects of the Murphy Wildland Fire Complex. Much more can be learned from the effects of this extensive fire complex that may offer insight for future management decisions.

Large eddy simulation of forest canopy flow for wildland fire modeling

Treesearch

Eric Mueller; William Mell; Albert Simeoni

2014-01-01

Large eddy simulation (LES) based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulators have obtained increasing attention in the wildland fire research community, as these tools allow the inclusion of important driving physics. However, due to the complexity of the models, individual aspects must be isolated and tested rigorously to ensure meaningful results. As wind is a...

Introduction to fire danger rating and remote sensing - Will remote sensing enhance wildland fire danger prediction?

USGS Publications Warehouse

Allgöwer, Britta; Carlson, J.D.; Van Wagtendonk, Jan W.; Chuvieco, Emilio

2003-01-01

While ‘Fire Danger’ per se cannot be measured, the physical properties of the biotic and abiotic world that relate to fire occurrence and fire behavior can. Today, increasingly sophisticated Remote Sensing methods are being developed to more accurately detect fuel properties such as species composition (fuel types), vegetation structure or plant water content - to name a few. Based on meteorological input data and physical, semi-physical or empirical model calculations, Wildland Fire Danger Rating Systems provide ‘indirect values’ - numerical indices - at different temporal scales (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly) denoting the physical conditions that may lead to fire ignition and support fire propagation. The results can be expressed as fire danger levels, ranging from ‘low’ to ‘very high’, and are commonly used in operational wildland fire management (e.g., the Canadian Fire Weather Index [FWI] System, the Russian Nesterov Index, or the U.S. National Fire Danger Rating System [NFDRS]). Today, fire danger levels are often turned into broad scale maps with the help of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) showing the areas with the different fire danger levels, and are distributed via the World Wide Web.In this chapter we will outline some key issues dealing with Remote Sensing and GIS techniques that are covered in the following chapters, and elaborate how the Fire Danger Rating concepts could be integrated into a framework that enables comprehensive and sustainable wildland fire risk assessment. To do so, we will first raise some general thoughts about wildland fires and suggest how to approach this extremely complex phenomenon. Second, we will outline a possible fire risk analysis framework and third we will give a short overview on existing Fire Danger Rating Systems and the principles behind them.

Risk management: Core principles and practices, and their relevance to wildland fire

Treesearch

Matthew P. Thompson; Donald G. MacGregor; Dave Calkin

2016-01-01

The Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture faces a future of increasing complexity and risk, pressing financial issues, and the inescapable possibility of loss of human life. These issues are perhaps most acute for wildland fire management, the highest risk activity in which the Forest Service engages. Risk management (RM) has long been put forth as an...

Wildland fire limits subsequent fire occurrence

Treesearch

Sean A. Parks; Carol Miller; Lisa M. Holsinger; Scott Baggett; Benjamin J. Bird

2016-01-01

Several aspects of wildland fire are moderated by site- and landscape-level vegetation changes caused by previous fire, thereby creating a dynamic where one fire exerts a regulatory control on subsequent fire. For example, wildland fire has been shown to regulate the size and severity of subsequent fire. However, wildland fire has the potential to influence...

Unraveling the Complexity of Wildland Urban Interface Fires.

PubMed

Mahmoud, Hussam; Chulahwat, Akshat

2018-06-18

Recent wildland urban interface fires have demonstrated the unrelenting destructive nature of these events and have called for an urgent need to address the problem. The Wildfire paradox reinforces the ideology that forest fires are inevitable and are actually beneficial; therefore focus should to be shifted towards minimizing potential losses to communities. This requires the development of vulnerability-based frameworks that can be used to provide holistic understanding of risk. In this study, we devise a probabilistic approach for quantifying community vulnerability to wildfires by applying concepts of graph theory. A directed graph for community in question is developed to model wildfire inside a community by incorporating different fire propagation modes. The model accounts for relevant community-specific characteristics including wind conditions, community layout, individual structural features, and the surrounding wildland vegetation. We calibrate the framework to study the infamous 1991 Oakland fire in an attempt to unravel the complexity of community fires. We use traditional centrality measures to identify critical behavior patterns and to evaluate the effect of fire mitigation strategies. Unlike current practice, the results are shown to be community-specific with substantial dependency of risk on meteorological conditions, environmental factors, and community characteristics and layout.

Occupational Exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon of Wildland Firefighters at Prescribed and Wildland Fires.

PubMed

Navarro, Kathleen M; Cisneros, Ricardo; Noth, Elizabeth M; Balmes, John R; Hammond, S Katharine

2017-06-06

Wildland firefighters suppressing wildland fires or conducting prescribed fires work long shifts during which they are exposed to high levels of wood smoke with no respiratory protection. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are hazardous air pollutants formed during incomplete combustion. Exposure to PAHs was measured for 21 wildland firefighters suppressing two wildland fires and 4 wildland firefighters conducting prescribed burns in California. Personal air samples were actively collected using XAD4-coated quartz fiber filters and XAD2 sorbent tubes. Samples were analyzed for 17 individual PAHs through extraction with dichloromethane and gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer analysis. Naphthalene, retene, and phenanthrene were consistently the highest measured PAHs. PAH concentrations were higher at wildland fires compared to prescribed fires and were highest for firefighters during job tasks that involve the most direct contact with smoke near an actively burning wildland fire. Although concentrations did not exceed current occupational exposure limits, wildland firefighters are exposed to PAHs not only on the fire line at wildland fires, but also while working prescribed burns and while off-duty. Characterization of occupational exposures from wildland firefighting is important to understand better any potential long-term health effects.

Chapter 4: Use of fire to manage populations of nonnative invasive plants

Treesearch

Peter M. Rice; Jane Kapler Smith

2008-01-01

It may be impossible to overstate the complexity of relationships among wildland ecosystems, fires, and nonnative invasives. Strategies for managing these relationships are similarly complex; they require information on local plant phenology, ability to produce various levels of fire severity within burns, willingness to combine fire with other management techniques,...

76 FR 59418 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-09-26

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction, and program oversight in support of the Wildland...

Examination of Wildland Fire Spread at Small Scales Using Direct Numerical Simulations and High-Speed Laser Diagnostics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wimer, N. T.; Mackoweicki, A. S.; Poludnenko, A. Y.; Hoffman, C.; Daily, J. W.; Rieker, G. B.; Hamlington, P.

2017-12-01

Results are presented from a joint computational and experimental research effort focused on understanding and characterizing wildland fire spread at small scales (roughly 1m-1mm) using direct numerical simulations (DNS) with chemical kinetics mechanisms that have been calibrated using data from high-speed laser diagnostics. The simulations are intended to directly resolve, with high physical accuracy, all small-scale fluid dynamic and chemical processes relevant to wildland fire spread. The high fidelity of the simulations is enabled by the calibration and validation of DNS sub-models using data from high-speed laser diagnostics. These diagnostics have the capability to measure temperature and chemical species concentrations, and are used here to characterize evaporation and pyrolysis processes in wildland fuels subjected to an external radiation source. The chemical kinetics code CHEMKIN-PRO is used to study and reduce complex reaction mechanisms for water removal, pyrolysis, and gas phase combustion during solid biomass burning. Simulations are then presented for a gaseous pool fire coupled with the resulting multi-step chemical reaction mechanisms, and the results are connected to the fundamental structure and spread of wildland fires. It is anticipated that the combined computational and experimental approach of this research effort will provide unprecedented access to information about chemical species, temperature, and turbulence during the entire pyrolysis, evaporation, ignition, and combustion process, thereby permitting more complete understanding of the physics that must be represented by coarse-scale numerical models of wildland fire spread.

Pleasing some of the people some of the time: How authors, subjects, and readers assess the complex landscape of "audience" in wildland fire incident reviews (Abstract)

Treesearch

Jennifer Ziegler; Anne E. Black

2012-01-01

When unexpected outcomes occur in wildland fire, reports from incident reviews carry a symbolic value beyond the factual information they contain. Popular perception of incident reviews is that the organization has identified the root cause with an eye toward system change, and that the final report chronicles "the" final, definitive, and authoritative...

Understanding social complexity within the wildland urban interface: A new species of human habitation? Environmental Management

Treesearch

Travis B. Paveglio; Pamela J. Jakes; Matthew S. Carroll; Daniel R. Williams

2009-01-01

The lack of knowledge regarding social diversity in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) or an in-depth understanding of the ways people living there interact to address common problems is concerning, perhaps even dangerous, given that community action is necessary for successful wildland fire preparedness and natural resource management activities. In this article, we...

Prediction errors in wildland fire situation analyses.

Treesearch

Geoffrey H. Donovan; Peter Noordijk

2005-01-01

Wildfires consume budgets and put the heat on fire managers to justify and control suppression costs. To determine the appropriate suppression strategy, land managers must conduct a wildland fire situation analysis (WFSA) when:A wildland fire is expected to or does escape initial attack,A wildland fire managed for resource benefits...

Simulation of the consequences of different fire regimes to support wildland fire use decisions

Treesearch

Carol Miller

2007-01-01

The strategy known as wildland fire use, in which lightning-ignited fires are allowed to burn, is rapidly gaining momentum in the fire management community. Managers need to know the consequences of an increase in area burned that might result from an increase in wildland fire use. One concern of land managers as they consider implementing wildland fire use is whether...

78 FR 45948 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-07-30

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction...

78 FR 65698 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-11-01

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction...

78 FR 15033 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-03-08

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... of the Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as... provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction...

78 FR 45949 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-07-30

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction...

76 FR 22130 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-04-20

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction...

75 FR 58347 - Information Collection; Overcoming Barriers to Wildland Fire Defensible Space Behaviors

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2010-09-24

... Information Collection; Overcoming Barriers to Wildland Fire Defensible Space Behaviors AGENCY: Forest Service... new information collection, Overcoming Barriers to Wildland Fire Defensible Space Behaviors. DATES... time, Monday through Friday. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Title: Overcoming Barriers to Wildland Fire...

Effect of suppression strategies on federal wildland fire expenditures

Treesearch

Krista M. Gebert; Anne E. Black

2012-01-01

Policymakers and decisionmakers alike have suggested that the use of less aggressive suppression strategies for wildland fires might help stem the tide of rising emergency wildland fire expenditures. However, the interplay of wildland fire management decisions and expenditures is not well understood. In this study, we assess the effect of different fire management...

Wildland fire management. Volume 2: Wildland fire control 1985-1995. [satellite information system for California fire problems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Saveker, D. R. (Editor)

1973-01-01

The preliminary design of a satellite plus computer earth resources information system is proposed for potential uses in fire prevention and control in the wildland fire community. Suggested are satellite characteristics, sensor characteristics, discrimination algorithms, data communication techniques, data processing requirements, display characteristics, and costs in achieving the integrated wildland fire information system.

78 FR 59949 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-09-30

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting.... Department of the Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as... provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction...

76 FR 28445 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-05-17

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below...-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction, and program oversight in support of the...

77 FR 63326 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-10-16

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below...-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction, and program oversight in support of the...

76 FR 15332 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-03-21

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below...-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership, direction, and program oversight in support of the...

78 FR 15032 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-03-08

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... is to provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide leadership...

78 FR 14351 - Wildland Fire Executive Council; Renewal

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-03-05

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council; Renewal AGENCY: Department of the Interior. ACTION: Renewal of the Wildland Fire Executive Council. SUMMARY: In accordance... Department of Agriculture are renewing the Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC). The purpose of the WFEC is...

77 FR 35420 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-06-13

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... purpose of the WFEC is to provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide...

76 FR 8768 - Establishment of the Wildland Fire Executive Council

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-02-15

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Establishment of the Wildland Fire Executive... are announcing the establishment of the Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC). The purpose of the WFEC is to provide advice on the coordinated national level wildland fire policy leadership, direction...

77 FR 18851 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-03-28

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... purpose of the WFEC is to provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide...

76 FR 79205 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-12-21

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting... Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as indicated below... purpose of the WFEC is to provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide...

Fire behavior modeling-a decision tool

Treesearch

Jack Cohen; Bill Bradshaw

1986-01-01

The usefulness of an analytical model as a fire management decision tool is determined by the correspondence of its descriptive capability to the specific decision context. Fire managers must determine the usefulness of fire models as a decision tool when applied to varied situations. Because the wildland fire phenomenon is complex, analytical fire spread models will...

78 FR 33432 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-06-04

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting.... Department of the Interior, Office of the Secretary, Wildland Fire Executive Council (WFEC) will meet as... purpose of the WFEC is to provide advice on coordinated national-level wildland fire policy and to provide...

Fire characteristics associated with firefighter injury on large federal wildland fires.

PubMed

Britton, Carla; Lynch, Charles F; Torner, James; Peek-Asa, Corinne

2013-02-01

Wildland fires present many injury hazards to firefighters. We estimate injury rates and identify fire-related factors associated with injury. Data from the National Interagency Fire Center from 2003 to 2007 provided the number of injuries in which the firefighter could not return to his or her job assignment, person-days worked, and fire characteristics (year, region, season, cause, fuel type, resistance to control, and structures destroyed). We assessed fire-level risk factors of having at least one reported injury using logistic regression. Negative binomial regression was used to examine incidence rate ratios associated with fire-level risk factors. Of 867 fires, 9.5% required the most complex management and 24.7% required the next-highest level of management. Fires most often occurred in the western United States (82.8%), during the summer (69.6%), caused by lightening (54.9%). Timber was the most frequent fuel source (40.2%). Peak incident management level, person-days of exposure, and the fire's resistance to control were significantly related to the odds of a fire having at least one reported injury. However, the most complex fires had a lower injury incidence rate than less complex fires. Although fire complexity and the number of firefighters were associated with the risk for at least one reported injury, the more experienced and specialized firefighting teams had lower injury incidence. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Evaluating risks and benefits of wildland fire at landscape scales

Treesearch

Carol Miller; Peter B. Landres; Paul B. Alaback

2000-01-01

Fire suppression has resulted in severe management challenges, especially in the wildland-urban interface zone. Fire managers seek to reduce fuels and risks in the interface zone, while striving to return the natural role of fire to wildland ecosystems. Managers must balance the benefits of wildland fire on ecosystem health against the values that need to be protected...

Development and demonstration of smoke plume, fire emissions, and pre- and postprescribed fire fuel models on North Carolina Coastal Plain forest ecosystems

Treesearch

Robert A. Mickler; Miriam Rorig; Christopher D. Geron; Gary L. Achtemier; Andrew D. Bailey; Candice Krull; David Brownlie

2007-01-01

Wildland fuels have been accumulating in the United States during at least the past half-century due to wildland fire management practices and policies. The additional fuels contribute to intense fire behavior, increase the costs of wildland fire control, and contribute to the degradation of local and regional air quality. The management of prescribed and wildland fire...

Wildland Fire Management Plan

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Schwager, K.

The Wildland Fire Management Plan (FMP) for Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) is written to comply with Department of Energy (DOE) Integrated Safety Management Policy; Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and Program Review; and Wildland and Prescribed Fire Management Policy and Implementation Procedures Reference Guide. This current plan incorporates changes resulting from new policies on the national level as well as significant changes to available resources and other emerging issues, and replaces BNL's Wildland FMP dated 2014.

An Implementing Strategy for Improving Wildland Fire Environmental Literacy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McCalla, M. R.; Andrus, D.; Barnett, K.

2007-12-01

Wildland fire is any planned or unplanned fire which occurs in wildland ecosystems. Wildland fires affect millions of acres annually in the U.S. An average of 5.4 million acres a year were burned in the U.S. between 1995 and 2004, approximately 142 percent of the average burned area between 1984 and 1994. In 2005 alone, Federal agencies spent nearly $1 billion on fire suppression and state and local agencies contributed millions more. Many Americans prefer to live and vacation in relatively remote surroundings, (i.e., woods and rangelands). These choices offer many benefits, but they also present significant risks. Most of North America is fire-prone and every day developed areas and home sites are extending further into natural wildlands, which increases the chances of catastrophic fire. In addition, an abundance of accumulated biomass in forests and rangelands and persistent drought conditions are contributing to larger, costlier wildland fires. To effectively prevent, manage, suppress, respond to, and recover from wildland fires, fire managers, and other communities which are impacted by wildland fires (e.g., the business community; healthcare providers; federal, state, and local policymakers; the media; the public, etc.) need timely, accurate, and detailed wildland fire weather and climate information to support their decision-making activities. But what are the wildland fire weather and climate data, products, and information, as well as information dissemination technologies, needed to reach out and promote wildland fire environmental literacy in these communities? The Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services and Supporting Research (OFCM) conducted a comprehensive review and assessment of weather and climate needs of providers and users in their wildland fire and fuels management activities. The assessment has nine focus areas, one of which is environmental literacy (e.g., education, training, outreach, partnering, and collaboration). The OFCM model for promoting wildland fire environmental literacy, the model's component parts, as well as an implementing strategy to execute the model will be presented. That is, the presentation will lay out the framework and methodology which the OFCM used to systematically define the wildland fire weather and climate education and outreach needs through interdepartmental collaboration within the OFCM coordinating infrastructure. A key element of the methodology is to improve the overall understanding and use of wildland fire forecast and warning climate and weather products and to exploit current and emerging technologies to improve the dissemination of customer-tailored forecast and warning information and products to stakeholders and users. Thus, the framework and methodology define the method used to determine the target public, private, and academic sector audiences. The methodology also identifies the means for determining the optimal channels, formats, and content for informing end users in time for effective action to be taken.

Wildland fire and climate variability impacts on annual streamflow in watersheds across the continental United States: Regional patterns and attribution analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hallema, D. W.; Sun, G.; Caldwell, P. V.; Norman, S. P.; Cohen, E. C.; Liu, Y.; McNulty, S. G.

2016-12-01

The magnitude of wildland fire impacts on water resources varies regionally depending on fire severity, topography, vegetation and climate. An assessment of the potential threat that wildland fire poses to water supplies across the conterminous United States (CONUS) is critically important because forests supply 50% of consumed water. In our assessment, we first performed a double mass analysis of streamflow (GAGES-II) vs. precipitation (PRISM) data from 170 burned watersheds to identify changes in average water yield in the first five years following wildland fire (MTBS burn severity dataset), which were positive in 52 watersheds (Chow test p<0.1), negative in 69 (p<0.1), and not significant in 49 (p>0.1). Subsequently, we separated the respective contributions of fire and climate variability to changes in annual runoff (dQ) by fitting linear climate elasticity models (CEMs), yielding acceptable CEMs (coefficient p<0.1) for 106 watersheds. Median dQ (MdQ) for 62 watersheds with a burned area to drainage area ratio (BAR) <10% declined by -12%, mostly attributed to lower annual precipitation (P) (-16%) associated with regional climate trends, which was a common response in watersheds in the eastern states with low severity prescribed (Rx) or wildfires. MdQ increased by +11% in 44 watersheds with BAR >10%, notwithstanding overall declining P. These watersheds were for the greatest part located in the western CONUS, where dQ was correlated with burn severity (R2>0.53, variable per severity class) and PET (R2=0.73). The most severe impacts were observed in Arizona (2005 Cave Creek Complex, 2004 Edge Complex and 2004 Willow Fires), with BARs >39% and dQ>+160%, while hydrologic response in the east was much less extreme with only 10 cases where post-fire dQ increased >+10%. The clear regional patterns in post-fire Q together with evidence showing that downward trends in P can mask flow enhancing effects of fire disturbance (24 watersheds), underline the importance of the combined analysis of wildland fire and climate impacts in national scale assessments. Research funded by the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station, Joint Fire Science Program (#14-1-06-18), and Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (U.S. Department of Energy).

Decision making under uncertainty: Recommendations for the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS)

Treesearch

Matthew P. Thompson

2015-01-01

The management of wildfire is a dynamic, complex, and fundamentally uncertain enterprise. Fire managers face uncertainties regarding fire weather and subsequent influence on fire behavior, the effects of fire on socioeconomic and ecological resources, and the efficacy of alternative suppression actions on fire outcomes. In these types of difficult decision environments...

Reducing the wildland fire threat to homes: Where and how much?

Treesearch

Jack D. Cohen

1999-01-01

Understanding how ignitions occur is critical for effectively mitigating home fire losses during wildland fires. The threat of life and property losses during wildland fires is a significant issue for Federal, State, and local agencies that have responsibilities involving homes within and adjacent to wildlands. Agencies have shifted attention to communities adjacent to...

Wildland fire: Nature’s fuel treatment

Treesearch

Brian Cooke; Sean Parks; Carol Miller; Lisa Holsinger; Cara Nelson; Zack Holden; Scott Baggett; Benjamin Bird

2016-01-01

Every year wildland fires affect much more acreage in the United States compared to controlled burns. Like controlled burns, wildland fire can help promote biological diversity and healthy ecosystems. But despite these facts, wildland fire is not often considered as a fuel treatment in the United States. Scientists working with the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain...

Fire danger and fire behavior modeling systems in Australia, Europe, and North America

Treesearch

Francis M. Fujioka; A. Malcolm Gill; Domingos X. Viegas; B. Mike Wotton

2009-01-01

Wildland fire occurrence and behavior are complex phenomena involving essentially fuel (vegetation), topography, and weather. Fire managers around the world use a variety of systems to track and predict fire danger and fire behavior, at spatial scales that span from local to global extents, and temporal scales ranging from minutes to seasons. The fire management...

The Wildland Fire Decision Support System: Integrating science, technology, and fire management

Treesearch

Morgan Pence; Tom Zimmerman

2011-01-01

Federal agency policy requires documentation and analysis of all wildland fire response decisions. In the past, planning and decision documentation for fires were completed using multiple unconnected processes, yielding many limitations. In response, interagency fire management executives chartered the development of the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS)....

Climatic and weather factors affecting fire occurrence and behavior

Treesearch

Randall P. Benson; John O. Roads; David R. Weise

2009-01-01

Weather and climate have a profound influence on wildland fire ignition potential, fire behavior, and fire severity. Local weather and climate are affected by large-scale patterns of winds over the hemispheres that predispose wildland fuels to fire. The characteristics of wildland fuels, especially the moisture content, ultimately determine fire behavior and the impact...

Communicating with wildland interface communities during wildfire

USGS Publications Warehouse

Taylor, Jonathan G.; Gillette, Shana C.

2005-01-01

Communications during fire events are complex. Nevertheless, training fire information officers to plan fire communications before events, and to communicate during fires in a way that accurately and promptly informs residents in fire-affected areas, can increase effectiveness, reduce anxiety, ensure residents have accurate information on which to act, help them make better decisions, and possibly save lives.

The federal wildland policy: opportunities for wilderness fire management

Treesearch

G. Thomas Zimmerman; David L. Bunnell

2000-01-01

The Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and Program Review represents the latest stage in the evolution of wildland fire management. This policy directs changes that consolidate past fire management practices into a single direction to achieve multidimensional objectives and creates increased opportunities for wilderness fire management. Objectives previously...

Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy: A vision for an innovative and integrated approach to managing the risks

Treesearch

Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy Project Management Team

2006-01-01

The Canadian Wildland Fire Strategy (CWFS) provides a vision for a new, innovative, and integrated approach to wildland fire management in Canada. It was developed under the auspices of the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers and seeks to balance the social, ecological, and economic aspects of wildland fire through a risk management framework that emphasizes hazard...

Risk complexity and the wildland firefighter

Treesearch

Ivan Pupulidy

2012-01-01

Between 2000 and 2010 the US Forest Service and the Department of the Interior experienced 82 wildland fire fatalities. Our most recent organizational focus has been to eliminate fatalities. The chief of the USFS, in a letter to all employees, asked us to "suspend disbelief" with regard to the concept of a "zero fatality organization". This plea...

Climate Change, Wildland Fires and Public Health

EPA Science Inventory

Climate change is contributing to an increase in the severity of wildland fires. The annual acreage burned in the U.S. has risen steadily since 1985, and the fire season has lengthened. Wildland fires impair air quality by producing massive quantities of particulate air polluta...

Resource allocation for wildland fire suppression planning using a stochastic program

Treesearch

Alex Taylor Masarie

2011-01-01

Resource allocation for wildland fire suppression problems, referred to here as Fire-S problems, have been studied for over a century. Not only have the many variants of the base Fire-S problem made it such a durable one to study, but advances in suppression technology and our ever-expanding knowledge of and experience with wildland fire behavior have required almost...

Wildland fire risk and social vulnerability in the Southeastern United States: An exploratory spatial data analysis approach

Treesearch

Cassandra Johnson Gaither; N.C. Poudyal; S. Goodrick; J.M. Bowker; S. Malone; J. Gan

2011-01-01

The southeastern U.S. is one of the more wildland fire prone areas of the country and also contains some of the poorest or most socially vulnerable rural communities. Our project addresses wildland fire risk in this part of the U.S and its intersection with social vulnerability. We examine spatial association between high wildland fire prone areas which also rank high...

Assessing high reliability practices in the wildland fire community

Treesearch

Anne E. Black; Kathleen Sutcliffe; Michelle Barton; Deirdre Dether

2008-01-01

The Office of Inspector General's 2006 audit of Forest Service fire management operations added yet another voice to the growing chorus calling on the Federal wildland fire community to get more fire on the ground (OIG 2006). The 1995 National Fire Plan and the 2001 Implementation Plan identify the critical role of wildland fire use in reducing hazardous fuels...

FIRESCOPE: a new concept in multiagency fire suppression coordination

Treesearch

Richard A. Chase

1980-01-01

FIRESCOPE is a system developed to improve the capability of firefighting agencies in southern California in allocating and managing fire suppression resources. The system provides an effective and efficient solution to operational coordination requirements and problems of the major fire protection agencies serving the southern California urban-wildland complex. Major...

Wildland fire decision support system air quality tools

Treesearch

Sim Larkin; Tim Brown; Pete Lahm; Tom Zimmerman

2010-01-01

Smoke and air quality information have an important role in wildland fire decisionmaking that is reinforced in the 2009 "Guidance for Implementation of Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy." A key intent of the guidance is to allow consideration and use of the full range of strategic and tactical options that are available in the response to every wildland...

Land-use planning may reduce fire damage in the urban-wildland intermix

Treesearch

Carol L. Rice; James B. Davis

1991-01-01

The risk of wildfire associated with development in the urban-wildland intermix is nationwide. To wildland fire agencies, providing fire protection for wildland residential development can be an exercise in frustration. Much of the problem is that few convincing ties have been made between community planning and wildfire. For three counties in California, the following...

What is the wildland fire threat to homes?

Treesearch

Jack D. Cohen

2000-01-01

The threat of life and property losses related to wildfires is a significant issue for federal, state, and local fire and planning agencies who consider the mix of residential areas and wildlands. The wildland fire threat is part of the more general consideration of human development encroaching wildlands. The March, 2000 edition of the Journal of Forestry reflects...

Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination (GeoMAC) wildland fire perimeters, 2008

USGS Publications Warehouse

Walters, Sandra P.; Schneider, Norma J.; Guthrie, John D.

2011-01-01

The Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination (GeoMAC) has been collecting and storing data on wildland fire perimeters since August 2000. The dataset presented via this U.S. Geological Survey Data Series product contains the GeoMAC wildland fire perimeter data for the calendar year 2008, which are based upon input from incident intelligence sources, Global Positioning System (GPS) data, and infrared (IR) imagery. Wildland fire perimeter data are obtained from the incidents, evaluated for completeness and accuracy, and processed to reflect consistent field names and attributes. After a quality check, the perimeters are loaded to GeoMAC databases, which support the GeoMAC Web application for access by wildland fire managers and the public. The wildland fire perimeters are viewed through the Web application. The data are subsequently archived according to year and state and are made available for downloading through the Internet in shapefile and Keyhole Markup Language (KML) format. These wildland fire perimeter data are also retained for historical, planning, and research purposes. The datasets that pertain to this report can be found on the Rocky Mountain Geographic Science Center HTTP site at http://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/outgoing/GeoMAC/historic_fire_data/. The links are also provided on the sidebar.

Review of vortices in wildland fire

Treesearch

Jason M. Forthofer; Scott L. Goodrick

2011-01-01

Vortices are almost always present in the wildland fire environment and can sometimes interact with the fire in unpredictable ways, causing extreme fire behavior and safety concerns. In this paper, the current state of knowledge of the interaction of wildland fire and vortices is examined and reviewed. A basic introduction to vorticity is given, and the two common...

Modeling regional-scale wildland fire emissions with the wildland fire emissions information system

Treesearch

Nancy H.F. French; Donald McKenzie; Tyler Erickson; Benjamin Koziol; Michael Billmire; K. Endsley; Naomi K.Y. Scheinerman; Liza Jenkins; Mary E. Miller; Roger Ottmar; Susan Prichard

2014-01-01

As carbon modeling tools become more comprehensive, spatial data are needed to improve quantitative maps of carbon emissions from fire. The Wildland Fire Emissions Information System (WFEIS) provides mapped estimates of carbon emissions from historical forest fires in the United States through a web browser. WFEIS improves access to data and provides a consistent...

Glossary of Fire Terms

Science.gov Websites

a slope faces. Backfiring When attacking a wildland fire using the indirect attack method convective column. Black Line When putting in control lines, the process of burning out any pockets of small wildland fire. Burning Out When attack on the wildland fire is direct, or parallel with the

Public perspectives on the "wildfire problem."

Treesearch

Antony S. Cheng; Dennis R. Becker

2005-01-01

Just as wildland fire managers must have a working knowledge of fire behavior, they must also understand the social dimensions of wildland fire in order to effectively engage the public.Social scientists are therefore gathering information about public attitudes toward wildland fire and wildfire mitigation. How do people see the "wildfire problem"? What...

The Howling Prescribed Natural Fire - long-term effects on the modernization of planning and implementation of wildland fire management

Treesearch

Tom Zimmerman; Laurie Kurth; Mitchell Burgard

2011-01-01

Wildland fire management policy and practices have long been driven by the occurrence of significant events. The Howling Prescribed Natural Fire in Glacier National Park in 1994 is a prime example of a significant historical fire event that provided the impetus for program changes and modifications that modernized wildland fire management at the local, regional, and...

An Assessment of the Southern Wildland-Urban Interface

Treesearch

L. Annie Hermansen; Edward A. Macie

2005-01-01

Severe wildfires in Florida in 1998 demonstrated the complexities that the wildland-urban interface presents for a diverse group of people who live and work there. These fires cost millions of dollars in suppression costs, reduced tourism, and damaged timber, businessess, and homes. Entire communities had to be evacuated, and many elderly people and others afflicated...

Venture capital: States suffer as suppression expenses climb

Treesearch

Krista Gebert

2008-01-01

The high cost of suppressing wildfires is taking a toll on federal and state agencies alike. Large wildland fires are complex, costly events influenced by a vast array of physical, climatic, and social factors. During five of the last eight years, the Forest Services' wildfire suppression expenditures have topped $1 billion, and total federal wildland suppression...

Symbolic meanings of wildland fire: A study of residents in the U.S

Treesearch

Travis B. Paveglio; Matthew S. Carroll; James D. Absher; William Robinson

2010-01-01

This study uses symbolic interactionism as a basis for understanding the salience and fundamental meanings of wildland fire to wildland–urban interface (WUI) residents. It contributes to an understanding of how WUI residents actually view wildland fire, its role in forest ecosystems, and its attendant risks for human settlements. Three focus groups were conducted with...

Wildland fire and organic discourse: Negotiating place and leisure identity in a changing wildland urban inteface

Treesearch

Joseph G. Champ; Daniel R. Williams; Katie Knotek

2009-01-01

A lack of research on the conceptual intersection of leisure, place and wildland fire and its role in identity prompted this exploratory study. The purpose of this research was to gather evidence regarding how people negotiate identities under the threat of wildland fire. Qualitative interviews with 16 homeowners and recreationists who value leisure activities in...

Wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate: U.S. emissions inventories

Treesearch

Narasimhan K. Larkin; Sean M. Raffuse; Tara M. Strand

2014-01-01

Emissions from wildland fire are both highly variable and highly uncertain over a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. Wildland fire emissions change considerably due to fluctuations from year to year with overall fire season severity, from season to season as different regions pass in and out of wildfire and prescribed fire periods, and from day to day as...

Allowing a wildfire to burn: estimating the effect on future fire suppression costs

Treesearch

Rachel M. Houtman; Claire A. Montgomery; Aaron R. Gagnon; David E. Calkin; Thomas G. Dietterich; Sean McGregor; Mark Crowley

2013-01-01

Where a legacy of aggressive wildland fire suppression has left forests in need of fuel reduction, allowing wildland fire to burn may provide fuel treatment benefits, thereby reducing suppression costs from subsequent fires. The least-cost-plus-net-value-change model of wildland fire economics includes benefits of wildfire in a framework for evaluating suppression...

Burned forests impact water supplies

Treesearch

Dennis W. Hallema; Ge Sun; Peter V. Caldwell; Steven P. Norman; Erika C. Cohen; Yongqiang Liu; Kevin D. Bladon; Steven G. McNulty

2018-01-01

Wildland fire impacts on surface freshwater resources have not previously been measured, nor factored into regional water management strategies. But, large wildland fires are increasing and raise concerns about fire impacts on potable water. Here we synthesize longterm records of wildland fire, climate, and river flow for 168 locations across the United States. We show...

Wildland fire management futures: insights from a foresight panel

Treesearch

Robert L. Olson; David N. Bengston; Leif A. DeVaney; Trevor A.C. Thompson

2015-01-01

Wildland fire management faces unprecedented challenges in the 21st century: the increasingly apparent effects of climate change, more people and structures in the wildland-urban interface, growing costs associated with wildfire management, and the rise of high-impact fires, to name a few. Given these significant and growing challenges, conventional fire management...

Preface: Special issue on wildland fires

Treesearch

Alistair M. S. Smith; James A. Lutz; Chad M. Hoffman; Grant J. Williamson; Andrew T. Hudak

2018-01-01

Wildland fires are a critical Earth-system process that impacts human populations in each settled continent [1,2]. Wildland fires have often been stated as being essential to human life and civilization through the impacts on land clearance, agriculture, and hunting, with fire as a phenomenon serving a key role in the development of agricultural and industrial...

Production and efficiency of large wildland fire suppression effort: A stochastic frontier analysis

Treesearch

Hari Katuwal; Dave Calkin; Michael S. Hand

2016-01-01

This study examines the production and efficiency of wildland fire suppression effort. We estimate the effectiveness of suppression resource inputs to produce controlled fire lines that contain large wildland fires using stochastic frontier analysis. Determinants of inefficiency are identified and the effects of these determinants on the daily production of...

Local Planning Considerations for the Wildland-Structural Intermix in the Year 2000

Treesearch

Robert L. Irwin

1987-01-01

California's foothill counties are the scene of rapid development. All types of construction in former wildlands is creating an intermix of wildland-structures-wildland that is different from the traditional "urban-wildland interface." The fire and structural environment for seven counties is described. Fire statistics are compared with growth patterns...

Modeling topographic influences on fuel moisture and fire danger in complex terrain to improve wildland fire management decision support

Treesearch

Zachary A. Holden; W. Matt Jolly

2011-01-01

Fire danger rating systems commonly ignore fine scale, topographically-induced weather variations. These variations will likely create heterogeneous, landscape-scale fire danger conditions that have never been examined in detail. We modeled the evolution of fuel moistures and the Energy Release Component (ERC) from the US National Fire Danger Rating System across the...

76 FR 62755 - Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-10-11

... wild land urban interface homeowners. The information collected will help wildland fire managers and... a currently valid OMB control number. Forest Service Title: Overcoming Barriers to Wildland Fire... information regarding barriers to participating in fire hazard reduction programs in the wildland urban...

Proposed wildland fire amendment to the Coronado National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan

Treesearch

Sherry A. Tune; Erin M. Boyle

2005-01-01

The Coronado National Forest proposed amending its 1986 Land and Resource Management Plan to conform to the 2001 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. This Policy emphasizes fire’s essential role in maintaining natural ecosystems and allows a broader range of management options for wildland fires. Under the current Forest Plan, fires must be suppressed in areas...

A framework for developing safe and effective large-fire response in a new fire management paradigm

Treesearch

Christopher J. Dunn; Matthew P. Thompson; David E. Calkin

2017-01-01

The impacts of wildfires have increased in recent decades because of historical forest and fire management, a rapidly changing climate, and an increasingly populated wildland urban interface. This increasingly complex fire environment highlights the importance of developing robust tools to support risk-informed decision making. While tools have been developed to aid...

Burned forests impact water supplies.

PubMed

Hallema, Dennis W; Sun, Ge; Caldwell, Peter V; Norman, Steven P; Cohen, Erika C; Liu, Yongqiang; Bladon, Kevin D; McNulty, Steven G

2018-04-10

Wildland fire impacts on surface freshwater resources have not previously been measured, nor factored into regional water management strategies. But, large wildland fires are increasing and raise concerns about fire impacts on potable water. Here we synthesize long-term records of wildland fire, climate, and river flow for 168 locations across the United States. We show that annual river flow changed in 32 locations, where more than 19% of the basin area was burned. Wildland fires enhanced annual river flow in the western regions with a warm temperate or humid continental climate. Wildland fires increased annual river flow most in the semi-arid Lower Colorado region, in spite of frequent droughts in this region. In contrast, prescribed burns in the subtropical Southeast did not significantly alter river flow. These extremely variable outcomes offer new insights into the potential role of wildfire and prescribed fire in regional water resource management, under a changing climate.

Wildfire smoke exposure and cardiopulmonary hospitalizations among those over age 65 in the United States

EPA Science Inventory

Background: The health implications of excess PM2.5 due to wildland fire smoke are not well understood. Very few studies have assessed the effect of wildland fire smoke from multiple fires across the US. Methods: We estimated daily concentrations of PM2.5 due to wildland fire smo...

Public acceptance of wildland fire and fuel management: Panel responses in seven locations

Treesearch

Eric Toman; Bruce Shindler; Sarah McCaffrey; James Bennett

2014-01-01

Wildland fire affects both public and private resources throughout the United States. A century of fire suppression has contributed to changing ecological conditions and accumulated fuel loads. Managers have used a variety of approaches to address these conditions and reduce the likelihood of wildland fires that may result in adverse ecological impacts and threaten...

Influences on USFS District Rangers' Decision to Authorize Wildland Fire Use

Treesearch

Martha A. Williamson

2006-01-01

United States wildland fire policy and program reviews in 1995 and 2000 required reduction of hazardous fuel and recognition of fire as a natural process. Although an existing policy, Wildland Fire Use (WFU), permitted managing natural ignitions to meet resource benefits, most fuel reduction is still achieved through mechanical treatments and prescribed burning....

WILDLAND FIRE EMISSION MODELING: INTEGRATING BLUESKY AND SMOKE

EPA Science Inventory

This presentation is a summary of an improved method to estimate emissions from wildland fires. An interagency agreement between the US Forest Service and the US EPA has made it possible for these two agencies to collaborate in the study of wildland fires.

Spatial products available for identifying areas of likely wildfire ignitions using lightning location data-Wildland Fire Assessment System (WFAS)

Treesearch

Paul Sopko; Larry Bradshaw; Matt Jolly

2016-01-01

The Wildland Fire Assessment System (WFAS, www.wfas.net) is a one-stop-shop giving wildland fire managers the ability to assess fire potential ranging in scale from national to regional and temporally from 1 to 5 days. Each day, broad-area maps are produced from fire weather station and lightning location networks. Three products are created using 24 hour...

Using social science to understand and improve wildland fire organizations: an annotated reading list

Treesearch

Gregory Larson; Vita Wright; Cade Spaulding; Kelly Rossetto; Georgi Rausch; Andrea Richards; Stephanie Durnford

2007-01-01

The wildland fire community has spent the past decade trying to understand and account for the role of human factors in wildland fire organizations. Social research that is relevant to managing fire organizations can be found in disciplines such as social psychology, management, and communication. However, such research has been published primarily for scientific and...

Exploring information needs for wildland fire and fuels management

Treesearch

Carol Miller; Peter Landres

2004-01-01

We report the results of a questionnaire and workshop that sought to gain a better and deeper understanding of the contemporary information needs of wildland fire and fuels managers. Results from the questionnaire indicated that the decision to suppress a wildland fire was most often influenced by factors related to safety and that the decision to allow a fire to burn...

Burning rates of wood cribs with implications for wildland fires

Treesearch

Sara McAllister; Mark Finney

2016-01-01

Wood cribs are often used as ignition sources for room fire tests and the well characterized burning rates may also have applications to wildland fires. The burning rate of wildland fuel structures, whether the needle layer on the ground or trees and shrubs themselves, is not addressed in any operational fire model and no simple model exists. Several relations...

Implications of burned area approaches in emission inventories for modeling wildland fire pollution in the contiguous U.S.

EPA Science Inventory

Wildland fires are a major source of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), one of the most harmful ambient pollutants for human health globally. Within the U.S., wildland fires can account for more than 30% of total annual PM2.5 emissions. In order to represent the influence of fire e...

Implications of burned area approaches in emission inventories for modeling wildland fire pollution in the contiguous U.S

EPA Science Inventory

Wildland fires are a major source of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), one of the most harmful ambient pollutants for human health globally. Within the U.S., wildland fires can account for more than 30% of total annual PM2.5 emissions. In order to represent the influence of fire e...

Chapter 3 - Large-scale patterns of forest fire occurrence in the conterminous United States, Alaska and Hawaii, 2016

Treesearch

Kevin M. Potter

2018-01-01

As a pervasive disturbance agent operating at many spatial and temporal scales, wildland fire is a key abiotic factor affecting forest health both positively and negatively. In some ecosystems, for example, wildland fires have been essential for regulating processes that maintain forest health (Lundquist and others 2011). Wildland fire is an important ecological...

Alaska's State Forests

Science.gov Websites

Conservation Education Timber Management Wildland Fire & Aviation Burn Permits Firewise Alaska Brochure (PDF) Fire Management Plans Fire Assignments Annual Fire Statistics Fire Terms Glossary Incident Business Management Grants Become an Alaska Firewise Community Community Wildland Fire Protection Plans

Chemical composition of wildland fire emissions

Treesearch

Shawn P. Urbanski; Wei Min Hao; Stephen Baker

2009-01-01

Wildland fires are major sources of trace gases and aerosol, and these emissions are believed to significantly influence the chemical composition of the atmosphere and the earth's climate system. The wide variety of pollutants released by wildland fire include greenhouse gases, photochemically reactive compounds, and fine and coarse particulate matter. Through...

Wildland fire and the wilderness visitor experience

Treesearch

Sierra L. Schroeder; Ingrid E. Schneider

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study was to understand wilderness visitors' perceptions of wildland fire and describe visitors' wilderness recreational experience following wildland fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). Qualitative interviews revealed visitors' perceptions of burned areas as well as if and how activities and behaviors were...

The economic dimension of wildland fires

Treesearch

Armando Gonzalez-Caban

2013-01-01

The economic relevance of wildland fire management and protection programs is ever growing, particularly considering mounting wildfire costs and losses globally, and the justifications required for budget allocations to management and protection of forest ecosystems. However, there are major difficulties in grappling with the problem of rapidly increasing wildland fire...

Wildland Fire: Health Effects and Public Health Outreach: Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS) Webinar

EPA Science Inventory

The expanding wildland-urban interface and the proximity of prescribed fires undertaken by the Department of Defense is bringing the source of wildland fires close to densely populated areas in the Southeast. The presentation is an informational webinar to representatives of SERP...

Assessing CMAQ's contribution to Ozone and PM 2.5 from Wildland Fire Emissions

EPA Science Inventory

This poster to be delivered at the International Association of Wildland Fire Conference highlights modeling efforts that have been made to assess the impact of wildland fires on atmospheric pollution and human health. It points out the need to perform additional evaluation and m...

Leveraging the geospatial advantage

Treesearch

Ben Butler; Andrew Bailey

2013-01-01

The Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) web-based application leverages geospatial data to inform strategic decisions on wildland fires. A specialized data team, working within the Wildland Fire Management Research Development and Application group (WFM RD&A), assembles authoritative national-level data sets defining values to be protected. The use of...

Modelling public support for wildland fire policy

Treesearch

J.D. Absher; J.J. Vaske

2007-01-01

Theoretically grounded explanations of wildland fire policy can be improved by empirically documenting the causal influences of support for (or opposition to) management alternatives. This chapter proposes a model based on the specificity principle (i.e. correspondence between measured variables to empirically examine four common wildland fire policies in relation to...

Division of Forestry Fire and Aviation Program

Science.gov Websites

Conservation Education Timber Management Wildland Fire & Aviation Burn Permits Firewise Alaska Brochure (PDF) Fire Management Plans Fire Assignments Annual Fire Statistics Fire Terms Glossary Incident Business Management Grants Become an Alaska Firewise Community Community Wildland Fire Protection Plans

Change as a factor in advancing fire-management decisionmaking and program effectiveness

Treesearch

Thomas Zimmerman

2011-01-01

Wildland fire management—as evidenced by its nature, historical growth, and development—can be characterized as a program of constant change. To become better able to meet changing conditions and complexity, fire management must be agile, flexible, and able to embrace change. But many challenges and limitations to acceptance continue to hamper...

Evaluating crown fire rate of spread predictions from physics-based models

Treesearch

C. M. Hoffman; J. Ziegler; J. Canfield; R. R. Linn; W. Mell; C. H. Sieg; F. Pimont

2015-01-01

Modeling the behavior of crown fires is challenging due to the complex set of coupled processes that drive the characteristics of a spreading wildfire and the large range of spatial and temporal scales over which these processes occur. Detailed physics-based modeling approaches such as FIRETEC and the Wildland Urban Interface Fire Dynamics Simulator (WFDS) simulate...

Review of the health effects of wildland fire smoke on wildland firefighters and the public.

PubMed

Adetona, Olorunfemi; Reinhardt, Timothy E; Domitrovich, Joe; Broyles, George; Adetona, Anna M; Kleinman, Michael T; Ottmar, Roger D; Naeher, Luke P

2016-01-01

Each year, the general public and wildland firefighters in the US are exposed to smoke from wildland fires. As part of an effort to characterize health risks of breathing this smoke, a review of the literature was conducted using five major databases, including PubMed and MEDLINE Web of Knowledge, to identify smoke components that present the highest hazard potential, the mechanisms of toxicity, review epidemiological studies for health effects and identify the current gap in knowledge on the health impacts of wildland fire smoke exposure. Respiratory events measured in time series studies as incidences of disease-caused mortality, hospital admissions, emergency room visits and symptoms in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients are the health effects that are most commonly associated with community level exposure to wildland fire smoke. A few recent studies have also determined associations between acute wildland fire smoke exposure and cardiovascular health end-points. These cardiopulmonary effects were mostly observed in association with ambient air concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5). However, research on the health effects of this mixture is currently limited. The health effects of acute exposures beyond susceptible populations and the effects of chronic exposures experienced by the wildland firefighter are largely unknown. Longitudinal studies of wildland firefighters during and/or after the firefighting career could help elucidate some of the unknown health impacts of cumulative exposure to wildland fire smoke, establish occupational exposure limits and help determine the types of exposure controls that may be applicable to the occupation.

Alaska Timber Jobs Task Force

Science.gov Websites

Conservation Education Timber Management Wildland Fire & Aviation Burn Permits Firewise Alaska Brochure (PDF) Fire Management Plans Fire Assignments Annual Fire Statistics Fire Terms Glossary Incident Business Management Grants Become an Alaska Firewise Community Community Wildland Fire Protection Plans

Third U.S. Geological Survey Wildland Fire-Science Workshop : Denver, Colorado, November 12-15, 2002

USGS Publications Warehouse

Livingston, Russell K.

2004-01-01

Executive Summary -- The historically significant wildland fire events that occurred in the United States during 2000 and 2002, together with the associated recognition of the need for a different national policy of forest management, has led to an increased awareness of the need for cooperative effort among all Federal agencies in planning for and managing the risks and consequences of wildland fire. The expertise and capabilities of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are significant resources in this regard, and the agency is becoming increasingly involved in fire-science activities in support of the various land-management agencies that are dealing directly with this issue. The First USGS Wildland Fire Workshop was held in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1997 and helped to establish the direction of USGS in sharing its expertise with the fire-management agencies. The Second USGS Wildland Fire Workshop was held in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 2000 and brought together all the agencies involved in the management of wildland fires in order to determine their needs, to demonstrate USGS capabilities to meet those needs, and to establish methods for the USGS to distribute data and tools useful in fire management. It enhanced the relationships developed during the 1997 workshop and helped to define USGS' role in the fire-management community. The Third USGS Wildland Fire-Science Workshop, held in Denver, Colorado, November 12?15, 2002, was an opportunity for exchange of information on recent progress in the area of fire science and to determine the gaps in fire-science research that could be addressed by the USGS. In addition to more than 90 USGS scientists engaged in fire-related research and managers of organizational units involved in some aspect of wildland fire activities, the workshop was attended by about 30 representatives of 11 other Federal agencies. There also were a number of attendees affiliated with several universities, private companies, and State and local agencies. The 4-day meeting consisted of a pre-workshop field trip to the Hayman Fire area, several keynote presentations, five panel discussions, presentation and 'breakout' discussion of four 'white paper' topics, and a poster session with more than 30 presentations.

Status of wildland fire prevention evaluation in the United States.

Treesearch

Larry Doolittle; Linda R. Donoghue

1991-01-01

Presents findings of an assessment of the evaluation of wildland prevention efforts by all U.S. Wildland fire management agencies, and offers recommendations for improvements in prevention valuation techniques and procedures.

Fuels planning: science synthesis and integration: social issues fact sheet 19: Impacts of wildland fire on communities

Treesearch

Rocky Mountain Research Station USDA Forest Service

2007-01-01

Large fires can result in a series of disasters for individuals and communities in the wildland-urban interface. They create significant disruptions to ongoing social processes, result in large financial losses, and lead to expensive restoration activities. By being aware of the impacts of wildland fire on local residents, fire managers can bring added value to them...

An analytical framework for quantifying wildland fire risk and fuel treatment benefit

Treesearch

Joe H. Scott

2006-01-01

Federal wildland fire management programs have readily embraced the practice of fuel treatment. Wildland fire risk is quantified as expected annual loss ($ yr –1 or $ yr –1 ac –1). Fire risk at a point on the landscape is a function of the probability of burning at that point, the relative frequency...

Characterizing sources of emissions from wildland fires

Treesearch

Roger D. Ottmar; Ana Isabel Miranda; David V. Sandberg

2009-01-01

Smoke emissions from wildland fire can be harmful to human health and welfare, impair visibility, and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. The generation of emissions and heat release need to be characterized to estimate the potential impacts of wildland fire smoke. This requires explicit knowledge of the source, including size of the area burned, burn period,...

Chemical composition of wildland fire emissions

Treesearch

Shawn P. Urbanski; Wei Min Hao; Stephen Baker

2009-01-01

Wildland fires are major sources of trace gases and aerosol, and these emissions are believed to significantly influence the chemical composition of the atmosphere and the earth’s climate system. The wide variety of pollutants released by wildland fire include greenhouse gases, photochemically reactive compounds, and fine and coarse particulate matter. Through direct...

Preventing disaster: Home ignitability in the wildland-urban interface

Treesearch

Jack D. Cohen

2000-01-01

Wildland-urban interface (W-UI) fires are a significant concern for federal, state, and local land management and fire agencies. Research using modeling, experiments, and W-UI case studies indicates that home ignitability during wildland fires depends on the characteristics of the home and its immediate surroundings. These findings have implications for hazard...

Guidance on spatial wildland fire analysis: models, tools, and techniques

Treesearch

Richard D. Stratton

2006-01-01

There is an increasing need for spatial wildland fire analysis in support of incident management, fuel treatment planning, wildland-urban assessment, and land management plan development. However, little guidance has been provided to the field in the form of training, support, or research examples. This paper provides guidance to fire managers, planners, specialists,...

Tanana Valley State Forest Citizens' Advisory Committee

Science.gov Websites

Conservation Education Timber Management Wildland Fire & Aviation Burn Permits Firewise Alaska Brochure (PDF) Fire Management Plans Fire Assignments Annual Fire Statistics Fire Terms Glossary Incident Business Management Grants Become an Alaska Firewise Community Community Wildland Fire Protection Plans

Los Alamos National Laboratory Prepares for Fire Season

ScienceCinema

L’Esperance, Manny

2018-01-16

Through the establishment of a Wildland Fire Program Office, and the Interagency Fire Base located on Laboratory property, Los Alamos National Laboratory is continuing and improving a program to prepare for wildland fire.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Prepares for Fire Season

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

L’Esperance, Manny

Through the establishment of a Wildland Fire Program Office, and the Interagency Fire Base located on Laboratory property, Los Alamos National Laboratory is continuing and improving a program to prepare for wildland fire.

Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory Wildland Fire Management Environmental Assessment - April 2003

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Irving, J.S.

DOE prepared an environmental assessment (EA)for wildland fire management activities on the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) (DOE/EA-1372). The EA was developed to evaluate wildland fire management options for pre-fire, fire suppression, and post fire activities. Those activities have an important role in minimizing the conversion of the native sagebrush steppe ecosystem found on the INEEL to non-native weeds. Four alternative management approaches were analyzed: Alternative 1 - maximum fire protection; Alternative 2 - balanced fire protection; Alternative 2 - balanced fire protection; Alternative 3 - protect infrastructure and personnel; and Alternative 4 - no action/traditional fire protection.

Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory Wildland Fire Management Environmental Assessment

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Irving, John S

DOE prepared an environmental assessment (EA)for wildland fire management activities on the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) (DOE/EA-1372). The EA was developed to evaluate wildland fire management options for pre-fire, fire suppression, and post fire activities. Those activities have an important role in minimizing the conversion of the native sagebrush steppe ecosystem found on the INEEL to non-native weeds. Four alternative management approaches were analyzed: Alternative 1 - maximum fire protection; Alternative 2 - balanced fire protection; Alternative 2 - balanced fire protection; Alternative 3 - protect infrastructure and personnel; and Alternative 4 - no action/traditional fire protection.

Evaluating the impacts of wildland fires on caribou in interior Alaska

USGS Publications Warehouse

Joly, Kyle; Adams, Layne G.; Dale, Bruce W.; Collins, William

2002-01-01

Caribou are found throughout the boreal forests of interior Alaska, a region subject to chronic and expansive wildland fires. Fruticose lichens, if available, constitute the majority of the winter diet of caribou throughout their range and are common in mature boreal forests but largely absent from early successional stages. Fire, the dominant ecological driving force, increases vegetative diversity and productivity across the landscape but may reduce the availability of caribou winter forage for decades.Increasingly, wildland fire regimes are influenced by humans seeking to reduce fire hazards or mitigate the effects of years of fire suppression. Consequently, biologists have debated the importance of forage lichens to the dynamics of caribou populations, and land managers have questioned the importance of fire regime to wintering caribou. To better understand the impacts of wildland fire on caribou, we are simultaneously investigating the relationships between fire history, caribou movements, forage lichen availability, and caribou nutritional performance on their winter range.

Employment Opportunities

Science.gov Websites

Conservation Education Timber Management Wildland Fire & Aviation Burn Permits Firewise Alaska Brochure (PDF) Fire Management Plans Fire Assignments Annual Fire Statistics Fire Terms Glossary Incident Business Management Grants Become an Alaska Firewise Community Community Wildland Fire Protection Plans

Forest Stewardship Committee

Science.gov Websites

Conservation Education Timber Management Wildland Fire & Aviation Burn Permits Firewise Alaska Brochure (PDF) Fire Management Plans Fire Assignments Annual Fire Statistics Fire Terms Glossary Incident Business Management Grants Become an Alaska Firewise Community Community Wildland Fire Protection Plans

The Simulations of Wildland Fire Smoke PM25 in the NWS Air Quality Forecasting Systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, H. C.; Pan, L.; McQueen, J.; Lee, P.; ONeill, S. M.; Ruminski, M.; Shafran, P.; Huang, J.; Stajner, I.; Upadhayay, S.; Larkin, N. K.

2017-12-01

The increase of wildland fire intensity and frequency in the United States (U.S.) has led to property loss, human fatality, and poor air quality due to elevated particulate matters and surface ozone concentrations. The NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS) built the National Air Quality Forecast Capability (NAQFC) based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) Modeling System driven by the NCEP North American Mesoscale Forecast System meteorology to provide ozone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) forecast guidance publicly. State and local forecasters use the NWS air quality forecast guidance to issue air quality alerts in their area. The NAQFC PM2.5 predictions include emissions from anthropogenic and biogenic sources, as well as natural sources such as dust storms and wildland fires. The wildland fire emission inputs to the NAQFC is derived from the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service Hazard Mapping System fire and smoke detection product and the emission module of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) BlueSky Smoke Modeling Framework. Wildland fires are unpredictable and can be ignited by natural causes such as lightning or be human-caused. It is extremely difficult to predict future occurrences and behavior of wildland fires, as is the available bio-fuel to be burned for real-time air quality predictions. Assumptions of future day's wildland fire behavior often have to be made from older observed wildland fire information. The comparisons between the NAQFC modeled PM2.5 and the EPA AirNow surface observation show that large errors in PM2.5 prediction can occur if fire smoke emissions are sometimes placed at the wrong location and/or time. A configuration of NAQFC CMAQ-system to re-run previous 24 hours, during which wildland fires were observed from satellites has been included recently. This study focuses on the effort performed to minimize the error in NAQFC PM2.5 predictions resulting from incorporating fire smoke emissions into the NAQFC from a recently updated newer version of USFS BlueSky system. This study will show how new approaches has improved the PM2.5 predictions at both nearby and downstream areas from fire sources. Furthermore, Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) fire emissions data are being tested.

A numerical study of atmospheric perturbations induced by heat from a wildland fire: sensitivity to vertical canopy structure and heat source strength

Treesearch

Michael T. Kiefer; Shiyuan Zhong; Warren E. Heilman; Joseph J. Charney; Xindi Bian

2018-01-01

An improved understanding of atmospheric perturbations within and above a forest during a wildland fire has relevance to many aspects of wildland fires including fire spread, smoke transport and dispersion, and tree mortality. In this study, the ARPS-CANOPY model, a version of the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) model with a canopy parameterization, is...

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Green,T.

This Wildland Fire Management Plan (FMP) for Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) updates the 2003 plan incorporating changes necessary to comply with DOE Order 450.1 and DOE P 450.4, Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and Program Review; Wildland and Prescribed Fire Management Policy and implementation Procedures Reference Guide. This current plan incorporates changes since the original draft of the FMP that result from new policies on the national level. This update also removes references and dependence on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Department of the Interior, fully transitioning Wildland Fire Management responsibilities to BNL. The Department of Energy policymore » for managing wildland fires requires that all areas, managed by the DOE and/or its various contractors, that can sustain fire must have a FMP that details fire management guidelines for operational procedures associated with wild fire, operational, and prescribed fires. Fire management plans provide guidance on fire preparedness, fire prevention, wildfire suppression, and the use of controlled, 'prescribed' fires and mechanical means to control the amount of available combustible material. Values reflected in the BNL Wildland FMP include protecting life and public safety; Lab properties, structures and improvements; cultural and historical sites; neighboring private and public properties; and endangered, threatened, and species of concern. Other values supported by the plan include the enhancement of fire-dependent ecosystems at BNL. This FMP will be reviewed periodically to ensure the fire program advances and evolves with the missions of the DOE and BNL. This Fire Management Plan is presented in a format that coverers all aspects specified by DOE guidance documents which are based on the national template for fire management plans adopted under the National Fire Plan. The DOE is one of the signatory agencies on the National Fire Plan. This FMP is to be used and implemented for the entire BNL site including the Upton Reserve and has been reviewed by, The Nature Conservancy, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers, and DOE, as well as appropriate BNL emergency services personnel. The BNL Fire Department is the lead on wildfire suppression. However, the BNL Natural Resource Manager will be assigned to all wildland fires as technical resource advisor.« less

Estimating US federal wildland fire managers' preferences toward competing strategic suppression objectives

Treesearch

David E. Calkin; Tyron Venn; Matthew Wibbenmeyer; Matthew P. Thompson

2012-01-01

Wildfire management involves significant complexity and uncertainty, requiring simultaneous consideration of multiple, non-commensurate objectives. This paper investigates the tradeoffs fire managers are willing to make among these objectives using a choice experiment methodology that provides three key advancements relative to previous stated-preference studies...

A synopsis of large or disastrous wildland fires

Treesearch

Robert E. Martin; David B. Sapsis

1995-01-01

Wildland fires have occurred for centuries in North America and other selected countries and can be segregated into three periods: prehistoric (presuppression) fires, suppression period fires, and fire management period fires. Prehistoric fires varied in size and damage but were probably viewed fatalistically. Suppression period fires were based on policy that excluded...

Estimating suppression expenditures for individual large wildland fires

Treesearch

Krista M. Gebert; David E. Calkin; Jonathan Yoder

2007-01-01

The extreme cost of fighting wildland fires has brought fire suppression expenditures to the forefront of budgetary and policy debate in the United States. Inasmuch as large fires are responsible for the bulk of fire suppression expenditures, understanding fire characteristics that influence expenditures is important for both strategic fire planning and onsite fire...

The Evolution of Wildland Fire Management Policy in the USA: Successes and Failures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gonzalez-Caban, A.

2015-12-01

Wildfires have been suppressed over the last 100 years in forest and brush landscapes. For the last three decades, fires occurrence and severity have significantly increased when compared to historical levels causing economic damage and suppression costs never experienced before in the US or globally. As the wildland fire problem evolved so did the public response through a wildland fire management policy guided by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management understanding of the problem. Globally it is estimated that more 350 million hectares of wildland burn annually. They oxidize approximately 3-8% of the total terrestrial net primary productivity. The economic and physical relevance of wildland fire management and protection programs is ever growing, particularly considering mounting wildfire costs and losses globally. In the US alone, from 2000 to 2013 more than 37 million hectares of wildland has been affected at a cost of over $21 billion. The increase in siege-like fires can be explained in part by increasing population, particularly in the wildland-urban interface and the accumulation of biomass fuel due to over a century of fire exclusion. Recent developments demonstrate a strong relationship between fire and weather and climate variations. How the wildland fire management policy has evolved through time? The development can be divided in three stages: the formative years between 1905 and 1911; the consolidation years from 1911 through 1968; and the modern era from 1995 to present. Each stage is characterized by a series of significant events that caused changes on how the problem was approached. For example, the establishment of the Forest Service in 1905 and the rash of large wildfires in the western USA set the base for the wildfire suppression of all wildfires in 1911. During the second stage we see the 1935 policy of suppressing all wildfires by 10-am next-day. By 1968 the policy has evolved to include the use of prescribed burning and the elimination of the 10-am next-day policy. In the modern era, by 1995 the wildland fire management policy changed to require the use of economic efficiency analysis in fire suppression actions. The recently passed FLAME Act and establishment of the FS Cohesive Strategy have been in response to increases in the wildland-urban interface problem and climate change challenges.

Spatially explicit measurements of forest structure and fire behavior following restoration treatments in dry forests

Treesearch

Justin Paul Ziegler; Chad Hoffman; Michael Battaglia; William Mell

2017-01-01

Restoration treatments in dry forests of the western US often attempt silvicultural practices to restore the historical characteristics of forest structure and fire behavior. However, it is suggested that a reliance on non-spatial metrics of forest stand structure, along with the use of wildland fire behavior models that lack the ability to handle complex structures,...

Hands-on learning: Its effectiveness in teaching the public about wildland fire

Treesearch

Tamara M. Parkinson; Jo Ellen Force; Jane Kapler Smith

2003-01-01

This study evaluated workshops for the adult public featuring experiential learning about wildland fire. Participants used hands-on activities to investigate fire behavior and ecology and to assess hazards in the wildland-urban interface. Effectiveness was examined using a pretest, a posttest following the program, and another posttest 30 days later. Participants’...

Manitoba Health's emerging work on wildland fire smoke

Treesearch

Jeffrey Joaquin; Darlene Oshanski

2015-01-01

Smoke caused by wildland fire events is an important public health issue, involving major risks to the health of people and the environment. Smoke from wildland fires can travel hundreds of kilometers, affecting air quality far from the flames. Through a partnership with Health Canada, Manitoba Health's Office of Disaster Management (ODM) has undertaken a number...

Research and Development wildland fire and fuels accomplishments and outcomes

Treesearch

Matthew Rollins; Carlos Rodriguez-Franco; Tara Haan; Susan Conard

2017-01-01

The Research and Development (R&D) Wildland Fire and Fuels program at the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, continues to be an internationally renowned program for generating critical and essential data, knowledge, and applications for all phases of wildland fire management and response. This report provides a primer on the...

Model comparisons for estimating carbon emissions from North American wildland fire

Treesearch

Nancy H.F. French; William J. de Groot; Liza K. Jenkins; Brendan M. Rogers; Ernesto Alvarado; Brian Amiro; Bernardus De Jong; Scott Goetz; Elizabeth Hoy; Edward Hyer; Robert Keane; B.E. Law; Donald McKenzie; Steven G. McNulty; Roger Ottmar; Diego R. Perez-Salicrup; James Randerson; Kevin M. Robertson; Merritt Turetsky

2011-01-01

Research activities focused on estimating the direct emissions of carbon from wildland fires across North America are reviewed as part of the North American Carbon Program disturbance synthesis. A comparison of methods to estimate the loss of carbon from the terrestrial biosphere to the atmosphere from wildland fires is presented. Published studies on emissions from...

Alaska Community Forest Council

Science.gov Websites

Conservation Education Timber Management Wildland Fire & Aviation Burn Permits Firewise Alaska Brochure (PDF) Fire Management Plans Fire Assignments Annual Fire Statistics Fire Terms Glossary Incident Business Management Grants Become an Alaska Firewise Community Community Wildland Fire Protection Plans

Firewood on Alaska State Lands

Science.gov Websites

Conservation Education Timber Management Wildland Fire & Aviation Burn Permits Firewise Alaska Brochure (PDF) Fire Management Plans Fire Assignments Annual Fire Statistics Fire Terms Glossary Incident Business Management Grants Become an Alaska Firewise Community Community Wildland Fire Protection Plans

Climate Change, Wildland Fires and Public Health

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cascio, W. E.

2016-12-01

Climate change is contributing to an increase in the severity of wildland fires. The annual acreage burned in the U.S. has risen steadily since 1985, and the fire season has lengthened. Wildland fires impair air quality by producing massive quantities of particulate air pollutants and ozone precursors. Together particles and ozone exposures increase the risk of premature death and acute and chronic cardiovascular and respiratory morbidity among vulnerable individuals. Future wildfires are predicted to be larger, more severe and more frequent in some regions of the U.S and will contribute to an even greater proportion of the ambient air pollution, the disease burden and healthcare costs.While the projected magnitude of the public health impact of climate change-related wildfire events is uncertain, it is clear that the proportion of the U.S. population vulnerable to the adverse health effects of wildland fire and its smoke is increasing. An aging population with chronic respiratory diseases and increasing obesity and diabetes that heralds more cardiovascular disease will increase the vulnerability of the population to the adverse effects of wildfire smoke and associated stressors. Additionally, physiological changes attendant to aging decrease the capacity of aged-adults to tolerate wildfire smoke, heat, humidity, evacuation and recovery. Expansion of our cities into the wildland-urban interface is also placing a greater proportion of the population in closer proximity to wildland fire emissions with its associated health risks. The public health community has an opportunity to contribute to the broader national effort to mitigate climate change and wildland fire risk by working closely with the healthcare community to facilitate adaptive responses to climate change. Adaptation will increase the resilience of individuals and their communities and is anticipated to help mitigate the adverse health effects of wildland fire. This abstract does not reflect USEPA policy.

Wildfires and Forest Development in Tropical and Subtropical Asia: Outlook for the Year 2000

Treesearch

Johann G. Goldammer

1987-01-01

California's foothill counties are the scene of rapid development. All types of construction in former wildlands is creating an intermix of wildland-structures-wildland that is different from the traditional "urban-wildland interface." The fire and structural environment for seven counties is described. Fire statistics are compared with growth patterns...

Reducing fuels in the wildland urban interface: Community perceptions of agency fuels treatments

Treesearch

Eric Toman; Melanie Stidham; Bruce Shindler; Sarah McCaffrey

2011-01-01

Wildland fires and resulting effects have increased in recent years. Efforts are under way nationwide to proactively manage vegetative conditions to reduce the threat of wildland fires. Public support is critical to the successful implementation of fuels reduction programs, particularly at the wildland-urban interface. This study examines public acceptance of fuels...

Locating spatial variation in the association between wildland fire risk and social vulnerability across six southern states

Treesearch

Neelam Poudyal; Cassandra Johnson Gaither; Scott Goodrick; J.M. Bowker; Jianbang Gan

2012-01-01

Wildland fire in the South commands considerable attention, given the expanding wildland urban interface (WUI) across the region. Much of this growth is propelled by higher income retirees and others desiring natural amenity residential settings. However, population growth in the WUI increases the likelihood of wildfire fire ignition caused by people, as humans account...

Proceedings of the second conference on the human dimensions of wildland fire

Treesearch

Sarah M. McCaffrey; Cherie LeBlanc, eds. Fisher

2011-01-01

This proceedings contains articles, posters, and abstracts of presentations from the second Human Dimensions of Wildland Fire Conference held 27-29 April 2010 in San Antonio, Texas. The conference covered the social issues at the root of wildland fire management’s most serious challenges. Specific topics included: firefighter and public safety; social acceptance of...

The effect of wind on burning rate of wood cribs

Treesearch

Sara McAllister; Mark Finney

2016-01-01

Wood cribs are often used as ignition sources for room fire tests. A wood crib may also apply to studies of burning rate in wildland fires, because wildland fuel beds are porous and three dimensional. A unique aspect of wildland fires is the ubiquitous presence of wind. However, very little is known about what effect the increased ventilation has on the...

A model of gas mixing into single-entrance tree cavities during wildland fires

Treesearch

A.S. Bova; G. Bohrer; Matthew Dickinson

2011-01-01

The level of protection to fauna provided by tree cavities during wildland fires is not well understood. Here we present a model for estimating the transport of combustion gases into cylindrical, single-entrance cavities during exposures caused by different wildland fire scenarios. In these shelters, the entrance occurs near the top of the cavity. This empirical model...

Best practices for interacting with the public about wildland fire: Key findings from interviews

Treesearch

Daniel Berkman

2012-01-01

Interviews were conducted with public information and line officers about wildland fire communications with the public. The goal of these interviews was to determine the best practices and most useful content and format for an annotated bibliography about external wildland fire communications, i.e., does the current literature reviewed address the issues of greatest...

Using the Large Fire Simulator System to map wildland fire potential for the conterminous United States

Treesearch

LaWen Hollingsworth; James Menakis

2010-01-01

This project mapped wildland fire potential (WFP) for the conterminous United States by using the large fire simulation system developed for Fire Program Analysis (FPA) System. The large fire simulation system, referred to here as LFSim, consists of modules for weather generation, fire occurrence, fire suppression, and fire growth modeling. Weather was generated with...

Wildfire risk assessment in a typical Mediterranean wildland-urban interface of Greece.

PubMed

Mitsopoulos, Ioannis; Mallinis, Giorgos; Arianoutsou, Margarita

2015-04-01

The purpose of this study was to assess spatial wildfire risk in a typical Mediterranean wildland-urban interface (WUI) in Greece and the potential effect of three different burning condition scenarios on the following four major wildfire risk components: burn probability, conditional flame length, fire size, and source-sink ratio. We applied the Minimum Travel Time fire simulation algorithm using the FlamMap and ArcFuels tools to characterize the potential response of the wildfire risk to a range of different burning scenarios. We created site-specific fuel models of the study area by measuring the field fuel parameters in representative natural fuel complexes, and we determined the spatial extent of the different fuel types and residential structures in the study area using photointerpretation procedures of large scale natural color orthophotographs. The results included simulated spatially explicit fire risk components along with wildfire risk exposure analysis and the expected net value change. Statistical significance differences in simulation outputs between the scenarios were obtained using Tukey's significance test. The results of this study provide valuable information for decision support systems for short-term predictions of wildfire risk potential and inform wildland fire management of typical WUI areas in Greece.

Wildfire Risk Assessment in a Typical Mediterranean Wildland-Urban Interface of Greece

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mitsopoulos, Ioannis; Mallinis, Giorgos; Arianoutsou, Margarita

2015-04-01

The purpose of this study was to assess spatial wildfire risk in a typical Mediterranean wildland-urban interface (WUI) in Greece and the potential effect of three different burning condition scenarios on the following four major wildfire risk components: burn probability, conditional flame length, fire size, and source-sink ratio. We applied the Minimum Travel Time fire simulation algorithm using the FlamMap and ArcFuels tools to characterize the potential response of the wildfire risk to a range of different burning scenarios. We created site-specific fuel models of the study area by measuring the field fuel parameters in representative natural fuel complexes, and we determined the spatial extent of the different fuel types and residential structures in the study area using photointerpretation procedures of large scale natural color orthophotographs. The results included simulated spatially explicit fire risk components along with wildfire risk exposure analysis and the expected net value change. Statistical significance differences in simulation outputs between the scenarios were obtained using Tukey's significance test. The results of this study provide valuable information for decision support systems for short-term predictions of wildfire risk potential and inform wildland fire management of typical WUI areas in Greece.

Managing wildland fires: integrating weather models into fire projections

Treesearch

Anne M. Rosenthal; Francis Fujioka

2004-01-01

Flames from the Old Fire sweep through lands north of San Bernardino during late fall of 2003. Like many Southern California fires, the Old Fire consumed susceptible forests at the urban-wildland interface and spread to nearby city neighborhoods. By incorporating weather models into fire perimeter projections, scientist Francis Fujioka is improving fire modeling as a...

Ecological fire use for ecological fire management: Managing large wildfires by design

Treesearch

Timothy Ingalsbee

2015-01-01

Past fire exclusion policies and fire suppression actions have led to a historic "fire deficit" on public wildlands. These sociocultural actions have led to unprecedented environmental changes that have created conditions conducive to more frequent large-scale wildfires. Politicians, the newsmedia, and agency officials portray large wildland fires as...

A feasibility study: California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection utilization of infrared technologies for wildland fire suppression and management

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nichols, J. D.; Britten, R. A.; Parks, G. S.; Voss, J. M.

1990-01-01

NASA's JPL has completed a feasibility study using infrared technologies for wildland fire suppression and management. The study surveyed user needs, examined available technologies, matched the user needs with technologies, and defined an integrated infrared wildland fire mapping concept system configuration. System component trade-offs were presented for evaluation in the concept system configuration. The economic benefits of using infrared technologies in fire suppression and management were examined. Follow-on concept system configuration development and implementation were proposed.

Burn severity of areas reburned by wildfires in the Gila National Forest, New Mexico, USA

Treesearch

Zachary A. Holden; Penelope Morgan; Andrew T. Hudak

2010-01-01

We describe satellite-inferred burn severity patterns of areas that were burned and then reburned by wildland fire from 1984 to 2004 within the Gila Aldo Leopold Wilderness Complex, New Mexico, USA. Thirteen fires have burned 27 000 hectares across multiple vegetation types at intervals between fires ranging from 3 yr to 14 yr. Burn severity of reburned areas showed...

Fire science application and integration in support of decision making

Treesearch

Tom Zimmerman

2011-01-01

Wildland fire management in the United States has historically been a challenging and complex program governed by a multitude of factors including situational status, objectives, operational capability, science and technology, and changes and advances in all these factors. The improvement and advancement of risk-informed decision making has the potential to improve...

Uncertainty and risk in wildland fire management: A review

Treesearch

Matthew P. Thompson; Dave E. Calkin

2011-01-01

Wildland fire management is subject to manifold sources of uncertainty. Beyond the unpredictability of wildfire behavior, uncertainty stems from inaccurate/missing data, limited resource value measures to guide prioritization across fires and resources at risk, and an incomplete scientific understanding of ecological response to fire, of fire behavior response to...

The fire environment--innovations, management, and policy; conference proceedings

Treesearch

Bret W. Butler; Wayne Cook

2007-01-01

The International Association of Wildland Fire sponsored the second Fire Behavior and Fuels conference in Destin, Florida. The conference theme was "Fire Environment--Innovations, Management, and Policy." Over 450 attendees participated in presentations on the latest innovations in wildland fire management, examples of successful and maybe not so successful...

Stochastic representation of fire behavior in a wildland fire protection planning model for California.

Treesearch

J. Keith Gilless; Jeremy S. Fried

1998-01-01

A fire behavior module was developed for the California Fire Economics Simulator version 2 (CFES2), a stochastic simulation model of initial attack on wildland fire used by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Fire rate of spread (ROS) and fire dispatch level (FDL) for simulated fires "occurring" on the same day are determined by making...

77 FR 45650 - Interior Fire Program Assessment 2012

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2012-08-01

... DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Office of the Secretary Interior Fire Program Assessment 2012 AGENCY: Office of Wildland Fire, Interior. ACTION: Notice of Tribal consultations and informational meetings. SUMMARY: The Office of Wildland Fire is announcing tribal consultations to discuss the following topics...

Economics of wildland fire management

Treesearch

David Calkin; Krista Gebert

2009-01-01

Increased wildland fire activity and associated suppression costs over the last decade have significantly challenged federal agencies' ability to manage the nation's lands and meet public expectations. Three common factors have typically been identified to explain this increasing cost trend: 1) increased development within the wildland urban interface...

Review of the health effects of wildland fire smoke on wildland firefighters and the public

Treesearch

Olorunfemi Adetona; Timothy E. Reinhardt; Joe Domitrovich; George Broyles; Anna M. Adetona; Michael T. Kleinman; Roger D. Ottmar; Luke P. Naeher

2016-01-01

Each year, the general public and wildland firefighters in the US are exposed to smoke from wildland fires. As part of an effort to characterize health risks of breathing this smoke, a review of the literature was conducted using five major databases, including PubMed and MEDLINE Web of Knowledge, to identify smoke components that present the highest hazard potential,...

Wildfire, wildlands, and people: understanding and preparing for wildfire in the wildland-urban interface - a Forests on the Edge report

Treesearch

S. M. Stein; J. Menakis; M. A. Carr; S. J. Comas; S. I. Stewart; H. Cleveland; L. Bramwell; V. C. Radeloff

2013-01-01

Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America's wildland areas. However, the rising number of homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), associated impacts on lives and property from wildfire, and escalating costs of wildfire management have led to an urgent need for communities to become "fire-adapted." We present maps...

Scientific and social challenges for the management of fire-prone wildland-urban interfaces

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gill, A. Malcolm; Stephens, Scott L.

2009-09-01

At their worst, fires at the rural-urban or wildland-urban interface cause tragic loss of human lives and homes, but mitigating these fire effects through management elicits many social and scientific challenges. This paper addresses four interconnected management challenges posed by socially disastrous landscape fires. The issues concern various assets (particularly houses, human life and biodiversity), fuel treatments, and fire and human behaviours. The topics considered are: 'asset protection zones'; 'defensible space' and urban fire spread in relation to house ignition and loss; 'stay-or-go' policy and the prediction of time available for safe egress and the possible conflict between the creation of defensible space and wildland management objectives. The first scientific challenge is to model the effective width of an asset protection zone of an urban area. The second is to consider the effect of vegetation around a house, potentially defensible space, on fire arrival at the structure. The third scientific challenge is to present stakeholders with accurate information on rates of spread, and where the fire front is located, so as to allow them to plan safe egress or preparation time in their particular circumstances. The fourth scientific challenge is to be able to predict the effects of fires on wildland species composition. Associated with each scientific challenge is a social challenge: for the first two scientific challenges the social challenge is to co-ordinate fuel management within and between the urban and rural or wildland sides of the interface. For the third scientific challenge, the social challenge is to be aware of, and appropriately use, fire danger information so that the potential for safe egress from a home can be estimated most accurately. Finally, the fourth social challenge is to for local residents of wildland-urban interfaces with an interest in biodiversity conservation to understand the effects of fire regimes on biodiversity, thereby assisting hard-pressed wildland managers to make informed choices.

Management and climate contributions to satellite-derived active fire trends in the contiguous United States

PubMed Central

Lin, Hsiao-Wen; McCarty, Jessica L; Wang, Dongdong; Rogers, Brendan M; Morton, Douglas C; Collatz, G James; Jin, Yufang; Randerson, James T

2014-01-01

Fires in croplands, plantations, and rangelands contribute significantly to fire emissions in the United States, yet are often overshadowed by wildland fires in efforts to develop inventories or estimate responses to climate change. Here we quantified decadal trends, interannual variability, and seasonality of Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations of active fires (thermal anomalies) as a function of management type in the contiguous U.S. during 2001–2010. We used the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity database to identify active fires within the perimeter of large wildland fires and land cover maps to identify active fires in croplands. A third class of fires defined as prescribed/other included all residual satellite active fire detections. Large wildland fires were the most variable of all three fire types and had no significant annual trend in the contiguous U.S. during 2001–2010. Active fires in croplands, in contrast, increased at a rate of 3.4% per year. Cropland and prescribed/other fire types combined were responsible for 77% of the total active fire detections within the U.S and were most abundant in the south and southeast. In the west, cropland active fires decreased at a rate of 5.9% per year, likely in response to intensive air quality policies. Potential evaporation was a dominant regulator of the interannual variability of large wildland fires, but had a weaker influence on the other two fire types. Our analysis suggests it may be possible to modify landscape fire emissions within the U.S. by influencing the way fires are used in managed ecosystems. Key Points Wildland, cropland, and prescribed fires had different trends and patterns Sensitivity to climate varied with fire type Intensity of air quality regulation influenced cropland burning trends PMID:26213662

Management and climate contributions to satellite-derived active fire trends in the contiguous United States.

PubMed

Lin, Hsiao-Wen; McCarty, Jessica L; Wang, Dongdong; Rogers, Brendan M; Morton, Douglas C; Collatz, G James; Jin, Yufang; Randerson, James T

2014-04-01

Fires in croplands, plantations, and rangelands contribute significantly to fire emissions in the United States, yet are often overshadowed by wildland fires in efforts to develop inventories or estimate responses to climate change. Here we quantified decadal trends, interannual variability, and seasonality of Terra Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) observations of active fires (thermal anomalies) as a function of management type in the contiguous U.S. during 2001-2010. We used the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity database to identify active fires within the perimeter of large wildland fires and land cover maps to identify active fires in croplands. A third class of fires defined as prescribed/other included all residual satellite active fire detections. Large wildland fires were the most variable of all three fire types and had no significant annual trend in the contiguous U.S. during 2001-2010. Active fires in croplands, in contrast, increased at a rate of 3.4% per year. Cropland and prescribed/other fire types combined were responsible for 77% of the total active fire detections within the U.S and were most abundant in the south and southeast. In the west, cropland active fires decreased at a rate of 5.9% per year, likely in response to intensive air quality policies. Potential evaporation was a dominant regulator of the interannual variability of large wildland fires, but had a weaker influence on the other two fire types. Our analysis suggests it may be possible to modify landscape fire emissions within the U.S. by influencing the way fires are used in managed ecosystems. Wildland, cropland, and prescribed fires had different trends and patternsSensitivity to climate varied with fire typeIntensity of air quality regulation influenced cropland burning trends.

Mapping the Distribution of Wildfire Fuels Using AVIRIS in the Santa Monica Mountains

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Roberts, Dar; Gardner, M.; Regelbrugge, J.; Pedreros, D.; Ustin, S.

1998-01-01

Catastrophic wildfires, such as the 1990 Painted Cave Fire in Santa Barbara or Oakland fire of 1991, attest to the destructive potential of fire in the wildland/urban interface. For example, during the Painted Cave Fire, 673 structures were consumed over a period of only six hours at an estimated cost of 250 million dollars (Gomes et al., 1993). One of the primary sources of fuels is chaparral, which consists of plant species that are adapted to frequent fires and may actually promote its ignition and spread of through volatile organic compounds in foliage. As one of the most widely distributed plant communities in Southern California, and one of the most common vegetation types along the wildland urban interface, chaparral represents one of the greatest sources of wildfire hazard in the region. An ongoing NASA funded research project was initiated in 1994 to study the potential of AVIRIS for mapping wildfire fuel properties in Southern California chaparral. The project was initiated in the Santa Monica Mountains, an east-west trending range in western Los Angeles County that has experienced extremely high fire frequencies over the past 70 years. The Santa Monica Mountains were selected because they exemplify many of the problems facing the southwest, forming a complex mosaic of land ownership intermixed with a diversity of chaparral age classes and fuel loads. Furthermore, the area has a wide diversity of chaparral community types and a rich background in supporting geographic information including fire history, soils and topography. Recent fires in the Santa Monica Mountains, including several in 1993 and the Calabasas fire of 1996 attest to the active fire regime present in the area. The long term objectives of this project are to improve existing maps of wildland fuel properties in the area, link AVIRIS derived products to fuel models under development for the region, then predict fire hazard through models that simulate fire spread. In this paper, we describe the AVIRIS derived products we are developing to map wildland fuels.

Atmospheric turbulence observations in the vicinity of surface fires in forested environments

Treesearch

Warren E. Heilman; Xindi Bian; Kenneth L. Clark; Nicholas S. Skowronski; John L. Hom; Michael R. Gallagher

2017-01-01

Ambient and fire-induced atmospheric turbulence in the vicinity of wildland fires can affect the behavior of those fires and the dispersion of smoke. The presence of forest overstory vegetation can further complicate the evolution of local turbulence regimes and their interaction with spreading fires and smoke plumes. Previous observational studies of wildland fire...

Estimates of wildland fire emissions

Treesearch

Yongqiang Liu; John J. Qu; Wanting Wang; Xianjun Hao

2013-01-01

Wildland fire missions can significantly affect regional and global air quality, radiation, climate, and the carbon cycle. A fundamental and yet challenging prerequisite to understanding the environmental effects is to accurately estimate fire emissions. This chapter describes and analyzes fire emission calculations. Various techniques (field measurements, empirical...

Wildland arson management

Treesearch

Jeffrey P. Prestemon; David T. Butry

2008-01-01

Wildland arson has received scant attention in the resource economics literature, yet is the cause of many large and damaging wildland fires. Research into wildfire management and policy in the United States has been principally concerned with wildfire suppression, fuels treatments, fire science (behavior), and economic efficiency questions. This is unfortunate,...

The Biswell symposium: fire issues and solutions in urban interface and wildland ecosystems; February 15-17, 1994; Walnut Creek, California

Treesearch

David R. Weise; Robert E. Martin

1995-01-01

These proceedings summarize the results of a symposium designed to address current issues about wildfire and prescribed fire in both the wildland-urban interface and in wildlands. Thirty-eight invited oral papers and 23 poster papers describing the issues and state-of-the-art solutions to technical, biological, and social challenges currently facing land and fire...

Fuel treatment prescriptions alter spatial patterns of fire severity around the wildland-urban interface during the Wallow Fire, Arizona, USA

Treesearch

Maureen C. Kennedy; Morris C. Johnson

2014-01-01

Fuel reduction treatments are implemented in the forest surrounding the wildland–urban interface (WUI) to provide defensible space and safe opportunity for the protection of homes during a wildfire. The 2011 Wallow Fire in Arizona USA burned through recently implemented fuel treatments in the wildland surrounding residential communities in the WUI, and those fuel...

Social science to improve fuels management: a synthesis of research on the impacts of wildland fires on communities

Treesearch

Stephen F. McCool; James Burchfield; Daniel R. Williams; Matt Carroll; Patricia Cohn; Yoshitaka Kumagai; Tam Ubben

2007-01-01

A series of syntheses were commissioned by the U.S. Forest Service to aid in fuels mitigation project planning. Focusing on research on the social impacts of wildland fire, this synthesis explores decisions and actions taken by communities before, during, and after a wildland fire to minimize its impacts. It then synthesizes the research studying (1) the consequences...

Variability of wildland fire emissions across the contiguous United States

Treesearch

YongQiang Liu

2004-01-01

This study analyzes spatial and temporal variability of emissions from wildland fires across the contiguous US. The emissions are estimates based on a recently constructed dataset of historical fire records collected by multiple US governlnental agencies. Both wildfire and prescribed fires have the highest emissions over the Pacific coastal states. Prescribed fire...

76 FR 70408 - Information Collection; Understanding Value Trade-Offs Regarding Fire Hazard Reduction Programs...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-11-14

... Regarding Fire Hazard Reduction Programs in the Wildland-Urban Interface AGENCY: Forest Service, USDA... Regarding Fire Hazard Reduction Programs in the Wildland-Urban Interface. DATES: Comments must be received... holidays. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Title: Understanding Value Trade-offs Regarding Fire Hazard Reduction...

The costs of climate change: ecosystem services and wildland fires

EPA Science Inventory

In this paper we use Habitat Equivalency Analysis (HEA) to monetize the avoided ecosystem services losses due to climate change-induced wildland fires in the U.S. Specifically, we use the U.S. Forest Service’s MC1 dynamic global vegetation model to forecast changes in wildland fi...

Measuring wildland fire fighter performance with wearable technology.

PubMed

Parker, Richard; Vitalis, Antonios; Walker, Robyn; Riley, David; Pearce, H Grant

2017-03-01

Wildland (rural) fire fighting is a physically demanding and hazardous occupation. An observational study was conducted to explore the use of new technologies for the field study of fire fighters at wildfires and to understand the work pressures of wildland fire fighting. The research was carried out with two fire fighters at real fires wearing microphones, miniature video cameras, heart rate monitors and GPS units to record their actions and location at wildfire events. The fire fighters were exposed to high physiological workloads (heart rates of up to 180 beats per minute) and walked considerable distances at the fires. Results from this study have been used in presentations to fire fighters and non-operational fire personnel to understand the pressures fire fighters are under and how others complete the fire fighting tasks. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Complex Network Theory Approach for the Spatial Distribution of Fire Breaks in Heterogeneous Forest Landscapes for the Control of Wildland Fires

PubMed Central

Russo, Lucia; Russo, Paola; Siettos, Constantinos I.

2016-01-01

Based on complex network theory, we propose a computational methodology which addresses the spatial distribution of fuel breaks for the inhibition of the spread of wildland fires on heterogeneous landscapes. This is a two-level approach where the dynamics of fire spread are modeled as a random Markov field process on a directed network whose edge weights are determined by a Cellular Automata model that integrates detailed GIS, landscape and meteorological data. Within this framework, the spatial distribution of fuel breaks is reduced to the problem of finding network nodes (small land patches) which favour fire propagation. Here, this is accomplished by exploiting network centrality statistics. We illustrate the proposed approach through (a) an artificial forest of randomly distributed density of vegetation, and (b) a real-world case concerning the island of Rhodes in Greece whose major part of its forest was burned in 2008. Simulation results show that the proposed methodology outperforms the benchmark/conventional policy of fuel reduction as this can be realized by selective harvesting and/or prescribed burning based on the density and flammability of vegetation. Interestingly, our approach reveals that patches with sparse density of vegetation may act as hubs for the spread of the fire. PMID:27780249

A Complex Network Theory Approach for the Spatial Distribution of Fire Breaks in Heterogeneous Forest Landscapes for the Control of Wildland Fires.

PubMed

Russo, Lucia; Russo, Paola; Siettos, Constantinos I

2016-01-01

Based on complex network theory, we propose a computational methodology which addresses the spatial distribution of fuel breaks for the inhibition of the spread of wildland fires on heterogeneous landscapes. This is a two-level approach where the dynamics of fire spread are modeled as a random Markov field process on a directed network whose edge weights are determined by a Cellular Automata model that integrates detailed GIS, landscape and meteorological data. Within this framework, the spatial distribution of fuel breaks is reduced to the problem of finding network nodes (small land patches) which favour fire propagation. Here, this is accomplished by exploiting network centrality statistics. We illustrate the proposed approach through (a) an artificial forest of randomly distributed density of vegetation, and (b) a real-world case concerning the island of Rhodes in Greece whose major part of its forest was burned in 2008. Simulation results show that the proposed methodology outperforms the benchmark/conventional policy of fuel reduction as this can be realized by selective harvesting and/or prescribed burning based on the density and flammability of vegetation. Interestingly, our approach reveals that patches with sparse density of vegetation may act as hubs for the spread of the fire.

WRF-Fire: coupled weather-wildland fire modeling with the weather research and forecasting model

Treesearch

Janice L. Coen; Marques Cameron; John Michalakes; Edward G. Patton; Philip J. Riggan; Kara M. Yedinak

2012-01-01

A wildland fire behavior module (WRF-Fire) was integrated into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) public domain numerical weather prediction model. The fire module is a surface fire behavior model that is two-way coupled with the atmospheric model. Near-surface winds from the atmospheric model are interpolated to a finer fire grid and used, with fuel properties...

Controls on carbon consumption during Alaskan wildland fires

Treesearch

Eric S. Kasischke; Elizabeth E. Hoy

2012-01-01

A method was developed to estimate carbon consumed during wildland fires in interior Alaska based on medium-spatial scale data (60 m cell size) generated on a daily basis. Carbon consumption estimates were developed for 41 fire events in the large fire year of 2004 and 34 fire events from the small fire years of 2006-2008. Total carbon consumed during the large fire...

Wildland fire in ecosystems: effects of fire on soils and water

Treesearch

Daniel G. Neary; Kevin C. Ryan; Leonard F. DeBano

2005-01-01

This state-of-knowledge review about the effects of fire on soils and water can assist land and fire managers with information on the physical, chemical, and biological effects of fire needed to successfully conduct ecosystem management, and effectively inform others about the role and impacts of wildland fire. Chapter topics include the soil resource, soil physical...

Value and challenges of conducting rapid response research on wildland fires

Treesearch

L. Lentile; P. Morgan; C. Hardy; A. Hudak; R. Means; R. Ottmar; P. Robichaud; E. Kennedy Sutherland; J. Szymoniak; F. Way; J. Fites-Kaufman; S. Lewis; E. Mathews; H. Shovik; K. Ryan

2007-01-01

Rapid Response Research is conducted during and immediately after wildland fires, in coordination with fire management teams, in order to collect information that can best be garnered in situ and in real-time. This information often includes fire behavior and fire effects data, which can be used to generate practical tools such as predictive fire models for managers....

Assessing the accuracy of wildland fire situation analysis (WFSA) fire size and suppression cost estimates.

Treesearch

Geoffrey H. Donovan; Peter. Noordijk

2005-01-01

To determine the optimal suppression strategy for escaped wildfires, federal land managers are requiredto conduct a wildland fire situation analysis (WFSA). As part of the WFSA process, fire managers estimate final fire size and suppression costs. Estimates from 58 WFSAs conducted during the 2002 fire season are compared to actual outcomes. Results indicate that...

Wildland fire deficit and surplus in the western United States, 1984-2012

Treesearch

Sean A. Parks; Carol Miller; Marc-Andre Parisien; Lisa M. Holsinger; Solomon Z. Dobrowski; John Abatzoglou

2015-01-01

Wildland fire is an important disturbance agent in the western US and globally. However, the natural role of fire has been disrupted in many regions due to the influence of human activities, which have the potential to either exclude or promote fire, resulting in a "fire deficit" or "fire surplus", respectively. In this study, we developed...

Uncertainties of wild-land fires emission in AQMEII phase 2 case study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soares, J.; Sofiev, M.; Hakkarainen, J.

2015-08-01

The paper discusses the main uncertainties of wild-land fire emission estimates used in the AQMEII-II case study. The wild-land fire emission of particulate matter for the summer fire season of 2010 in Eurasia was generated by the Integrated System for wild-land Fires (IS4FIRES). The emission calculation procedure included two steps: bottom-up emission compilation from radiative energy of individual fires observed by MODIS instrument on-board of Terra and Aqua satellites; and top-down calibration of emission factors based on the comparison between observations and modelled results. The approach inherits various uncertainties originating from imperfect information on fires, inaccuracies of the inverse problem solution, and simplifications in the fire description. These are analysed in regard to the Eurasian fires in 2010. It is concluded that the total emission is likely to be over-estimated by up to 50% with individual-fire emission accuracy likely to vary in a wide range. The first results of the new IS4FIRESv2 products and fire-resolving modelling are discussed in application to the 2010 events. It is shown that the new emission estimates have similar patterns but are lower than the IS4FIRESv1 values.

Federal fire managers' perceptions of the importance, scarcity and substitutability of suppression resources

Treesearch

Crystal S. Stonesifer; David E. Calkin; Michael S. Hand

2017-01-01

Wildland firefighting in the United States is a complex and costly enterprise. While there are strong seasonal signatures for fire occurrence in specific regions of the United States, spatiotemporal occurrence of wildfire activity can have high inter-annual variability. Suppression resources come from a variety of jurisdictions and provide a wide range of skills,...

Integrating research on wildland fires and air quality: needs and recommendations

Treesearch

Andrzej Bytnerowicz; Michael J. Arbaugh; Christian Andersen; Allen R. Riebau

2009-01-01

A summary is presented that integrates general information on the causes and effects of wildland fires and emissions with various ecological impacts of forest fires and air pollution in forests and other ecosystems. We also...

The Wildland/Urban Interface in 2025

Treesearch

Gary O. Tokle

1987-01-01

In the year 2025, wildland fire fighting practices have improved significantly over the method employed during the late1900's. Improved methods for predicting severe fire weather conditions, the establishment of the North American Fire Coordination Center, and the utilization of foam products for both wildfire and structural fire control have significantly changed...

Wildland fire in ecosystems: fire and nonnative invasive plants

Treesearch

Kristin Zouhar; Jane Kapler Smith; Steve Sutherland; Matthew L. Brooks

2008-01-01

This state-of-knowledge review of information on relationships between wildland fire and nonnative invasive plants can assist fire managers and other land managers concerned with prevention, detection, and eradication or control of nonnative invasive plants. The 16 chapters in this volume synthesize ecological and botanical principles regarding relationships between...

Systems thinking and wildland fire management

Treesearch

Matthew P. Thompson; Christopher J. Dunn; David E. Calkin

2017-01-01

A changing climate, changing development and land use patterns, and increasing pressures on ecosystem services raise global concerns over growing losses associated with wildland fires. New management paradigms acknowledge that fire is inevitable and often uncontrollable, and focus on living with fire rather than attempting to eliminate it from the landscape. A notable...

Introduction [Chapter 1

Treesearch

Sharon M. Hood; Donald Long; Melanie Miller; Kevin C. Ryan

2007-01-01

Many areas throughout the United States are facing the triple threat of increasing fire severity, residential growth in areas prone to wildland fire, and suppression costs and losses. In addition, substantial changes are occurring in the way we plan and implement management on federal lands relative to use of wildland fire, prescribed fire, and mechanical fuel...

Bridging the divide between fire safety research and fighting fire safely: How do we convey research innovation to contribute more effectively to wildland firefighter safety?

Treesearch

Theodore Ted Adams; Bret W. Butler; Sara Brown; Vita Wright; Anne Black

2017-01-01

Creating a safe workplace for wildland firefighters has long been at the centre of discussion for researchers and practitioners. The goal of wildland fire safety research has been to protect operational firefighters, yet its contributions often fall short of potential because much is getting lost in the translation of peer-reviewed results to potential and intended...

Econometric analysis of fire suppression production functions for large wildland fires

Treesearch

Thomas P. Holmes; David E. Calkin

2013-01-01

In this paper, we use operational data collected for large wildland fires to estimate the parameters of economic production functions that relate the rate of fireline construction with the level of fire suppression inputs (handcrews, dozers, engines and helicopters). These parameter estimates are then used to evaluate whether the productivity of fire suppression inputs...

Home destruction within the Hayman Fire perimeter

Treesearch

Jack Cohen; Rick Stratton

2003-01-01

The Hayman Fire report on home destruction examines the following four questions: 1. How many homes were destroyed out of the total number of homes within the Hayman Fire perimeter? 2. What was the relative wildland fire intensity associated with the destroyed homes? 3. What was the categorical cause of home ignition suggested by the associated wildland fire intensity...

Observations of fire-induced turbulence regimes during low-intensity wildland fires in forested environments: implications for smoke dispersion

Treesearch

Warren E. Heilman; Craig B. Clements; Daisuke Seto; Xindi Bian; Kenneth L. Clark; Nicholas S. Skowronski; John L. Hom

2015-01-01

Low-intensity wildland fires occurring beneath forest canopies can result in particularly adverse local air-quality conditions. Ambient and fire-induced turbulent circulations play a substantial role in the transport and dispersion of smoke during these fire events. Recent in situ measurements of fire–atmosphere interactions during low-...

Deploying wildland fire suppression resources with a scenario-based standard response model.

Treesearch

Robert G. Haight; Jeremy S. Fried

2007-01-01

Wildland fire managers deploy suppression resources to bases and dispatch them to fires to maximize the percentage of fires that are successfully contained before unacceptable costs and losses occur. Deployment is made with budget constraints and uncertainty about the daily number, location, and intensity of fires, all of which affect initial-attack success. To address...

Deploying wildland fire suppression resources with a scenario-based standard response model

Treesearch

Robert G. Haight; Jeremy S. Fried

2007-01-01

Wildland fire managers deploy suppression resources to bases and dispatch them to fires to maximize the percentage of fires that are successfully contained before unacceptable costs and losses occur. Deployment is made with budget constraints and uncertainty about the daily number, location, and intensity of fires, all of which affect initial-attack success. To address...

Wildland fire in ecosystems: effects of fire on cultural resources and archaeology

Treesearch

Kevin C. Ryan; Ann Trinkle Jones; Cassandra L. Koerner; Kristine M. Lee

2012-01-01

This state-of-knowledge review provides a synthesis of the effects of fire on cultural resources, which can be used by fire managers, cultural resource (CR) specialists, and archaeologists to more effectively manage wildland vegetation, fuels, and fire. The goal of the volume is twofold: (1) to provide cultural resource/archaeological professionals and policy makers...

Studying interregional wildland fire engine assignments for large fire suppression

Treesearch

Erin J. Belval; Yu Wei; David E. Calkin; Crystal S. Stonesifer; Matthew P. Thompson; John R. Tipton

2017-01-01

One crucial component of large fire response in the United States (US) is the sharing of wildland firefighting resources between regions: resources from regions experiencing low fire activity supplement resources in regions experiencing high fire activity. An important step towards improving the efficiency of resource sharing and related policies is to develop a better...

Smoke management guide for prescribed and wildland fire: 2001 edition.

Treesearch

Colin C. Hardy; Roger D. Ottmar; Janice L Peterson; John E. Core; Paula Seamon

2001-01-01

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group's (NWCG) Fire Use Working Team has assumed overall responsibility for sponsoring the development and production of this revised Smoke Management Guide for Prescribed and Wildland Fire (the "Guide"). The Mission Statement for the Fire Use Working Team includes the need to coordinate and advocate the use of fire to...

The bay area wildfire forum

Treesearch

Todd E. Bruce

1995-01-01

Fire agencies throughout the San Francisco Bay Area formed a grassroots organization to influence a firesafe environment. The Bay Area Wildfire Forum (BAWF) was organized in 1992 to coordinate wildland fire training while promoting and encouraging further activities regarding wildland firefighting and fire prevention.

Policy change and governance at the wildland-urban interface: the case of post-wildfire impacts in Boise, Idaho

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lindquist, Eric

2013-04-01

In the summer of 2012 over 1.7 million acres (approximately 6900 sq kilometers) were burned from wildfires in the state of Idaho in the Western United States. While most of the these fires were in rural and wilderness areas, several significant fires occurred at the wildland-urban interface (WUI), threatening houses, communities and the built environment as never before. As the population of the Mountain West in the United States grows, the WUI (the area where homes are being built adjacent to traditionally wild or rural areas and the built environment encroaches on wildlands) is rapidly becoming an at risk area for human habitation. Efforts to make these areas more resilient and sustainable in the face of increasing fire risk, due to increasing drought and climate change, are resulting in efforts to change or adapt disaster response and planning policy. An increase in stakeholders, however, with diverse objectives and resources presents an opportunity to assess the current governance situation for policy change in response to wildland fires in the dynamic and complex context of the WUI. The research presented here will focus on the case of Treasure Valley region of southwest Idaho and Boise, the capitol city of Idaho. This region is illustrative of the growing urban western United States and the pressures from a growing population pushing into the WUI. This research frames fire policy and decision making at the wildland-urban interface within public policy process theory using the example of the summer of 2012 forest fires in Idaho (USA) and focuses on subsequents impact these fires are having on fire planning and policy in the Boise metropolitan region. The focus is on the diverse stakeholders (federal, state and regional agencies, tourism, agriculture and private sector interests, homeowner organizations, and fire response and recovery agencies) and their roles and responsibilities, their interactions, decision and policy processes, the use of science in decision making, post and pre disaster assessments, and subsequent policy changes. The conclusions will reflect on the outlook for the future of the WUI in regard to wildfire risk and response and on the contribution of policy process theory to this policy domain. This paper/poster addresses significant theoretical and empirical issues raised in the Call for Papers for NH7.1 "Spatial and temporal patterns of wildfires: models, theory and reality," including: pre-fire planning and risk management; post-fire evaluation; relation between wildfires and social changes; and the influence of weather and climate change on wildfire activity.

Quantifying physical characteristics of wildland fuels using the fuel characteristic classification system.

Treesearch

Cynthia L. Riccardi; Susan J. Prichard; David V. Sandberg; Roger D. Ottmar

2007-01-01

Wildland fuel characteristics are used in many applications of operational fire predictions and to understand fire effects and behaviour. Even so, there is a shortage of information on basic fuel properties and the physical characteristics of wildland fuels. The Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) builds and catalogues fuelbed descriptions based on...

Examining the sources of public support for wildland fire policies

Treesearch

J.D. Absher; J.J. Vaske

2007-01-01

Recent severe wildfires have reinforced the need for successful mitigation strategies to be coordinated across all levels of government that address the needs and concerns of homeowners who live in the wildland/urban interface (WUI). Despite the growing body of social science literature on agency-initiated wildland fire policies and homeowner mitigation strategies,...

Structure ignition assessment model (SIAM)\\t

Treesearch

Jack D. Cohen

1995-01-01

Major wildland/urban interface fire losses, principally residences, continue to occur. Although the problem is not new, the specific mechanisms are not well known on how structures ignite in association with wildland fires. In response to the need for a better understanding of wildland/urban interface ignition mechanisms and a method of assessing the ignition risk,...

Previous fires moderate burn severity of subsequent wildland fires in two large western US wilderness areas

Treesearch

Sean A. Parks; Carol Miller; Cara R. Nelson; Zachary A. Holden

2014-01-01

Wildland fire is an important natural process in many ecosystems. However, fire exclusion has reduced frequency of fire and area burned in many dry forest types, which may affect vegetation structure and composition, and potential fire behavior. In forests of the western U.S., these effects pose a challenge for fire and land managers who seek to restore the ecological...

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Schwager, K.; Green, T. M.

The DOE policy for managing wildland fires requires that all areas managed by DOE and/or Its various contractors which can sustain fire must have a FMP that details fire management guidelines for operational procedures associated with wildland fire, operational, and prescribed fires. FMPs provide guidance on fire preparedness, fire prevention, wildfire suppression, and the use of controlled ''prescribed'' fires and mechanical means to control the amount of available combustible material. Values reflected in the BNL Wildland FMP include protecting life and public safety; Lab properties, structures and improvements; cultural and historical sites; neighboring private and public properties; and endangered, threatened,more » and species of concern. Other values supported by the plan include the enhancement of fire-dependent ecosystems at BNL. The plan will be reviewed periodically to ensure fire program advances and will evolve with the missions of DOE and BNL.« less

Wildland fire as a self-regulating mechanism: the role of previous burns and weather in limiting fire progression.

PubMed

Parks, Sean A; Holsinger, Lisa M; Miller, Carol; Nelson, Cara R

2015-09-01

Theory suggests that natural fire regimes can result in landscapes that are both self-regulating and resilient to fire. For example, because fires consume fuel, they may create barriers to the spread of future fires, thereby regulating fire size. Top-down controls such as weather, however, can weaken this effect. While empirical examples demonstrating this pattern-process feedback between vegetation and fire exist, they have been geographically limited or did not consider the influence of time between fires and weather. The availability of remotely sensed data identifying fire activity over the last four decades provides an opportunity to explicitly quantify-the ability of wildland fire to limit the progression of subsequent fire. Furthermore, advances in fire progression mapping now allow an evaluation of how daily weather as a top-down control modifies this effect. In this study, we evaluated the ability of wildland fire to create barriers that limit the spread of subsequent fire along a gradient representing time between fires in four large study areas in the western United States. Using fire progression maps in conjunction with weather station data, we also evaluated the influence of daily weather. Results indicate that wildland fire does limit subsequent fire spread in all four study areas, but this effect decays over time; wildland fire no longer limits subsequent fire spread 6-18 years after fire, depending on the study area. We also found that the ability of fire to regulate, subsequent fire progression was substantially reduced under extreme conditions compared to moderate weather conditions in all four study areas. This study increases understanding of the spatial feedbacks that can lead to self-regulating landscapes as well as the effects of top-down controls, such as weather, on these feedbacks. Our results will be useful to managers who seek to restore natural fire regimes or to exploit recent burns when managing fire.

Sustainability and the origins of wildland fire research

Treesearch

Diane M. Smith

2015-01-01

When looking for the origins of wildland fire research in the Forest Service, forester C. E. (Mike) Hardy makes the case for 1922, when Harry Gisborne became the agency’s first full-time fire researcher. Leading fire historian Stephen Pyne argues that fire research originated under the leadership of Coert DuBois, who oversaw the first fire case study in 1911, the first...

Simulation and thermal imaging of the 2006 Esperanza Wildfire in southern California: application of a coupled weather-wildland fire model

Treesearch

Janice L. Coen; Philip J Riggan

2014-01-01

The 2006 Esperanza Fire in Riverside County, California, was simulated with the Coupled Atmosphere-Wildland Fire Environment (CAWFE) model to examine how dynamic interactions of the atmosphere with large-scale fire spread and energy release may affect observed patterns of fire behavior as mapped using the FireMapper thermal imaging radiometer. CAWFE simulated the...

The smoke-fireplume model : tool for eventual application to prescribed burns and wildland fires.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Brown, D. F.; Dunn, W. E.; Lazaro, M. A.

Land managers are increasingly implementing strategies that employ the use of fire in prescribed burns to sustain ecosystems and plan to sustain the rate of increase in its use over the next five years. In planning and executing expanded use of fire in wildland treatment it is important to estimate the human health and safety consequences, property damage, and the extent of visibility degradation from the resulting conflagration-pyrolysis gases, soot and smoke generated during flaming, smoldering and/or glowing fires. Traditional approaches have often employed the analysis of weather observations and forecasts to determine whether a prescribed burn will affect populations,more » property, or protected Class I areas. However, the complexity of the problem lends itself to advanced PC-based models that are simple to use for both calculating the emissions from the burning of wildland fuels and the downwind dispersion of smoke and other products of pyrolysis, distillation, and/or fuels combustion. These models will need to address the effects of residual smoldering combustion, including plume dynamics and optical effects. In this paper, we discuss a suite of tools that can be applied for analyzing dispersion. These tools include the dispersion models FIREPLUME and SMOKE, together with the meteorological preprocessor SEBMET.« less

The health impacts and economic value of wildland fire ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Introduction: Wildland fires degrade regional air quality and adversely affect human health. A growing body of epidemiology literature report increased rates of emergency department, hospital admission and premature deaths from wildfire smoke exposure. Objective: Our research aimed to characterized excess mortality and morbidity events, and the economic value of these impacts, from wildland fire smoke exposure in the U.S over a multi-year period; to date no other burden assessment has done this. Methods: We first completed a systematic review of the epidemiologic literature and then performed photochemical air quality modeling for the years 2008 to 2012 in the Continental U.S. Finally, we estimated the morbidity, mortality, and economic burden of wildland fires. Results: Our models suggest that areas including northern California, Oregon and Idaho in the West, and Florida, Louisiana and Georgia in the East were most affected by wildland fire events in the form of additional premature deaths and respiratory hospital admissions. We estimated the economic value of these cases due to short term exposures as being between $11 and $20B (2010$) per year, with a net present value of $63B (95% confidence intervals $6-$170); we estimate the value of long- term exposures as being between $76 and $130B (2010$) per year, with a net present value of $450B (95% confidence intervals $42-$1,200). Conclusion: The public health burden of wildland fires-in terms of the number and

Climate change and wildland firefighter health and safety.

PubMed

Withen, Patrick

2015-02-01

The author examines how climate change is impacting wildland firefighters. Climate change has made wildland fires more frequent and more intense. The increase in frequency and intensity of fires has pushed the number of fatalities and injuries higher in recent decades. The most common hazards on fires follow the trend of fire in general in that these hazards become more frequent and intense. Burnovers, heat exhaustion, tree hazards, and many other common fire hazards are more likely. The fire suppression agencies are making every effort to improve health and safety on fires by improving communication, weather forecasting, mapping, fire shelters, decision making and more. Despite these efforts, wildfires are becoming ever more hazardous because of climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires. © 2015 SAGE Publications.

On the need for a theory of wildland fire spread

Treesearch

Mark A. Finney; Jack D. Cohen; Sara S. McAllister; W. Matt Jolly

2012-01-01

We explore the basis of understanding wildland fire behaviour with the intention of stimulating curiosity and promoting fundamental investigations of fire spread problems that persist even in the presence of tremendous modelling advances. Internationally, many fire models have been developed based on a variety of assumptions and expressions for the fundamental heat...

Spatiotemporal variability of wildland fuels in US Northern Rocky Mountain forests

Treesearch

Robert E. Keane

2016-01-01

Fire regimes are ultimately controlled by wildland fuel dynamics over space and time; spatial distributions of fuel influence the size, spread, and intensity of individual fires, while the temporal distribution of fuel deposition influences fire's frequency and controls fire size. These "shifting fuel mosaics" are both a cause and a consequence...

Factors influencing large wildland fire suppression expenditures

Treesearch

Jingjing Liang; Dave E. Calkin; Krista M. Gebert; Tyron J. Venn; Robin P. Silverstein

2008-01-01

There is an urgent and immediate need to address the excessive cost of large fires. Here, we studied large wildland fire suppression expenditures by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Among 16 potential nonmanagerial factors, which represented fire size and shape, private properties, public land attributes, forest and fuel conditions, and geographic...

Developing the U.S. Wildland Fire Decision Support System

Treesearch

Erin Noonan-Wright; Tonja S. Opperman; Mark A. Finney; Tom Zimmerman; Robert C. Seli; Lisa M. Elenz; David E. Calkin; John R. Fiedler

2011-01-01

A new decision support tool, the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) has been developed to support risk-informed decision-making for individual fires in the United States. WFDSS accesses national weather data and forecasts, fire behavior prediction, economic assessment, smoke management assessment, and landscape databases to efficiently formulate and apply...

International Issues: Report of Futuring Group 9

Treesearch

1987-01-01

The wildland fire scenario outside North American is characterized by increasing amount and severity of wildfires worldwide. In Europe, most of the Mediterranean countries suffer devastating forest fires, despite fire management efforts. Examples of the wildland fire theater within the developing countries and the tropical world have been given at this Symposium on...

Reformulation of Rothermel's wildland fire behaviour model for heterogeneous fuelbeds.

Treesearch

David V. Sandberg; Cynthia L. Riccardi; Mark D. Schaaf

2007-01-01

Abstract: The Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) includes equations that calculate energy release and one-dimensional spread rate in quasi-steady-state fires in heterogeneous but spatially uniform wildland fuelbeds, using a reformulation of the widely used Rothermel fire spread model. This reformulation provides an automated means to predict fire behavior...

A method for ensemble wildland fire simulation

Treesearch

Mark A. Finney; Isaac C. Grenfell; Charles W. McHugh; Robert C. Seli; Diane Trethewey; Richard D. Stratton; Stuart Brittain

2011-01-01

An ensemble simulation system that accounts for uncertainty in long-range weather conditions and two-dimensional wildland fire spread is described. Fuel moisture is expressed based on the energy release component, a US fire danger rating index, and its variation throughout the fire season is modeled using time series analysis of historical weather data. This analysis...

Assessing wildland fire risk transmission to communities in northern Spain

Treesearch

Fermín J. Alcasena; Michele Salis; Alan A. Ager; Rafael Castell; Cristina Vega-García

2017-01-01

We assessed potential economic losses and transmission to residential houses from wildland fires in a rural area of central Navarra (Spain). Expected losses were quantified at the individual structure level (n = 306) in 14 rural communities by combining fire model predictions of burn probability and fire intensity with susceptibility functions derived from expert...

Towards improving wildland firefighter situational awareness through daily fire behaviour risk assessments in the US Northern Rockies and Northern Great Basin

Treesearch

W. Matt Jolly; Patrick H. Freeborn

2017-01-01

Wildland firefighters must assess potential fire behaviour in order to develop appropriate strategies and tactics that will safely meet objectives. Fire danger indices integrate surface weather conditions to quantify potential variations in fire spread rates and intensities and therefore should closely relate to observed fire behaviour. These indices could better...

The Great Basin: Wildland Fire Management in the Year 2000

Treesearch

James B. Webb

1987-01-01

The future of wildland fire management depends on the course chosen by fire managers today. Our responsiveness to issues will determine how much we influence where we go. Economics in concert with a better appreciation of fire's role in ecosystem dynamics will significantly alter fire management as we know it today. Public subsidies of homeowners who refuse to...

Toward improving our application and understanding of crown fire behavior

Treesearch

Martin E. Alexander; Miguel G. Cruz; Nicole M. Vaillant

2014-01-01

The suggestion has been made that most wildland fire operations personnel base their expectations of how a fire will behave largely on experience and, to a lesser extent, on guides to predicting fire behavior (Burrows 1984). Experienced judgment is certainly needed in any assessment of wildland fire potential but it does have its limitations. The same can be said for...

The Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory: A 50-year dedication to understanding wildlands and fire

Treesearch

Diane M. Smith

2012-01-01

In 1960, the USDA Forest Service established the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory (now the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory) to find scientific solutions for better managing the nation's wildland resources and to research ways to improve forest fire prevention and suppression. This new state-of-the-art research facility did not emerge from a vacuum, however. This...

A preliminary study of wildland fire pattern indicator reliability following an experimental fire

Treesearch

Albert Simeoni; Zachary C. Owens; Erik W. Christiansen; Abid Kemal; Michael Gallagher; Kenneth L. Clark; Nicholas Skowronski; Eric V. Mueller; Jan C. Thomas; Simon Santamaria; Rory M. Hadden

2017-01-01

An experimental fire was conducted in 2016, in the Pinelands National Reserve of New Jersey, to assess the reliability of the fire pattern indicators used in wildland fire investigation. Objects were planted in the burn area to support the creation of the indicators. Fuel properties and environmental data were recorded. Video and infrared cameras were used to document...

Production and efficiency of large wildland fire suppression effort: A stochastic frontier analysis.

PubMed

Katuwal, Hari; Calkin, David E; Hand, Michael S

2016-01-15

This study examines the production and efficiency of wildland fire suppression effort. We estimate the effectiveness of suppression resource inputs to produce controlled fire lines that contain large wildland fires using stochastic frontier analysis. Determinants of inefficiency are identified and the effects of these determinants on the daily production of controlled fire line are examined. Results indicate that the use of bulldozers and fire engines increase the production of controlled fire line, while firefighter crews do not tend to contribute to controlled fire line production. Production of controlled fire line is more efficient if it occurs along natural or built breaks, such as rivers and roads, and within areas previously burned by wildfires. However, results also indicate that productivity and efficiency of the controlled fire line are sensitive to weather, landscape and fire characteristics. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Allocating fuel breaks to optimally protect structures in the wildland-urban interface

Treesearch

Avi Bar-Massada; Volker C. Radeloff; Susan I. Stewart

2011-01-01

Wildland fire is a major concern in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where human structures intermingle with wildland vegetation. Reducing wildfire risk in the WUI is more complicated than in wildland areas, owing to interactions between spatial patterns of housing and wildland fuels. Fuel treatments are commonly applied in wildlands surrounding WUI communities....

Research and development supporting risk-based wildfire effects prediction for fuels and fire management: Status and needs

Treesearch

Kevin Hyde; Matthew B. Dickinson; Gil Bohrer; David Calkin; Louisa Evers; Julie Gilbertson-Day; Tessa Nicolet; Kevin Ryan; Christina Tague

2013-01-01

Wildland fire management has moved beyond a singular focus on suppression, calling for wildfire management for ecological benefit where no critical human assets are at risk. Processes causing direct effects and indirect, long-term ecosystem changes are complex and multidimensional. Robust risk-assessment tools are required that account for highly variable effects on...

Low Level Impacts on Fire Evolution in the Mack Lake and Other Severe Wildfires

Treesearch

Joseph J. Charney; Xindi Bian; Brian E. Potter; Warren E. Heilman

2003-01-01

The 2000 fire season brought to the forefront the issue of severe wildland fires in the United States. To address the need for new research and for the development of predictive tools for managing wildland fires, Congress allocated funding under the National Fire Plan (NFP) to better equip government agencies to fight and study forest fires. As part of the NFP research...

Observing The Dynamics Of Wildland Grass Fires: FireFlux -A Field Validation Experiment

Treesearch

Craig B. Clements; Shiyuan Zhong; Scott Goodrick; Ju Li; Xindi Bian; Warren E. Heilman; Joseph J. Charney; Ryan Perna; Meongdo Jang; Daegyun Lee; Monica Patel; Susan Street; Glenn Aumann

2007-01-01

Grass fires, although not as intense as forest fires, present a major threat to life and property during periods of drought in the Great Plains of the United States. Recently, major wildland grass fires in Texas burned nearly 1.6 million acres and destroyed over 730 homes and 1320 other buildings. The fires resulted in the death of 19 people, an estimated loss of 10,...

78 FR 13372 - Wildland Fire Executive Council Meeting Schedule

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2013-02-27

... leadership, direction, and program oversight in support of the Wildland Fire Leadership Council. Questions... Governance; (3) Barriers and Critical Success Factors related to the Cohesive Strategy; (4) Regional Action...

Conservation education for Fire, Fuel and Smoke Program

Treesearch

Wayne Cook

2009-01-01

The mission of Conservation Education for the Fire, Fuel and Smoke (FFS) Program is to develop and deliver high-quality, science-based education about wildland fire to students, educators, the general public, and agency staff. Goals: 1) Increase awareness of the scope and content of FFS research. 2) Improve understanding of fundamental concepts in wildland fire science...

A conceptual framework for ranking crown fire potential in wildland fuelbeds.

Treesearch

Mark D. Schaaf; David V. Sandberg; Maarten D. Schreuder; Cynthia L. Riccardi

2007-01-01

This paper presents a conceptual framework for ranking the crown fire potential of wildland fuelbeds with forest canopies. This approach extends the work by Van Wagner and Rothermel, and introduces several new physical concepts to the modeling of crown fire behavior derived from the reformulated Rothemel surface fire modeling concepts proposed by Sandberg et al. This...

Influence of herbivory on regrowth of riparian shrubs following a wildland fire

Treesearch

Kathleen A. Dwire; Sandra E. Ryan; Laura J. Shirley; Danna Lytjen; Nick Otting; Mark K. Dixon

2006-01-01

Streamside vegetation frequently regenerates faster than upland vegetation following wildland fire and contributes to the recovery of riparian and stream ecosystems. Limited data are available, however, on the post-fire growth of riparian species and the influence of herbivory on regeneration. To determine post-fire regrowth of riparian vegetation, height, crown area,...

Wildland arson: a research assessment

Treesearch

Jeffrey P. Prestemon; David T. Butry

2010-01-01

Wildland arson makes up the majority of fire starts in some parts of the United States and is the second leading cause of fires on Eastern United States Federal forests. Individual arson fires can cause damages to resources and communities totaling over a hundred million dollars. Recent research has uncovered the temporal and spatial patterns of arson fires and their...

High-resolution infrared thermography for capturing wildland fire behaviour - RxCADRE 2012

Treesearch

Joseph J. O’Brien; E. Louise Loudermilk; Benjamin Hornsby; Andrew T. Hudak; Benjamin C. Bright; Matthew B. Dickinson; J. Kevin Hiers; Casey Teske; Roger D. Ottmar

2016-01-01

Wildland fire radiant energy emission is one of the only measurements of combustion that can be made at wide spatial extents and high temporal and spatial resolutions. Furthermore, spatially and temporally explicit measurements are critical for making inferences about fire effects and useful for examining patterns of fire spread. In this study we describe our...

Weather, fuels, and topography impede wildland fire spread in western US landscapes

Treesearch

Lisa Holsinger; Sean A. Parks; Carol Miller

2016-01-01

As wildland fire activity continues to surge across the western US, it is increasingly important that we understand and quantify the environmental drivers of fire and how they vary across ecosystems. At daily to annual timescales, weather, fuels, and topography are known to influence characteristics such as area burned and fire severity. An understudied facet...

An integer programming model to optimize resource allocation for wildfire containment.

Treesearch

Geoffrey H. Donovan; Douglas B. Rideout

2003-01-01

Determining the specific mix of fire-fighting resources for a given fire is a necessary condition for identifying the minimum of the Cost Plus Net Value Change (C+NVC) function. Current wildland fire management models may not reliably do so. The problem of identifying the most efficient wildland fire organization is characterized mathematically using integer-...

Physical characteristics of some northern California brush fuels

Treesearch

Clive M. Countryman

1982-01-01

Brush species make up much of the fuel load in forested wildlands. Basic physical and chemical characteristics of these species influence ease of ignition, rate of fire spread, burning time, and fire intensity. Quantitative knowledge of the variations in brush characteristics is essential to progress in fire control and effective use of fire in wildland management....

A GIS-based framework for evaluating investments in fire management: Spatial allocation of recreation values

Treesearch

Kenneth A. Baerenklau; Armando González-Cabán; Catrina I. Páez; Edgard Chávez

2009-01-01

The U.S. Forest Service is responsible for developing tools to facilitate effective and efficient fire management on wildlands and urban-wildland interfaces. Existing GIS-based fire modeling software only permits estimation of the costs of fire prevention and mitigation efforts as well as the effects of those efforts on fire behavior. This research demonstrates how the...

A world on fire

Treesearch

Robert L. Olson; David N. Bengston

2015-01-01

We live in a world on fire. In just the past few years, major wildland fires have struck at least 13 U.S. states, as well as Indonesia, Australia, China, southern Europe, Russia, Canada, Bolivia, and other parts of the world. Wildland fires are increasing in number, size, and intensity. In particular, there has been an increase in large fire events—megafires—that...

Wildland fire science and management in the U.S.: Spanning the boundaries through the regional knowledge exchange network (Abstract)

Treesearch

Susie Kocher; Eric Toman; Sarah Trainor; Vita Wright

2012-01-01

In 2009, the federal Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) initiated a national network of regional fire science consortia to accelerate awareness, understanding and use of wildland fire science. This presentation synthesizes findings from initial needs assessments conducted by consortia in eight regions of the United States. The assessments evaluated how fire science is...

Factors in United States Forest Service district rangers' decision to manage a fire for resource benefit

Treesearch

Martha A. Williamson

2007-01-01

United States wildland fire policy and program reviews in 1995 and 2000 required both the reduction of hazardous fuel and recognition of fire as a natural process. Despite the fact that existing policy permits managing natural ignitions to meet resource benefits, or Wildland Fire Use (WFU), most fuel reduction projects rely on mechanical treatments and prescribed fire...

An event-based approach for examining the effects of wildland fire decisions on communities

Treesearch

Stephen F. McCool; James A. Burchfield; Daniel R. Williams; Matthew S. Carroll

2006-01-01

Public concern over the consequences of forest fire to wildland interface communities has led to increased resources devoted to fire suppression, fuel treatment, and management of fire events. The social consequences of the decisions involved in these and other fire-related actions are largely unknown, except in an anecdotal sense, but do occur at a variety of temporal...

Integrating research on wildland fires and air quality: needs and recommendations

EPA Science Inventory

A summary is presented that integrates general information on the causes and effects of wildland fires and emissions with various ecological impacts of forest fires and air pollution in forests and other ecosystems. We also synthesize information on the regional effects of wildl...

EARTH, WIND AND FIRE: BUILDING METEOROLOGICALLY-SENSITIVE BIOGENIC AND WILDLAND FIRE EMISSION ESTIMATES FOR AIR QUALITY MODELS

EPA Science Inventory

Emission estimates are important for ensuring the accuracy of atmospheric chemical transport models. Estimates of biogenic and wildland fire emissions, because of their sensitivity to meteorological conditions, need to be carefully constructed and closely linked with a meteorolo...

Climate change effects on wildland fire risk in the Northeastern and Great Lakes states predicted by a downscaled multi-model ensemble

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kerr, Gaige Hunter; DeGaetano, Arthur T.; Stoof, Cathelijne R.; Ward, Daniel

2018-01-01

This study is among the first to investigate wildland fire risk in the Northeastern and the Great Lakes states under a changing climate. We use a multi-model ensemble (MME) of regional climate models from the Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) together with the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System (CFFWIS) to understand changes in wildland fire risk through differences between historical simulations and future projections. Our results are relatively homogeneous across the focus region and indicate modest increases in the magnitude of fire weather indices (FWIs) during northern hemisphere summer. The most pronounced changes occur in the date of the initialization of CFFWIS and peak of the wildland fire season, which in the future are trending earlier in the year, and in the significant increases in the length of high-risk episodes, defined by the number of consecutive days with FWIs above the current 95th percentile. Further analyses show that these changes are most closely linked to expected changes in the focus region's temperature and precipitation. These findings relate to the current understanding of particulate matter vis-à-vis wildfires and have implications for human health and local and regional changes in radiative forcings. When considering current fire management strategies which could be challenged by increasing wildland fire risk, fire management agencies could adapt new strategies to improve awareness, prevention, and resilience to mitigate potential impacts to critical infrastructure and population.

Fire hazards at the urban-wildland interface: What the public expects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cortner, Hanna J.; Gardner, Philip D.; Taylor, Jonathan G.

1990-01-01

Urban-wildland issues have become among the most contentious and problematic issues for forest managers. Using data drawn from surveys conducted by the authors and others, this article discusses how public knowledge and perceptions of fire policies and fire hazards change over time, the kinds of policy responses homeowners prefer as a way of preventing fire hazards at the urban-wildland interface, and how citizens view their own obligations as participants in interface issues. These data show that public attitudes toward fire have changed significantly over the past two decades and that educating the public about fire and the managers' use of fire can have positive effects on behavior. Yet, modifying the individual's behavior in regard to interface fire risks must also deal with important issues of individual incentives, the distribution of costs, and unanticipated policy impacts.

Fire hazards at the urban-wildland interface: what the public expects

USGS Publications Warehouse

Cortner, Hanna J.; Gardner, Philip D.; Taylor, Jonathan G.

1990-01-01

Urban-wildland issues have become among the most contentious and problematic issues for forest managers. Using data drawn from surveys conducted by the authors and others, this article discusses how public knowledge and perceptions of fire policies and fire hazards change over time, the kinds of policy responses homeowners prefer as a way of preventing fire hazards at the urban-wildland interface, and how citizens view their own obligations as participants in interface issues. These data show that public attitudes toward fire have changed significantly over the past two decades and that educating the public about fire and the managers' use of fire can have positive effects on behavior. Yet, modifying the individual's behavior in regard to interface fire risks must also deal with important issues of individual incentives, the distribution of costs, and unanticipated policy impacts.

Automated integration of lidar into the LANDFIRE product suite

USGS Publications Warehouse

Peterson, Birgit; Nelson, Kurtis; Seielstad, Carl; Stoker, Jason M.; Jolly, W. Matt; Parsons, Russell

2015-01-01

Accurate information about three-dimensional canopy structure and wildland fuel across the landscape is necessary for fire behaviour modelling system predictions. Remotely sensed data are invaluable for assessing these canopy characteristics over large areas; lidar data, in particular, are uniquely suited for quantifying three-dimensional canopy structure. Although lidar data are increasingly available, they have rarely been applied to wildland fuels mapping efforts, mostly due to two issues. First, the Landscape Fire and Resource Planning Tools (LANDFIRE) program, which has become the default source of large-scale fire behaviour modelling inputs for the US, does not currently incorporate lidar data into the vegetation and fuel mapping process because spatially continuous lidar data are not available at the national scale. Second, while lidar data are available for many land management units across the US, these data are underutilized for fire behaviour applications. This is partly due to a lack of local personnel trained to process and analyse lidar data. This investigation addresses these issues by developing the Creating Hybrid Structure from LANDFIRE/lidar Combinations (CHISLIC) tool. CHISLIC allows individuals to automatically generate a suite of vegetation structure and wildland fuel parameters from lidar data and infuse them into existing LANDFIRE data sets. CHISLIC will become available for wider distribution to the public through a partnership with the U.S. Forest Service’s Wildland Fire Assessment System (WFAS) and may be incorporated into the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) with additional design and testing. WFAS and WFDSS are the primary systems used to support tactical and strategic wildland fire management decisions.

Residents' responses to wildland fire programs: a review of cognitive and behavioral studies

Treesearch

James D. Absher; Jerry J. Vaske; Lori B. Shelby

2009-01-01

A compilation and summary of four research studies is presented. They were aimed at developing a theoretical and practical understanding of homeowners’ attitudes and behaviors in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) in relation to the threat from wildland fires. Individual studies focused on models and methods that measured (1) value orientations (patterns of basic...

Use of class a foams on structures and wildlands

Treesearch

Paul Schlobohm

1995-01-01

The increase of homes in wildlands indicates a significant change. The build-up of fuels around homes and in wildlands over time also indicates change. Resistance to change, however, remains the norm. Fires get worse, but plain water continues to be used for fire suppression and property protection. With Class A foam, the objectives of protection are to wet the...

Collaborative capacity, problem framing, and mutual trust in addressing the wildland fire social problem: An annotated reading list

Treesearch

Jeffrey J. Brooks; Alexander N. Bujak; Joseph G. Champ; Daniel R. Williams

2006-01-01

We reviewed, annotated, and organized recent social science research and developed a framework for addressing the wildland fire social problem. We annotated articles related to three topic areas or factors, which are critical for understanding collective action, particularly in the wildland-urban interface. These factors are collaborative capacity, problem framing, and...

The health impacts and economic value of wildland fire episodes in the U.S.: 2008-2012.

PubMed

Fann, Neal; Alman, Breanna; Broome, Richard A; Morgan, Geoffrey G; Johnston, Fay H; Pouliot, George; Rappold, Ana G

2018-01-01

Wildland fires degrade air quality and adversely affect human health. A growing body of epidemiology literature reports increased rates of emergency departments, hospital admissions and premature deaths from wildfire smoke exposure. Our research aimed to characterize excess mortality and morbidity events, and the economic value of these impacts, from wildland fire smoke exposure in the U.S. over a multi-year period; to date no other burden assessment has done this. We first completed a systematic review of the epidemiologic literature and then performed photochemical air quality modeling for the years 2008 to 2012 in the continental U.S. Finally, we estimated the morbidity, mortality, and economic burden of wildland fires. Our models suggest that areas including northern California, Oregon and Idaho in the West, and Florida, Louisiana and Georgia in the East were most affected by wildland fire events in the form of additional premature deaths and respiratory hospital admissions. We estimated the economic value of these cases due to short term exposures as being between $11 and $20B (2010$) per year, with a net present value of $63B (95% confidence intervals $6-$170); we estimate the value of long-term exposures as being between $76 and $130B (2010$) per year, with a net present value of $450B (95% confidence intervals $42-$1200). The public health burden of wildland fires-in terms of the number and economic value of deaths and illnesses-is considerable. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Winds, Mountains, and Wildland Fire: Improved Understanding of Coupled Atmosphere-Topography-Fire Interactions Through Large-Eddy Simulation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Munoz-Esparza, D.; Sauer, J.; Linn, R.

2015-12-01

Anomalous and unexpected fire behavior in complex terrain continues to result in substantial loss of property and extremely dangerous conditions for firefighting field personnel. We briefly discuss proposed hypotheses of fire interactions with atmospheric flows over complex terrain that can lead to poorly-understood and potentially catastrophic scenarios. Then, our recent results of numerical investigations via large-eddy simulation of coupled atmosphere-topography-fire phenomenology with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, HiGrad-Firetec model are presented as an example of the potential for increased understanding of these complex processes. This investigation focuses on the influence of downslope surface wind enhancement through stably stratified flow over an isolated hill, and the resulting dramatic changes in fire behavior including spread rate, and intensity. Implications with respect to counter-intuitive fire behavior and extreme fire events are discussed. This work demonstrates a tremendous opportunity to immediately create safer and more effective policy for field personnel through improved predictability of atmospheric conditions over complex terrain

Allocating resources to large wildland fires: a model with stochastic production rates

Treesearch

Romain Mees; David Strauss

1992-01-01

Wildland fires that grow out of the initial attack phase are responsible for most of the damage and burned area. We model the allocation of fire suppression resources (ground crews, engines, bulldozers, and airdrops) to these large fires. The fireline at a given future time is partitioned into homogeneous segments on the basis of fuel type, available resources, risk,...

Partners in wildland fire preparedness: lessons from communities in the U.S.

Treesearch

Pamela J. Jakes; Linda Kruger; Martha Monroe; Victoria Sturtevant

2004-01-01

By almost any measure, the past decade has been severe in terms of wildland fire in the United States (Table 1). The National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) maintains a list of ''Historically Significant Wildfires" in the US. - fires that are significant in terms of acres burned, value of the resources destroyed, or lives or property lost. Of the 34...

Proceedings of the large wildland fires conference; May 19-23, 2014; Missoula, MT

Treesearch

Robert E. Keane; Matt Jolly; Russell Parsons; Karin Riley

2015-01-01

Large fires or "megafires" have been a major topic in wildland fire research and management for over a decade. There is great debate regarding the impacts of large fires. Many believe that they (1) are occurring too frequently, (2) are burning abnormally large areas, (3) cause uncharacteristically adverse ecological harm, and (4) must be suppressed at all...

Yellow perch (Perca flavescens) mercury unaffected by wildland fires in northern Minnesota

Treesearch

Charlotte E. Riggs; Randall K. Kolka; Edward A. Nater; Emma L. Witt; Trent R. Wickman; Laurel G. Woodruff; Jason T. Butcher

2017-01-01

Wildland fire can alter mercury (Hg) cycling on land and in adjacent aquatic environments. In addition to enhancing local atmospheric Hg redeposition, fire can influence terrestrial movement of Hg and other elements into lakes via runoff from burned upland soil. However, the impact of fire on water quality and the accumulation of Hg in fish remain equivocal. We...

A study of flame spread in engineered cardboard fuelbeds: Part II: Scaling law approach

Treesearch

Brittany A. Adam; Nelson K. Akafuah; Mark Finney; Jason Forthofer; Kozo Saito

2013-01-01

In this second part of a two part exploration of dynamic behavior observed in wildland fires, time scales differentiating convective and radiative heat transfer is further explored. Scaling laws for the two different types of heat transfer considered: Radiation-driven fire spread, and convection-driven fire spread, which can both occur during wildland fires. A new...

Diversity in Southwesterners' views of Forest Service fire management

Treesearch

P.L. Winter; G.T. Cvetkovich

2007-01-01

The risk of wildland fires is of significant concern in the southwestern United States. Although the Southwest has a long hi story as a fire· prone ecosystem, years of drought and insect infestation have increased fire risk. Paired with these ecological forces is the increased risk caused by the concentration of populations in the wildland urban interface (WUl),...

Combustion efficiency and emission factors for wildfire-season fires in mixed conifer forests of the northern Rocky Mountains, US

Treesearch

S. P. Urbanski

2013-01-01

In the US, wildfires and prescribed burning present significant challenges to air regulatory agencies attempting to achieve and maintain compliance with air quality regulations. Fire emission factors (EF) are essential input for the emission models used to develop wildland fire emission inventories. Most previous studies quantifying wildland fire EF of temperate...

Research Shows Health Impacts and Economic Costs of Wildland Fires

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Researchers at EPA and colleagues at NC State University, the University of Sydney and the University of Tasmania are advancing the science of understanding the public health burden associated with wildland fires.

Synoptic circulation and temperature pattern during severe wildland fires

Treesearch

Warren E. Heilman

1996-01-01

Large-scale changes in the atmosphere associated with a globally changed climate and changes in climatic variability may have important regional impacts on the frequency and severity of wildland fires in the future.

SKOSFIRE: Semantically Accessible Vocabularies for Wildland Fire Science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nordgren, B.; Urbanski, S. P.

2012-12-01

The field of wildland fire science is experiencing mounting pressure to perform better data management. Large field campaigns produce all manner of data covering a variety of disciplines, including: spreadsheets of fuel measurements, meteorological data, visible and thermal infrared video, and volumetric datasets produced by scanning LIDAR. These data enable the advancement and validation of state of the art modeling tools. Curating these data with the objective of enabling future users to quickly and efficiently locate observations of interest is becoming a critical need, particularly in an era of shrinking budgets. As a first step towards the eventual goal of developing a Wildland Fire Science ontology for use with semantically-aware repository services, peer reviewed glossaries within the domain have been converted to the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) format. The "Glossary of Wildland Fire Terminology" is an interagency publication of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG), and serves to provide many concepts relevant to the land management agencies acting as consumers of fire science. "Firewords" is managed by fire scientists and provides concepts of interest to a scientific audience. Finally, a volume has been published to define the variables required by the BehavePlus fire modeling system, which should serve to describe many measurement fields. This work describes the steps taken to transition each of these sources from a term-centered glossary to a collection of well defined concepts serving as the foundation of a future Wildland Fire Science ontology.

Wildland Fire Forecasting: Predicting Wildfire Behavior, Growth, and Feedbacks on Weather

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coen, J. L.

2005-12-01

Recent developments in wildland fire research models have represented more complex of fire behavior. The cost has been to increase the computational requirements. When operational constraints are included, such as the need to produce such forecasts faster than real time, the challenge becomes a balance of how much complexity (with corresponding gains in realism) and accuracy can be achieved in producing the quantities of interest while meeting the specified operational constraints. Current field tools are calculator or Palm-Pilot based algorithms such as BEHAVE and BEHAVE Plus that produce timely estimates of instantaneous fire spread rates, flame length, and fire intensity at a point using readily estimated inputs of fuel model, terrain slope, and atmospheric wind speed at a point. At the cost of requiring a PC and slower calculation, FARSITE represents two-dimensional fire spread and adds capabilities including a parameterized representation of crown fire ignition, This work describes how a coupled atmosphere-fire model previously used as a research tool has been adapted for production of real-time forecasts of fire growth and its interactions with weather over a domain focusing on Colorado during summer 2004. The coupled atmosphere-wildland fire-environment (CAWFE) model composed of a 3-dimensional atmospheric prediction model that has been two-way coupled with an empirical fire spread model. The models are connected in that atmospheric conditions (and fuel conditions influenced by the atmosphere) affect the rate and direction of fire propagation, which releases sensible and latent heat (i.e. thermal and water vapor fluxes) to the atmosphere that in turn alter the winds and atmospheric structure around the fire. Thus, it can represent time and spatially-varying weather and the fire feedbacks on the atmospheric which are at the heart of sudden changes in fire behavior and examples of extreme fire behavior such as blow ups, which are now not predictable with current tools. Thus, although this work shows that is it possible to perform more detailed simulations in real time, fire behavior forecasting remains a challenging problem. This is due to challenges in weather prediction, particularly at fine spatial and temporal scales considered "nowcasting" (0-6 hrs), uncertainties in fire behavior even with known meteorological conditions, limitations in quantitative datasets on fuel properties such as fuel loading, and verification. This work describes efforts to advance these capabilities with input from remote sensing data on fuel characteristics and dynamic steering and object-based verification with remotely sensed fire perimeters.

Perceptions of Wildfire Threat and Mitigation Measures by Residents of Fire-Prone Communities in the Northeast: Survey Results and Wildland Fire Management Implications

Treesearch

Robert L. Ryan; Mark B. Wamsley

2006-01-01

We surveyed residents of fire-prone areas of the Central Pine Barrens of Long Island, New York, and the Plymouth Pine Barrens in Massachusetts to learn how they perceived wildland fire risk and management techniques for reducing fire hazard. We found that residents considered the fire threat to their own property to be relatively low in spite of first-hand experience...

Development at the wildland-urban interface and the mitigation of forest-fire risk.

PubMed

Spyratos, Vassilis; Bourgeron, Patrick S; Ghil, Michael

2007-09-04

This work addresses the impacts of development at the wildland-urban interface on forest fires that spread to human habitats. Catastrophic fires in the western United States and elsewhere make these impacts a matter of urgency for decision makers, scientists, and the general public. Using a simple fire-spread model, along with housing and vegetation data, we show that fire size probability distributions can be strongly modified by the density and flammability of houses. We highlight a sharp transition zone in the parameter space of vegetation flammability and house density. Many actual fire landscapes in the United States appear to have spreading properties close to this transition. Thus, the density and flammability of buildings should be taken into account when assessing fire risk at the wildland-urban interface. Moreover, our results highlight ways for regulation at this interface to help mitigate fire risk.

Sleep Quantity and Quality of Ontario Wildland Firefighters Across a Low-Hazard Fire Season

PubMed Central

McGillis, Zachary; Dorman, Sandra C.; Robertson, Ayden; Larivière, Michel; Leduc, Caleb; Eger, Tammy; Oddson, Bruce E.; Larivière, Céline

2017-01-01

Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the sleep quality, quantity, and fatigue levels of Canadian wildland firefighters while on deployment. Methods: Objective and subjective sleep and fatigue measures were collected using actigraphy and questionnaires during non-fire (Base) and fire (Initial Attack and Project) deployments. Results: Suboptimal sleep quality and quantity were more frequently observed during high-intensity, Initial Attack fire deployments. Suboptimal sleep was also exhibited during non-fire (Base) work periods, which increases the risk of prefire deployment sleep debt. Self-reported, morning fatigue scores were low-to-moderate and highest for Initial Attack fire deployments. Conclusions: The study highlights the incidence of suboptimal sleep patterns in wildland firefighters during non-fire and fire suppression work periods. These results have implications for the health and safety practices of firefighters given the link between sleep and fatigue, in a characteristically hazardous occupation. PMID:29216017

A site-specific approach for assessing the fire risk to structures at the wildland/urban interface

Treesearch

Jack Cohen

1991-01-01

The essence of the wildland/urban interface fire problem is the loss of homes. The problem is not new, but is becoming increasingly important as more homes with inadequate adherence to safety codes are built at the wildland/urban interface. Current regulatory codes are inflexible. Specifications for building and site characteristics cannot be adjusted to accommodate...

Residents' responses to wildland fire programs: a review of cognitive and behavioral studies

Treesearch

James D. Absher; Jerry J. Vaske; Lori B. Shelby

2009-01-01

During the past 8 years the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station, in cooperation with Colorado State University has conducted 4 research projects aimed at developing a theoretical and practical understanding of homeowners’ attitudes and behaviors in the Wildland Urban Interface in relation to the threat from wildland fires. Initial work focused on...

Barriers to wildland fire use: A preliminary problem analysis

Treesearch

Dustin L. Doane; Jay O' Laughlin; Penelope Morgan; Carol Miller

2006-01-01

American society has a general cultural bias toward controlling nature (Glover 2000) and, in particular, a strong bias for suppressing wildfire, even in wilderness (Saveland et al. 1988). Nevertheless, the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy directs managers to "allow lightning-caused fires to play, as nearly as possible, their natural ecological role in...

Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE): Torchbearers for a new fire management paradigm

Treesearch

Timothy Ingalsbee; Joseph Fox; Patrick Withen

2007-01-01

Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE) is a nonprofit organization promoting safe, ethical, ecological wildland fire management. FUSEE believes firefighter and community safety are ultimately interdependent with ethical public service, wildlands protection, and ecological restoration of fire-adapted ecosystems. Our members include current, former,...

Compartmentalization of pathogens in fire-injured trees

Treesearch

Kevin T. Smith

2013-01-01

Wildland fire is an episodic process that greatly influences the composition, structure, and developmental sequence of forests. Most news reports of wildland fire involves blazes fueled by slash, standing dead stems, and snags that reach into tree crowns and burn deeply into the forest floor, causing extensive tree mortality and the eventual replacement of the standing...

Wildland fire emissions, carbon and climate: Characterizing wildland fuels

Treesearch

David R. Weise; Clinton S. Wright

2013-01-01

Smoke from biomass fires makes up a substantial portion of global greenhouse gas, aerosol, and black carbon (GHG/A/BC) emissions. Understanding how fuel characteristics and conditions affect fire occurrence and extent, combustion dynamics, and fuel consumption is critical for making accurate, reliable estimates of emissions production at local, regional, national, and...

43 CFR 46.210 - Listing of Departmental categorical exclusions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-10-01

... using prescribed fire not to exceed 4,500 acres, and mechanical methods for crushing, piling, thinning... limited to areas— (i) In wildland-urban interface; and (ii) Condition Classes 2 or 3 in Fire Regime Groups... framework as described in “A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the...

43 CFR 46.210 - Listing of Departmental categorical exclusions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-10-01

... using prescribed fire not to exceed 4,500 acres, and mechanical methods for crushing, piling, thinning... limited to areas— (i) In wildland-urban interface; and (ii) Condition Classes 2 or 3 in Fire Regime Groups... framework as described in “A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the...

43 CFR 46.210 - Listing of Departmental categorical exclusions.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-10-01

... using prescribed fire not to exceed 4,500 acres, and mechanical methods for crushing, piling, thinning... limited to areas— (i) In wildland-urban interface; and (ii) Condition Classes 2 or 3 in Fire Regime Groups... framework as described in “A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the...

A portable system for characterizing wildland fire behavior

Treesearch

Bret Butler; D. Jimenez; J. Forthofer; K. Shannon; Paul Sopko

2010-01-01

A field deployable system for quantifying energy and mass transport in wildland fires is described. The system consists of two enclosures: The first is a sensor/data logger combination package that allows characterization of convective/radiant energy transport in fires. This package contains batteries, a programmable data logger, sensors, and other electronics. The...

Pine regeneration following wildland fire (P-53)

Treesearch

Katherine J. Elliott; James M. Vose; Alan S. White

2008-01-01

Pine regeneration following wildland fire continues to be a serious problem across the western and southeastern U.S. Frequency of large wildfires has increased over the last several decades and restoration of these burned areas is a major problem confronting land managers. Prescribed fires are used primarily to reduce heavy fuel loads and secondarily to reduce...

Pine regeneration following wildland fire

Treesearch

Katherine J. Elliott; James M. Vose; Alan S. White

2008-01-01

Pine regeneration following wildland fire continues to be a serious problem across the western and southeastern U.S. Frequency of large wildfires has increased over the last several decades and restoration of these burned areas is a major problem confronting land managers. Prescribed fires are used primarily to reduce heavy fuel loads and secondarily to reduce...

Mesoscale Simulations During the Double Trouble State Park Wildfire in East-Central New Jersey on June 2, 2002

Treesearch

Joseph J. Charney; Xindi Bian; Brian E. Potter; Warren E. Heilman

2003-01-01

The 2000 fire season brought to the forefront the issue of severe wildland fires in the United States. To address the need for new research and for the development of predictive tools for the management of wildland fires, Congress allocated funding under the National Fire Plan (NFP) to better equip government agencies to fight and study forest fires. As part of the NFP...

Bridging the worlds of fire managers and researchers: lessons and opportunities from the Wildland Fire Workshops.

Treesearch

Seth M. White

2004-01-01

In March and April of 2003, over 250 managers, researchers, and other participants gathered for a series of workshops at Oregon State University, the University of Arizona, and Colorado State University, near the largest wildfires of 2002. In response to the need for better understanding of large fires, the Wildland Fire Workshops were designed to create an atmosphere...

Wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate: wildland fire detection and burned area in the United States

Treesearch

Wei Min Hao; Narasimhan K. Larkin

2014-01-01

Biomass burning is a major source of greenhouse gases, aerosols, black carbon, and atmospheric pollutants that affects regional and global climate and air quality. The spatial and temporal extent of fires and the size of burned areas are critical parameters in the estimation of fire emissions. Tremendous efforts have been made in the past 12 years to characterize the...

Establishing a nationwide baseline of historical burn-severity data to support monitoring of trends in wildfire effects and national fire policies

Treesearch

Brian Schwind; Brad Quayle; Jeffery C. Eidenshink

2010-01-01

There is a need to provide agency leaders, elected officials, and the general public with summary information regarding the effects of large wildfires. Recently, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC), which implements and coordinates National Fire Plan (NFP) and Federal Wildland Fire Management Policies adopted a strategy to monitor the effectiveness and effects...

Effects of season on ignition of live wildland fuels using the forced ignition and flame spread test apparatus

Treesearch

S. McAllister; D. R. Weise

2017-01-01

An understanding of what variables affect the ignition of live wildland fuels is crucial to predicting crown fire spread, the most poorly understood type of wildland fire. Ignition tests were performed over the course of an entire year for ten species (three species in year one, seven in year two) to evaluate seasonal changes in flammability. Ignition delay and mass...

Public webinar: Wildland Fire Sensors Challenge

EPA Science Inventory

This multi-agency challenge seeks a field-ready prototype system capable of measuring constituents of smoke, including particulates, carbon monoxide, ozone, and carbon dioxide, over the wide range of levels expected during wildland fires. The prototype system should be accurate, ...

Using Earth Observations to Assess the Socioeconomic Impact of Human Decision Making during the Suppression of a Wildland Fire

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miller, V. V.; Kochanski, A.; Mandel, J.; Herr, V.; Schranz, S.

2016-12-01

This presentation will discuss the fire simulation system based on WRF-SFIRE and assimilation of satellite Active Fires detection to estimate the socio-economic impact of Earth observations and fire behavior modeling for the 2011 Las Conchas fire in New Mexico. Multiple scenarios will be developed with the WRF-SFIRE simulation based on value of information (VOI) provided by retired incident commanders, whose decision inputs will steer scenario development and simulation. The scenarios will differ according to the Earth observations available through NASA and then deemed useful to incident commanders. Each scenario will be evaluated in terms of its socio-economic impact as specified by NASA (2012) for its wildland fire program. This presentation is a proposed supplement to NASA grant NNX13AH59G Wildland Fire Behavior and Risk Forecasting, Sher Schranz, PI.

Mapping the Daily Progression of Large Wildland Fires Using MODIS Active Fire Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Veraverbeke, Sander; Sedano, Fernando; Hook, Simon J.; Randerson, James T.; Jin, Yufang; Rogers, Brendan

2013-01-01

High temporal resolution information on burned area is a prerequisite for incorporating bottom-up estimates of wildland fire emissions in regional air transport models and for improving models of fire behavior. We used the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) active fire product (MO(Y)D14) as input to a kriging interpolation to derive continuous maps of the evolution of nine large wildland fires. For each fire, local input parameters for the kriging model were defined using variogram analysis. The accuracy of the kriging model was assessed using high resolution daily fire perimeter data available from the U.S. Forest Service. We also assessed the temporal reporting accuracy of the MODIS burned area products (MCD45A1 and MCD64A1). Averaged over the nine fires, the kriging method correctly mapped 73% of the pixels within the accuracy of a single day, compared to 33% for MCD45A1 and 53% for MCD64A1.

Communicating about smoke from wildland fire: challenges and ways to address them

Treesearch

Christine S. Olsen; Danielle K. Mazzotta; Eric Toman; A. Paige Fischer

2014-01-01

Wildland fire and associated management efforts are dominant topics in natural resource fields. Smoke from fires can be a nuisance and pose serious health risks and aggravate pre-existing health conditions. When it results in reduced visibility near roadways, smoke can also pose hazardous driving conditions and reduce the scenic value of vistas. Communicating about...

Managing for fire in the interface: Challenges and opportunities

Treesearch

Alan J. Long; Dale D. Wade; Feank C. Beall

2004-01-01

Fire managers define the wildland-urban interface as all areas were flammable wildland fuels are adjacent to homes and communities. With this definition, the wild-land-urban interface may encompass a much broader landscape than traditionally perceived. For example, the Tunnel Fire in the Oakland hills in 1991 included a large area that, for practical purposes, could be...

Climate and very large wildland fires in the contiguous western USA

Treesearch

E. Natasha Stavros; John Abatzoglou; Narasimhan K. Larkin; Donald McKenzie; E. Ashley Steel

2014-01-01

Very large wildfires can cause significant economic and environmental damage, including destruction of homes, adverse air quality, firefighting costs and even loss of life. We examine how climate is associated with very large wildland fires (VLWFs >=50 000 acres, or ~20234 ha) in the western contiguous USA. We used composite records of climate and fire to...

Measurements of convective and radiative heating in wildland fires

Treesearch

David Frankman; Brent W. Webb; Bret W. Butler; Daniel Jimenez; Jason M. Forthofer; Paul Sopko; Kyle S. Shannon; J. Kevin Hiers; Roger D. Ottmar

2012-01-01

Time-resolved irradiance and convective heating and cooling of fast-response thermopile sensors were measured in 13 natural and prescribed wildland fires under a variety of fuel and ambient conditions. It was shown that a sensor exposed to the fire environment was subject to rapid fluctuations of convective transfer whereas irradiance measured by a windowed sensor was...

Wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate: Modeling fuel consumption

Treesearch

Roger D. Ottmar

2014-01-01

Fuel consumption specifies the amount of vegetative biomass consumed during wildland fire. It is a two-stage process of pyrolysis and combustion that occurs simultaneously and at different rates depending on the characteristics and condition of the fuel, weather, topography, and in the case of prescribed fire, ignition rate and pattern. Fuel consumption is the basic...

We still need Smokey Bear!

USGS Publications Warehouse

Keeley, Jon E.

2001-01-01

It was gratifying to see articles in recent issues of Fire Management Today clarifying the role of Smokey Bear in wildland fire management strategies (Baily 1999; Brown 1999). These articles clearly spelled out Smokey’s importance in reducing unplanned human-ignited wildland fires and rightly criticized attempts to detract from Smokey’s campaign (Williams 1995; see also Vogl 1973).

Modeling potential structure ignitions from flame radiation exposure with implications for wildland/urban interface fire management

Treesearch

Jack D. Cohen; Bret W. Butler

1998-01-01

Residential losses associated with wildland fires have become a serious international fire protection problem. The radiant heat flux from burning vegetation adjacent to a structure is a principal ignition factor. A thermal radiation and ignition model estimated structure ignition potential using designated flame characteristics (inferred from various types and...

Managing wildland fire risk in Florida

Treesearch

J. Brenner; D. Carlton; S. McLellan; A. Dozier; T. Spencer; D. Buckley; A. Ralowicz

2010-01-01

Florida’s Wildland Fire Risk Assessment (FRA), which was completed in 2002, is a statewide effort to develop a comprehensive suite of standardized spatial data layers developed to support implementation of a statewide fuels management strategy. By maintaining focus on fire and fuel dynamics for use with scientifically credible local to statewide applications, the FRA...

Integrating models to predict regional haze from wildland fire.

Treesearch

D. McKenzie; S.M. O' Neill; N. Larkin; R.A. Norheim

2006-01-01

Visibility impairment from regional haze is a significant problem throughout the continental United States. A substantial portion of regional haze is produced by smoke from prescribed and wildland fires. Here we describe the integration of four simulation models, an array of GIS raster layers, and a set of algorithms for fire-danger calculations into a modeling...

Modeling flame structure in wildland fires using the one-dimensional turbulence model

Treesearch

David O. Lignell; Elizabeth I. Monson; Mark A. Finney

2010-01-01

The mechanism of flame propagation in wildland fire fuel beds is of critical importance for understanding and quantifying fire spread rates. Recent observations and experiments have indicated the dominance of flame propagation by direct contact between flames and unburnt fuel, as opposed to propagation via radiative heating alone. It is postulated that effects of...

Modeling the effects of vegetation heterogeneity on wildland fire behavior

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Atchley, A. L.; Linn, R.; Sieg, C.; Middleton, R. S.

2017-12-01

Vegetation structure and densities are known to drive fire-spread rate and burn severity. Many fire-spread models incorporate an average, homogenous fuel density in the model domain to drive fire behavior. However, vegetation communities are rarely homogenous and instead present significant heterogeneous structure and fuel densities in the fires path. This results in observed patches of varied burn severities and mosaics of disturbed conditions that affect ecological recovery and hydrologic response. Consequently, to understand the interactions of fire and ecosystem functions, representations of spatially heterogeneous conditions need to be incorporated into fire models. Mechanistic models of fire disturbance offer insight into how fuel load characterization and distribution result in varied fire behavior. Here we use a physically-based 3D combustion model—FIRETEC—that solves conservation of mass, momentum, energy, and chemical species to compare fire behavior on homogenous representations to a heterogeneous vegetation distribution. Results demonstrate the impact vegetation heterogeneity has on the spread rate, intensity, and extent of simulated wildfires thus providing valuable insight in predicted wildland fire evolution and enhanced ability to estimate wildland fire inputs into regional and global climate models.

An evaluation of image based techniques for wildfire detection and fuel mapping

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gabbert, Dustin W.

Few events can cause the catastrophic impact to ecology, infrastructure, and human safety of a wildland fire along the wildland urban interface. The suppression of natural wildland fires over the past decade has caused a buildup of dry, dead surface fuels: a condition that, coupled with the right weather conditions, can cause large destructive wildfires that are capable of threatening both ancient tree stands and manmade infrastructure. Firefighters use fire danger models to determine staffing needs on high fire risk days; however models are only as effective as the spatial and temporal density of their observations. OKFIRE, an Oklahoma initiative created by a partnership between Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma, has proven that fire danger assessments close to the fire - both geographically and temporally - can give firefighters a significant increase in their situational awareness while fighting a wildland fire. This paper investigates several possible solutions for a small Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) which could gather information useful for detecting ground fires and constructing fire danger maps. Multiple fire detection and fuel mapping programs utilize satellites, manned aircraft, and large UAS equipped with hyperspectral sensors to gather useful information. Their success provides convincing proof of the utility that could be gained from low-altitude UAS gathering information at the exact time and place firefighters and land managers are interested in. Close proximity, both geographically and operationally, to the end can reduce latency times below what could ever be possible with satellite observation. This paper expands on recent advances in computer vision, photogrammetry, and infrared and color imagery to develop a framework for a next-generation UAS which can assess fire danger and aid firefighters in real time as they observe, contain, or extinguish wildland fires. It also investigates the impact information gained by this system could have on pre-fire risk assessments through the development of very high resolution fuel maps.

An Evaluation of Image Based Techniques for Early Wildfire Detection and Fuel Mapping

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Gabbert, Dustin W.

Few events can cause the catastrophic impact to ecology, infrastructure, and human safety of a wildland fire along the wildland urban interface. The suppression of natural wildland fires over the past decade has caused a buildup of dry, dead surface fuels: a condition that, coupled with the right weather conditions, can cause large destructive wildfires that are capable of threatening both ancient tree stands and manmade infrastructure. Firefighters use fire danger models to determine staffing needs on high fire risk days; however models are only as effective as the spatial and temporal density of their observations. OKFIRE, an Oklahoma initiativemore » created by a partnership between Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma, has proven that fire danger assessments close to the fire – both geographically and temporally – can give firefighters a significant increase in their situational awareness while fighting a wildland fire. This paper investigates several possible solutions for a small Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) which could gather information useful for detecting ground fires and constructing fire danger maps. Multiple fire detection and fuel mapping programs utilize satellites, manned aircraft, and large UAS equipped with hyperspectral sensors to gather useful information. Their success provides convincing proof of the utility that could be gained from low-altitude UAS gathering information at the exact time and place firefighters and land managers are interested in. Close proximity, both geographically and operationally, to the end can reduce latency times below what could ever be possible with satellite observation. This paper expands on recent advances in computer vision, photogrammetry, and infrared and color imagery to develop a framework for a next-generation UAS which can assess fire danger and aid firefighters in real time as they observe, contain, or extinguish wildland fires. It also investigates the impact information gained by this system could have on pre-fire risk assessments through the development of very high resolution fuel maps.« less

Science Matters Special Edition: Wildland Fire Science

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

EPA is applying its extensive expertise in air quality science to the study of wildland fires to help states and communities that are impacted. This issue of Science Matters newsletter highlights some of the research projects under way by EPA and partners.

Framework for addressing the national wildland urban interface fire problem—determining fire and ember exposure zones using a WUI hazard scale

Treesearch

Alexander Maranghides; William Mell

2012-01-01

Destruction of homes and businesses from Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) fires have been steadily escalating as have the fire suppression costs associated with them. Since 2000, in the U.S. over 3,000 homes per year are lost to WUI fires, compared to about 900 homes in the 1990s, and 400 homes in the 1970s. In 2011, in Texas alone, over 2,000 homes were...

36 CFR 219.8 - Sustainability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... as natural succession, wildland fire, invasive species, and climate change; and the ability of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems on the plan area to adapt to change. (v) Wildland fire and opportunities to... other sources of drinking water (including guidance to prevent or mitigate detrimental changes in...

36 CFR 219.8 - Sustainability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... as natural succession, wildland fire, invasive species, and climate change; and the ability of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems on the plan area to adapt to change. (v) Wildland fire and opportunities to... other sources of drinking water (including guidance to prevent or mitigate detrimental changes in...

36 CFR 219.8 - Sustainability.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... as natural succession, wildland fire, invasive species, and climate change; and the ability of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems on the plan area to adapt to change. (v) Wildland fire and opportunities to... other sources of drinking water (including guidance to prevent or mitigate detrimental changes in...

(EDMUNDS, WA) WILDLAND FIRE EMISSIONS MODELING: INTEGRATING BLUESKY AND SMOKE

EPA Science Inventory

This presentation is a status update of the BlueSky emissions modeling system. BlueSky-EM has been coupled with the Sparse Matrix Operational Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) system, and is now available as a tool for estimating emissions from wildland fires

Modeling the protection afforded by burrows, cavities, and roosts during wildland surface fires

Treesearch

Anthony Bova; Matthew Dickinson

2009-01-01

Wildland surface fires produce many toxic and irritating compounds, such as formaldehyde and acrolein, and harmful gases such as carbon monoxide. Several factors influence the degree of protection offered by animal shelters against combustion products and heat.

Measurements, datasets and preliminary results from the RxCADRE project-2008, 2011 and 2012

Treesearch

Roger D. Ottmar; J. Kevin Hiers; Bret W. Butler; Craig B. Clements; Matthew B. Dickinson; Andrew T. Hudak; Joseph O' Brien; Brian E. Potter; Eric M. Rowell; Tara M. Strand; Thomas J. Zajkowski

2016-01-01

The lack of independent, quality-assured field data prevents scientists from effectively evaluating and advancing wildland fire models. To rectify this, scientists and technicians convened in the southeastern United States in 2008, 2011 and 2012 to collect wildland fire data in six integrated core science disciplines defined by the fire modelling community. These were...

Kanawha State Forest, WV: Wildland fire fuel load assessment and geospatial distribution

Treesearch

Adele Fenwick; Jamie L. Schuler; Shawn Grushecky; Thomas M. Schuler; Melissa Thomas-Van Gundy

2014-01-01

Fire has become a major concern along the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and there is increased awareness that fires could result in serious damage to people and property in residential areas occurring in forested landscapes. Part of the long-term strategy the West Virginia Division of Forestry outlined in the 2010 West Virginia Statewide Forest Resource Assessment...

Structure Ignition Assessment can help reduce fire damages in the W-UI

Treesearch

Jack Cohen; Jim Saveland

1997-01-01

The wildland-urban interface (W-UI) refers to residential areas surrounded by or adjacent to wildland areas. In recent years, significant W-UI residential fire losses have occurred nationwide in the United States that have focused attention on the principal W-UI problem - losses of life and property to fire. To assess potential ignitions, SIAM uses an analytical...

Evaluating wildland fire danger and prioritizing vegetation and fuels treatments

Treesearch

Paul F. Hessburg; Keith M. Reynolds; Robert E. Keane; Kevin M. James; R. Brion Salter

2008-01-01

We present a decision-support application that evaluates danger of severe wildland fire and prioritizes subwatersheds for vegetation and fuels treatment. We demonstrate the use of the system with an example from the Rocky Mountain region in Utah; a planning area of 4.8 million ha encompassing 575 subwatersheds. In a logic model, we evaluate fire danger as a function of...

A collaborative fire hazard reduction/ecosystem restoration stewardship project in a Montana mixed ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir/western larch wildland urban interface

Treesearch

Steve Slaughter; Laura Ward; Michael Hillis; Jim Chew; Rebecca McFarlan

2004-01-01

Forest Service managers and researchers designed and evaluated alternative disturbance-based fire hazard reduction/ecosystem restoration treatments in a greatly altered low-elevation ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir/western larch wildland urban interface. Collaboratively planned improvement cutting and prescribed fire treatment alternatives were evaluated in simulations of...

Proceedings of the symposium on wildland fire 2000; April 27-30, 1987; South Lake Tahoe, California

Treesearch

James B. Davis; Robert E. Martin

1987-01-01

This "futuring" symposium addressed the possible, preferred, and probable status of wildland fire management and research in the year 2000 and beyond. Papers cover the fire protection needs of the public, management response to these perceived needs, and the research and education required to meet these needs. Also covered in a separate section are the...

Error associated with model predictions of wildland fire rate of spread

Treesearch

Miguel G. Cruz; Martin E. Alexander

2015-01-01

How well can we expect to predict the spread rate of wildfires and prescribed fires? The degree of accuracy in model predictions of wildland fire behaviour characteristics are dependent on the model's applicability to a given situation, the validity of the model's relationships, and the reliability of the model input data (Alexander and Cruz 2013b#. We...

Comparing production function models for wildfire risk analysis in the wildland-urban interface

Treesearch

D. Evan Mercer; Jeffrey P. Prestemon

2005-01-01

Wildfires create damages in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) that total hundreds of millions of dollars annually in the United States. Understanding how fires are produced in built-up areas near and within fire prone landscapes requires evaluating and quantifling the roles that humans play in fire regimes. We outline a typology of wildfire production functions (WPFs...

Wildland fire, risk, and recovery: results of a national survey with regional and racial perspectives

Treesearch

J. Michael Bowker; Siew Hoon Lim; H. Ken Cordell; Gary T. Green; Sandra Rideout-Hanzak; Cassandra Y. Johnson

2008-01-01

We used a national household survey to examine knowledge, attitudes, and preferences pertaining to wildland fire. First, we present nationwide results and trends. Then, we examine opinions across region and race. Despite some regional variation, respondents are fairly consistent in their beliefs about assuming personal responsibility for living in fire-prone areas and...

Effects of wildland fire smoke on a tree-roosting bat: integrating a plume model, field measurements, and mammalian dose-response relationships

Treesearch

M.B. Dickinson; J.C. Norris; A.S. Bova; R.L. Kremens; V. Young; M.J. Lacki

2010-01-01

Faunal injury and mortality in wildland fires is a concern for wildlife and fire management although little work has been done on the mechanisms by which exposures cause their effects. In this paper, we use an integral plume model, field measurements, and models of carbon monoxide and heat effects to explore risk to tree-roosting bats during prescribed fires in mixed-...

Science You Can Use Bulletin: Fire and forethought: Fire effects syntheses are a powerful tool for planning and management across resource fields

Treesearch

Brian Cooke; Jane Kapler Smith; Robin Innes; Janet Fryer; Kris Zouhar; Ilana Abrahamson; Shannon Murphy; Eva Masin

2015-01-01

The Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) team synthesizes information about wildland fires, their history in U.S. ecosystems, and their effects on U.S. wildland plants, lichens, and animals. Found at www.feis-crs.org/feis/, FEIS publications can be used for many purposes, including land use planning, restoration and rehabilitation...

Combustion processes in wildland fuels

Treesearch

Charles K. McMahon

1985-01-01

Abstract. A 5-year summary of accomplishments, current activities, and planned actions for fire research project SE-2110 are presented. Areas of discussion center on: (1) characterization of wildland smoke, and (2) fuel, fire, and emission relationships. Characterization summaries include physical and chemical properties of smoke, smoke from...

Wildland fire research: Future Search conference notes

Treesearch

Jim Saveland; Dave Thomas

1998-01-01

This conference provided an arena for identifying common key issues that are shaping wildland fire research. Commonly identified desired outcomes include: research, integrated across disciplines, and management form partnerships; communication between management and research is effective and continuous; responsive and proactive research balances long-term scientific...

The health impacts and economic value of wildland fire episodes in the U.S.: 2008-2012

EPA Science Inventory

Introduction: Wildland fires degrade regional air quality and adversely affect human health. A growing body of epidemiology literature report increased rates of emergency department, hospital admission and premature deaths from wildfire smoke exposure. Objective: Our research a...

SIMPPLLE, version 2.5 user's guide

Treesearch

Jimmie D. Chew; Kirk Moeller; Christine Stalling

2012-01-01

SIMPPLLE is a spatially-interactive, dynamic landscape modeling system for projecting temporal changes in the spatial distribution of vegetation in response to insects, disease, wildland fire, and other natural and management-caused disturbances. SIMPPLLE is designed to provide a balance between incorporating enough complexity and interactions in modeling ecosystem...

Estimating radiated flux density from wildland fires using the raw output of limited bandpass detectors

Treesearch

Robert L. Kremens; Matthew B. Dickinson

2015-01-01

We have simulated the radiant emission spectra from wildland fires such as would be observed at a scale encompassing the pre-frontal fuel bed, the flaming front and the zone of post-frontal combustion and cooling. For these simulations, we developed a 'mixed-pixel' model where the fire infrared spectrum is estimated as the linear superposition of spectra of...

Simulation and Experiment of Air Quality Effects of Prescribed Fires in the Southeast

Treesearch

Yongqiang Liu; Gary Achtemeier; Scott Goodrick

2005-01-01

Wildfires can cause degradation of air quality by releasing large amounts of particulate matter (PM) and precursors of ozone (Sandberg et al., 1999; Riebau and Fox, 2001). EPA has issued the Interim Air Quality Policy on Wildland and Prescribed Fire to protect public health and welfare by mitigating the impacts of air pollutant emissions from wildland fires on air...

The Future of wildland fire management in a world of rapid change and great uncertainty: Overview of a futures research project

Treesearch

David N. Bengston; Robert L. Olson; Leif A. DeVaney

2012-01-01

Past efforts to examine the future of wildland fire management have relied heavily on expertise from within the wildfire community. But changes in seemingly unrelated external factors - outside of the world of wildfire and fire management - can have unexpected and profound effects. This paper describes an ongoing sh1dy of the...

Final report: Imagining Fire Futures - An interactive, online learning activity for high school and college students

Treesearch

Jane Kapler Smith

2014-01-01

In IMAGINING FIRE FUTURES, students in a high school or college class use model results to develop a vision of the future for Flathead County, Montana. This is a rural area in the northern Rocky Mountains where more than half of the landscape is covered by wildland ecosystems that have evolved with and are shaped by wildland fire.

Influence of vegetation moisture on combustion of pyrolysis gases in wildland fires

Treesearch

S.C. Dover; A.R. Dahale; B. Shotorban; S. Mahalingam; D.R. Weise

2011-01-01

Since wildland fires occur in living vegetation, the fuel moisture content must be considered in order to correctly predict the behavior of the fire. One facet of combustion of pyrolysis gases that has not been considered in previous research is the effect of moisture on the combustion process. This effect is investigated by using CHEMKIN software to study an opposed...

Climate Change, Wildland Fires and Public Health | Science ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Climate change is contributing to an increase in the severity of wildland fires. The annual acreage burned in the U.S. has risen steadily since 1985, and the fire season has lengthened. Wildland fires impair air quality by producing massive quantities of particulate air pollutants and ozone precursors. Together particles and ozone exposures increase the risk of premature death and acute and chronic cardiovascular and respiratory morbidity among vulnerable individuals. Future wildfires are predicted to be larger, more severe and more frequent in some regions of the U.S and will contribute to an even greater proportion of the ambient air pollution, the disease burden and healthcare costs.While the projected magnitude of the public health impact of climate change-related wildfire events is uncertain, it is clear that the proportion of the U.S. population vulnerable to the adverse health effects of wildland fire and its smoke is increasing. An aging population with chronic respiratory diseases and increasing obesity and diabetes that heralds more cardiovascular disease will increase the vulnerability of the population to the adverse effects of wildfire smoke and associated stressors. Additionally, physiological changes attendant to aging decrease the capacity of aged-adults to tolerate wildfire smoke, heat, humidity, evacuation and recovery. Expansion of our cities into the wildland-urban interface is also placing a greater proportion of the population in clo

Social, institutional, and psychological factors affecting wildfire incident decision making

Treesearch

Matthew P. Thompson

2014-01-01

Managing wildland fire incidents can be fraught with complexity and uncertainty. Myriad human factors can exert significant influence on incident decision making, and can contribute additional uncertainty regarding programmatic evaluations of wildfire management and attainment of policy goals. This article develops a framework within which human sources of uncertainty...

An Electronic Timer for Measuring Spread Rates of Wildland Fires

Treesearch

Richard W. Blank; Albert J. Simard

1983-01-01

There are many disadvantages to current techniques for measuring the spread rate of wildland fires. This paper describes the design and use of an electronic timber that resolves most of the problems. The unit is small, lightweight, inexpensive, easy-to-assemble, self-contained, and long-running.

The effect of smoke inhalation on lung function and airway responsiveness in wildland fire fighters

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Liu, D.; Tager, I.B.; Balmes, J.R.

1992-12-01

The current study was undertaken to evaluate the effect of smoke on forced expiratory volumes and airway responsiveness in wildland fire fighters during a season of active fire fighting. Sixty-three seasonal and full-time wildland fire fighters from five U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDAFS) Hotshot crews in Northern California and Montana completed questionnaires, spirometry, and methacholine challenge testing before and after an active season of fire fighting in 1989. There were significant mean individual declines of 0.09, 0.15, and 0.44 L/s in postseason values of FVC, FEV1, and FEF25-75, respectively, compared with preseason values. There were no consistent significantmore » relationships between mean individual declines of the spirometric parameters and the covariates: sex, smoking history, history of asthma or allergies, years as a fire fighter, upper/lower respiratory symptoms, or membership in a particular Hotshot crew. There was a statistically significant increase in airway responsiveness when comparing preseason methacholine dose-response slopes (DRS) with postseason dose-response slopes (p = 0.02). The increase in airway responsiveness appeared to be greatest in fire fighters with a history of lower respiratory symptoms or asthma, but it was not related to smoking history. These data suggest that wildland fire fighting is associated with decreases in lung function and increases in airway responsiveness independent of a history of cigarette smoking. Our findings are consistent with the results of previous studies of municipal fire fighters.« less

Health Impacts of Climate Change-Induced Subzero Temperature Fires.

PubMed

Metallinou, Maria-Monika; Log, Torgrim

2017-07-20

General fire risk and the special risk related to cold climate cellulosic drying processes are outlined. Four recent subzero temperatures fires are studied with respect to health impacts: a wooden village fire, a single wood structure fire, a wildland urban interface (WUI) fire and a huge wildland fire. The health impacts range from stress related to loss of jobs, psychological effects of lost possessions, exposure to smoke and heat as well as immediate, or delayed, loss of lives. These four fires resulted in 32 fatalities, 385 persons hospitalized for shorter or longer periods, 104 structures lost and 1015 km² of wildland burned north of, and just south of, the Arctic Circle. It is shown that the combination of subzero temperature dry weather, strong winds, changing agricultural activities and declining snowpack may lead to previously anticipated threats to people and the environment. There are reasons to believe that these fires are a result of the ongoing climate changes. Risk impacts are discussed. Rural districts and/or vulnerable populations seem to be most affected. Training methods to identify and better monitor critical fire risk parameters are suggested to mitigate the health impacts of a possibly increasing number of such fires.

Health Impacts of Climate Change-Induced Subzero Temperature Fires

PubMed Central

Metallinou, Maria-Monika; Log, Torgrim

2017-01-01

General fire risk and the special risk related to cold climate cellulosic drying processes are outlined. Four recent subzero temperatures fires are studied with respect to health impacts: a wooden village fire, a single wood structure fire, a wildland urban interface (WUI) fire and a huge wildland fire. The health impacts range from stress related to loss of jobs, psychological effects of lost possessions, exposure to smoke and heat as well as immediate, or delayed, loss of lives. These four fires resulted in 32 fatalities, 385 persons hospitalized for shorter or longer periods, 104 structures lost and 1015 km2 of wildland burned north of, and just south of, the Arctic Circle. It is shown that the combination of subzero temperature dry weather, strong winds, changing agricultural activities and declining snowpack may lead to previously anticipated threats to people and the environment. There are reasons to believe that these fires are a result of the ongoing climate changes. Risk impacts are discussed. Rural districts and/or vulnerable populations seem to be most affected. Training methods to identify and better monitor critical fire risk parameters are suggested to mitigate the health impacts of a possibly increasing number of such fires. PMID:28726752

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

ENVIRONMENTAL AND WASTE MANAGEMENT SERVICES DIVISION

This Wildland Fire Management Plan (FMP) for Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) and the Upton Ecological and Research Reserve (Upton Reserve) is based on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) fire management planning procedures and was developed in cooperation with the Department of Energy (DOE) by Brookhaven Science Associates. As the Upton Reserve is contained within the BNL 5,265-acre site, it is logical that the plan applies to both the Upton Reserve and BNL. The Department of the Interior policy for managing wildland fires requires that all areas managed by FWS that can sustain fire must have an FMP thatmore » details fire management guidelines for operational procedures and specifies values to be protected or enhanced. Fire management plans provide guidance on fire preparedness, fire prevention, wildfire suppression, and the use of controlled, ''prescribed'' fires and mechanical means to control the amount of available combustible material. Values reflected in the BNL/Upton Reserve Wildland FMP include protecting life and public safety; Lab properties, structures and improvements; cultural and historical sites; neighboring private and public properties; and endangered and threatened species and species of concern. Other values supported by the plan include the enhancement of fire-dependent ecosystems at BNL and the Upton Reserve. This FMP will be reviewed periodically to ensure the fire program advances and evolves with the missions of FWS, BNL, and the Upton Reserve. This Fire Management Plan is a modified version of the Long Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex Fire plan (updated in 2000), which contains all FWS fire plan requirements and is presented in the format specified by the national template for fire management plans adopted under the National Fire Plan. The DOE is one of the signatory agencies on the National Fire Plan. FWS shall be, through an Interagency Agreement dated November 2000 (Appendix C), responsible for coordinating and implementing prescribed burns and fuel reduction projects in the Upton Reserve. Prescribed fire and fuel reduction in locations outside the Upton Reserve will be coordinated through the Natural Resource Management Program at BNL, and done in consultation with FWS. This FMP is to be used and implemented for the entire BNL site including the Upton Reserve and has been reviewed by FWS, The Nature Conservancy, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Forest Rangers, and DOE, as well as appropriate BNL emergency services personnel.« less

Fuels planning: science synthesis and integration; environmental consequences fact sheet 03: structure fires in the wildland-urban interface

Treesearch

Steve Sutherland

2004-01-01

National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) data indicate that wildfires destroyed approximately 9,000 homes between 1985 and 1994 in the United States. The loss of homes to wildfire has had a significant impact on Federal fire policy. This fact sheet discusses the causes of home ignitions in the wildland-urban interface, home ignition zones, how to reduce home...

Social science at the wildland-urban interface: a compendium of research results to create fire-adapted communities

Treesearch

Eric Toman; Melanie Stidham; Sarah McCaffrey; Bruce Shindler

2013-01-01

Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting literature to synthesize disparate findings and identify lessons learned across studies. These lessons can then be applied to fostering fire-adapted...

Estimation of wildfire size and risk changes due to fuels treatments

USGS Publications Warehouse

Cochrane, M.A.; Moran, C.J.; Wimberly, M.C.; Baer, A.D.; Finney, M.A.; Beckendorf, K.L.; Eidenshink, J.; Zhu, Z.

2012-01-01

Human land use practices, altered climates, and shifting forest and fire management policies have increased the frequency of large wildfires several-fold. Mitigation of potential fire behaviour and fire severity have increasingly been attempted through pre-fire alteration of wildland fuels using mechanical treatments and prescribed fires. Despite annual treatment of more than a million hectares of land, quantitative assessments of the effectiveness of existing fuel treatments at reducing the size of actual wildfires or how they might alter the risk of burning across landscapes are currently lacking. Here, we present a method for estimating spatial probabilities of burning as a function of extant fuels treatments for any wildland fire-affected landscape. We examined the landscape effects of more than 72 000 ha of wildland fuel treatments involved in 14 large wildfires that burned 314 000 ha of forests in nine US states between 2002 and 2010. Fuels treatments altered the probability of fire occurrence both positively and negatively across landscapes, effectively redistributing fire risk by changing surface fire spread rates and reducing the likelihood of crowning behaviour. Trade offs are created between formation of large areas with low probabilities of increased burning and smaller, well-defined regions with reduced fire risk.

Modeling acute respiratory illness during the 2007 San Diego wildland fires using a coupled emissions-transport system and generalized additive modeling.

PubMed

Thelen, Brian; French, Nancy H F; Koziol, Benjamin W; Billmire, Michael; Owen, Robert Chris; Johnson, Jeffrey; Ginsberg, Michele; Loboda, Tatiana; Wu, Shiliang

2013-11-05

A study of the impacts on respiratory health of the 2007 wildland fires in and around San Diego County, California is presented. This study helps to address the impact of fire emissions on human health by modeling the exposure potential of proximate populations to atmospheric particulate matter (PM) from vegetation fires. Currently, there is no standard methodology to model and forecast the potential respiratory health effects of PM plumes from wildland fires, and in part this is due to a lack of methodology for rigorously relating the two. The contribution in this research specifically targets that absence by modeling explicitly the emission, transmission, and distribution of PM following a wildland fire in both space and time. Coupled empirical and deterministic models describing particulate matter (PM) emissions and atmospheric dispersion were linked to spatially explicit syndromic surveillance health data records collected through the San Diego Aberration Detection and Incident Characterization (SDADIC) system using a Generalized Additive Modeling (GAM) statistical approach. Two levels of geographic aggregation were modeled, a county-wide regional level and division of the county into six sub regions. Selected health syndromes within SDADIC from 16 emergency departments within San Diego County relevant for respiratory health were identified for inclusion in the model. The model captured the variability in emergency department visits due to several factors by including nine ancillary variables in addition to wildfire PM concentration. The model coefficients and nonlinear function plots indicate that at peak fire PM concentrations the odds of a person seeking emergency care is increased by approximately 50% compared to non-fire conditions (40% for the regional case, 70% for a geographically specific case). The sub-regional analyses show that demographic variables also influence respiratory health outcomes from smoke. The model developed in this study allows a quantitative assessment and prediction of respiratory health outcomes as it relates to the location and timing of wildland fire emissions relevant for application to future wildfire scenarios. An important aspect of the resulting model is its generality thus allowing its ready use for geospatial assessments of respiratory health impacts under possible future wildfire conditions in the San Diego region. The coupled statistical and process-based modeling demonstrates an end-to-end methodology for generating reasonable estimates of wildland fire PM concentrations and health effects at resolutions compatible with syndromic surveillance data.

Using National Ambient Air Quality Standards for fine particulate matter to assess regional wildland fire smoke and air quality management.

PubMed

Schweizer, Don; Cisneros, Ricardo; Traina, Samuel; Ghezzehei, Teamrat A; Shaw, Glenn

2017-10-01

Wildland fire is an important ecological process in the California Sierra Nevada. Personal accounts from pre-20th century describe a much smokier environment than present day. The policy of suppression beginning in the early 20th century and climate change are contributing to increased megafires. We use a single particulate monitoring site at the wildland urban interface to explore impacts from prescribed, managed, and full suppression wildland fires from 2006 to 2015 producing a contextual assessment of smoke impacts over time at the landscape level. Prescribed fire had little effect on local fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) air quality with readings typical of similar non-fire times; hourly and daily good to moderate Air Quality Index (AQI) for PM 2.5 , maximum hourly concentrations 21-103 μg m -3 , and mean concentrations between 7.7 and 13.2 μg m -3 . Hourly and daily AQI was typically good or moderate during managed fires with 3 h and one day reaching unhealthy while the site remained below National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), with maximum hourly concentrations 27-244 μg m -3 , and mean concentrations 6.7-11.7 μg m -3 . The large high intensity fire in this area created the highest short term impacts (AQI unhealthy for 4 h and very unhealthy for 1 h), 11 unhealthy for sensitive days, and produced the only annual value (43.9 μg m -3 ) over the NAAQS 98th percentile for PM 2.5 (35 μg m -3 ). Pinehurst remained below the federal standards for PM 2.5 when wildland fire in the local area was managed to 7800 ha (8-22% of the historic burn area). Considering air quality impacts from smoke using the NAAQS at a landscape level over time can give land and air managers a metric for broader evaluation of smoke impacts particularly when assessing ecologically beneficial fire. Allowing managers to control the amount and timing of individual wildland fire emissions can help lessen large smoke impacts to public health from a megafire. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate: Science overview and knowledge needs

Treesearch

William T. Sommers; Rachel A. Loehman; Colin C. Hardy

2014-01-01

Wildland fires have influenced the global carbon cycle for 420 million years of Earth history, interacting with climate to define vegetation characteristics and distributions, trigger abrupt ecosystem shifts, and move carbon among terrestrial and atmospheric pools. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the dominant driver of ongoing climate change and the principal emissions...

Hydrologic ramifications of an increased role of wildland fire across the rangeland-dry forest continuum

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

The increased role of wildland fire across the rangeland-dry forest continuum in the western United States (US) presents landscape-scale consequences relative runoff and erosion. Much of the Intermountain West now exists in a state in which rangeland and woodland wildfires stimulated by invasive che...

Ground-level air pollution changes during a boreal wildland mega-fire

Treesearch

Andrzej Bytnerowicz; Yu-Mei Hsu; Kevin Percy; Allan Legge; Mark E. Fenn; Susan Schilling; Witold Frączek; Diane Alexander

2016-01-01

The 2011 Richardson wildland mega-fire in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) in northern Alberta, Canada had large effects on air quality. At a receptor site in the center of the AOSR ambient PM2.5, O3, NO, NO2, SO2, NH3, HONO, HNO3...

Spatial And Temporal Variability Of Wildland Fire Emissions Over The U.S.

Treesearch

Yongqiang Liu

2003-01-01

Wildland fires release large amounts of particulate matter (PM), CO, S02, NOx,, and Volatile Organic Carbon (VOC), which can cause serious consequence of regional and local air quality (Sandberg et al., 1999). All these components except VOC are the principal pollutants whose emissions are subject to the National Ambient...

Collaborative planning to reduce risk

Treesearch

Victoria Sturtevant; Pamela Jakes

2008-01-01

Wildland fire knows no political boundaries, nor should efforts to address its risk. Collaboration is not a new idea; many examples of natural resource managers and community groups working together can be found in forest management planning, watershed restoration, and wildland fire suppression (Sturtevant et al. 2005). Direction from a number of sources has urged...

Wildland smoke exposure values and exhaled breath indicators in firefighters.

PubMed

Miranda, Ana Isabel; Martins, Vera; Cascão, Pedro; Amorim, Jorge Humberto; Valente, Joana; Borrego, Carlos; Ferreira, António Jorge; Cordeiro, Carlos Robalo; Viegas, Domingos Xavier; Ottmar, Roger

2012-01-01

Smoke from forest fires contains significant amounts of gaseous and particulate pollutants. Firefighters exposed to wildland fire smoke can suffer from several acute and chronic adverse health effects. Consequently, exposure data are of vital importance for the establishment of cause/effect relationships between exposure to smoke and firefighter health effects. The aims of this study were to (1) characterize the relationship between wildland smoke exposure and medical parameters and (2) identify health effects pertinent to wildland forest fire smoke exposure. In this study, firefighter exposure levels of carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and volatile organic compounds (VOC) were measured in wildfires during three fire seasons in Portugal. Personal monitoring devices were used to measure exposure. Firefighters were also tested for exhaled nitric oxide (eNO) and CO before and after their firefighting activities. Data indicated that exposure levels during firefighting activities were beyond limits recommended by the Occupational Exposure Standard (OES) values. Medical tests conducted on the firefighters also indicated a considerable effect on measured medical parameters, with a significant increase in CO and decrease in NO in exhaled air of majority of the firefighters.

Integrating Fire, Climate, and Societal Factors into Decision Support for Strategic Planning in Wildland Fire Management

Treesearch

Barbara J. Morehouse; Gregg Garfin; Timothy Brown; Thomas W. Swetnam

2006-01-01

An El Niño winter in 1998-99, followed by a strong La Niña winter in 1999- 2000, set the stage for potentially large wildfires in the southwestern, southeastern, and northwestern forests of the United States. Researchers at the University of Arizona organized a three-day workshop to discuss the relationship between synoptic scale climate conditions and wildland fire...

Assessing wildfire exposure in the Wildland-Urban Interface area of the mountains of central Argentina.

PubMed

Argañaraz, J P; Radeloff, V C; Bar-Massada, A; Gavier-Pizarro, G I; Scavuzzo, C M; Bellis, L M

2017-07-01

Wildfires are a major threat to people and property in Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) communities worldwide, but while the patterns of the WUI in North America, Europe and Oceania have been studied before, this is not the case in Latin America. Our goals were to a) map WUI areas in central Argentina, and b) assess wildfire exposure for WUI communities in relation to historic fires, with special emphasis on large fires and estimated burn probability based on an empirical model. We mapped the WUI in the mountains of central Argentina (810,000 ha), after digitizing the location of 276,700 buildings and deriving vegetation maps from satellite imagery. The areas where houses and wildland vegetation intermingle were classified as Intermix WUI (housing density > 6.17 hu/km 2 and wildland vegetation cover > 50%), and the areas where wildland vegetation abuts settlements were classified as Interface WUI (housing density > 6.17 hu/km 2 , wildland vegetation cover < 50%, but within 600 m of a vegetated patch larger than 5 km 2 ). We generated burn probability maps based on historical fire data from 1999 to 2011; as well as from an empirical model of fire frequency. WUI areas occupied 15% of our study area and contained 144,000 buildings (52%). Most WUI area was Intermix WUI, but most WUI buildings were in the Interface WUI. Our findings suggest that central Argentina has a WUI fire problem. WUI areas included most of the buildings exposed to wildfires and most of the buildings located in areas of higher burn probability. Our findings can help focus fire management activities in areas of higher risk, and ultimately provide support for landscape management and planning aimed at reducing wildfire risk in WUI communities. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Impact of air quality in Mexico City due to particles smaller than ten microns (PM10) by wildland fire in "Cumbres del Ajusco Park" for the year 2013

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mendoza, A.; Garcia-Reynoso, J. A.; Ruiz-Suárez, L. G.; Torres, R.; Castro, T.; Peralta, O.; Padilla Barrera, Z. V.; Mar, B.; Carbajal, J. N.

2014-12-01

A forest fire is a natural process of combustion in a specific geographical area, its occurrence depends on meteorological variables, topography and vegetation type, the wildland fires are potential sources of large amounts of pollutants. The main air pollutants are in a wildland fires particles (PM10 and PM2.5) Carbon Monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOC's) and a negligible amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) (Chow 1995), Was performed a study of the environmental impact on air quality in Mexico city for a wildland fire. The fire was presented in Cumbres del Ajusco Park on April 14 for the year 2013, with a duration of 26 hours and consuming an extension 150 ha of pasture, WRF-Chem and WRF-fire model were used to conduct the study, two modeling scenarios were made, one including emissions from wildfire and other without emission-fire, comparison is made between the two modeling scenarios in order to calculate on air quality in Mexico cityPM10 concentrations have a larger impact on the air quality of Mexico city, when fire emission were included, a plume of PM10 coming from fire increase ambient concentration up to 350ug/m3 and it was obtained by modeling similar to the concentration measured by a monitoring station (320ug/m3).The current limit is 120ug/m3 24 hours average. (Mexican standard NOM-025-SSA1-1993)This system for setting emissions from fire is working properly whoever further development is required.

The science of decisionmaking: applications for sustainable forest and grassland management in the National Forest System

Treesearch

Matthew P. Thompson; Bruce G. Marcot; Frank R. Thompson; Steven McNulty; Larry A. Fisher; Michael C. Runge; David Cleaves; Monica Tomosy

2013-01-01

Sustainable management of national forests and grasslands within the National Forest System (NFS) often requires managers to make tough decisions under considerable uncertainty, complexity, and potential conflict. Resource decisionmakers must weigh a variety of risks, stressors, and challenges to sustainable management, including climate change, wildland fire, invasive...

An exploration of warfighting and firefighting doctrine

Treesearch

Michael T. DeGrosky; Alen Slijepcevic

2015-01-01

Over the past two decades, wildland fire professionals have been confronted with worsening conditions and complex challenges that cry out for change and new ways of thinking. However, change requires a framework within which people reliably translate policy into timely, effective action. Doctrine, or a body of teachings, instructions, taught principles, or positions,...

Reducing Community Vulnerability to Wildland Fires in Southern California

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Keeley, J. E.

2010-12-01

In the US fires are not treated like other hazards such as earthquakes but rather as preventable through landscape fuel treatments and aggressive fire suppression. In southern California extreme fire weather has made it impossible to control all fires and thus loss of homes and lives is a constant threat to communities. There is growing evidence that indicate we are not likely to ever eliminate fires on these landscapes. Thus, it is time to reframe the fire problem and think of fires like we do with other natural hazards such as earthquakes. We do not attempt to stop earthquakes, rather the primary emphasis is on altering human infrastructure in ways that minimize community vulnerability. In other words we need to change our approach from risk elimination to risk management. This approach means we accept that we cannot eliminate fires but rather learn to live with fire by communities becoming more fire adapted. We potentially can make great strides in reducing community vulnerability by finding those factors with high impacts and are sensitive to changes in management. Presently, decision makers have relatively little guidance about which of these is likely to have the greatest impact. Future reductions in fire risk to communities requires we address both wildland and urban elements that contribute to destructive losses. Damage risk or D is determined by: D = f (I, S, E, G, H) where I = the probability of a fire starting in the landscape S = the probability of the fire reaching a size sufficient to reach the urban environment E = probability of it encroaching into the urban environment G = probability of fire propagating within the built environment H = probability of a fire, once within the built environment, resulting in the destruction of a building. In southern California, reducing I through more strategic fire prevention has potential for reducing fire risk. There are many ignition sources that could be reduced, such as replacing power line ignitions with underground lines, strategically employing arson patrols during Santa Ana wind events, enforcing regulations on power equipment use in wildland areas, k-rail barriers along roads to reduce fire spread into wildland areas etc. S, or the probability of fire reaching urban environments has historically been the primary focus of state and federal fire management activities. There is a need for greater focus on understanding the most strategic application of wildland fuel treatments. E, the probability of fire encroaching into the urban environment, has largely been addressed in the past by attention to wildland-urban interface (WUI) fuel treatments. The one factor that has perhaps the greatest potential for impacting E are patterns of urban growth, both in strategic placement and spatial patterning within communities, and this is an area where alternative future growth scenarios could have huge impacts on fire outcomes. G, the chance of fire propagating within the urban environment is a function of urban fuels, which include both home construction and landscaping. This area has the potential for effecting large changes in fire losses dependent upon future regulations on plantings in the urban environment.

Urban-Wildland Fire Defense Strategy, Precision Prescribed Fire: The Los Angeles County Approach

Treesearch

Scott E. Franklin

1987-01-01

In the County of Los Angeles, critical conditions at the urban-wildland interface range from concentrated development to dispersed development; elevations from sea levelto 5000 feet with diverse ecosystems characterized by coastal sage scrub, Chamise, sumac, Ceanothus, Toyon, oak woodlands, pine forests, and desert sage; air quality impacts; sediment production; public...

Safety climate in the US federal wildland fire management community: influences of organizational, environmental, group, and individual characteristics

Treesearch

Anne E. Black; Brooke Baldauf McBride

2013-01-01

This study examined the effects of organisational, environmental, group and individual characteristics on five components of safety climate (High Reliability Organising Practices, Leadership, Group Culture, Learning Orientation and Mission Clarity) in the US federal wildland fire management community. Of particular interest were differences between perceptions based on...

Chapter 12 - Mapping wildland fuel across large regions for the LANDFIRE Prototype Project

Treesearch

Robert E. Keane; Tracey Frescino; Matthew C. Reeves; Jennifer L. Long

2006-01-01

The Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Prototype Project, or LANDFIRE Prototype Project, required that the entire array of wildland fuel characteristics be mapped to provide fire and landscape managers with consistent baseline geo-spatial information to plan projects for hazardous fuel mitigation and to improve public and firefighter safety. Fuel...

Aligning smoke management with ecological and public health goals

Treesearch

Jonathan W. Long; Leland W. Tarnay; Malcolm P. North

2017-01-01

Past and current forest management affects wildland fire smoke impacts on downwind human populations. However, mismatches between the scale of benefits and risks make it difficult to proactively manage wildland fires to promote both ecological and public health. Building on recent literature and advances in modeling smoke and health effects, we outline a framework to...

Risk terminology primer: Basic principles and a glossary for the wildland fire management community

Treesearch

Matthew P. Thompson; Tom Zimmerman; Dan Mindar; Mary Taber

2016-01-01

Risk management is being increasingly promoted as an appropriate method for addressing wildland fire management challenges. However, a lack of a common understanding of risk concepts and terminology is hindering effective application. In response, this General Technical Report provides a set of clear, consistent, understandable, and usable definitions for terms...

Economics of wildfire management: The development and application of suppression expenditure models

Treesearch

Michael S. Hand; Krista M. Gebert; Jingjing Liang; David E. Calkin; Matthew P. Thompson; Mo Zhou

2014-01-01

In the United States, increased wildland fire activity over the last 15 years has resulted in increased pressure to balance the cost, benefits, and risks of wildfire management. Amid increased public scrutiny and a highly variable wildland fire environment, a substantial body of research has developed to study factors affecting the cost-effectiveness of wildfire...

The Value of Assessing Public Perceptions: Wildland Fire and Defensible Space

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Monroe, Martha C.; Nelson, Kristen C.

2004-01-01

Fire is a challenge in the wildland-urban interface. Although resource managers encourage residents to create defensible space, many do not. This study illustrates the value of using a needs assessment to better understand perceptions of an audience in order to develop meaningful messages and materials. In this case, our audience is residents of…

Vegetation clearance distances to prevent wildland fire caused damage to telecommunication and power transmission infrastructure (2)

Treesearch

B. W. Butler; T. Wallace; J. Hogge

2015-01-01

Towers and poles supporting power transmission and telecommunication lines have collapsed due to heating from wildland fires. Such occurrences have led to interruptions in power or communication in large municipal areas with associated social and political implications as well as increased immediate danger to humans. Vegetation clearance standards for overhead...

Vegetation clearance distances to prevent wildland fire caused damage to telecommunication and power transmission infrastructure

Treesearch

B. W. Butler; J. Webb; J. Hogge; T. Wallace

2015-01-01

Towers and poles supporting power transmission and telecommunication lines have collapsed due to heating from wildland fires. Such occurrences have led to interruptions in power or communication in large municipal areas with associated social and political implications as well as increased immediate danger to humans. Unfortunately, no studies address the question of...

Coherent vertical structures in numerical simulations of buoyant plumes from wildland fires

Treesearch

Philip Cunningham; Scott L. Goodrick; M. Yousuff Hussaini; Rodman R. Linn

2005-01-01

The structure and dynamics of buoyant plumes arising from surface-based heat sources in a vertically sheared ambient atmospheric flow are examined via simulations of a three-dimensional, compressible numerical model. Simple circular heat sources and asymmetric elliptical ring heat sources that are representative of wildland fires of moderate intensity are considered....

Wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate: Plume rise, atmospheric transport, and chemistry processes

Treesearch

Warren Heilman; Yongqiang Liu; Shawn Urbanski; Vladimir Kovalev; Robert Mickler

2014-01-01

This paper provides an overview and summary of the current state of knowledge regarding critical atmospheric processes that affect the distribution and concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols emitted from wildland fires or produced through subsequent chemical reactions in the atmosphere. These critical atmospheric processes include the dynamics of plume rise,...

High-resolution numerical models for smoke transport in plumes from wildland fires

Treesearch

Philip Cunningham; Scott Goodrick

2013-01-01

A high-resolution large-eddy simulation (LES) model is employed to examine the fundamental structure and dynamics of buoyant plumes arising from heat sources representative of wildland fires. Herein we describe several aspects of the mean properties of the simulated plumes. Mean plume trajectories are apparently well described by the traditional two-thirds law for...

Atmospheric Response And Feedback To Smoke Radiative Forcing From Wildland Fires

Treesearch

Yongqiang Liu

2003-01-01

Smoke from wildland fires is one of the sources of atmospheric anthropogenic aerosols. it can dramatically affect regional and global radiative balance. Ross et al. (1998) estimated a direct radiative forcing of nearly -20 Wm-2 for the 1995 Amazonian smoke season (August and September). Penner et al. (1992) indicated that the magnitude of the...

A mathematical model for predicting fire spread in wildland fuels

Treesearch

Richard C. Rothermel

1972-01-01

A mathematical fire model for predicting rate of spread and intensity that is applicable to a wide range of wildland fuels and environment is presented. Methods of incorporating mixtures of fuel sizes are introduced by weighting input parameters by surface area. The input parameters do not require a prior knowledge of the burning characteristics of the fuel.

Trends in public attitudes towards the use of wildland fire

Treesearch

Katie Knotek

2006-01-01

This paper summarizes a select set of research studies conducted over the past 40 years, drawing conclusions on trends in public attitudes about the use of wildland fire in federally-designated Wilderness. The research includes trend studies conducted with visitors to Wilderness areas in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho and Montana. Each research study used a...

Initial impressions from the Northern California 2008 lightning siege: A report by a Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center Information Collection Team

Treesearch

Jonetta T. Holt; David Christenson; Anne Black; Brett Fay; Kim Round

2009-01-01

This event in NorCal is another of the major events we have experienced in fire management. In line with our desire to learn, we ought to line up a team to help us capture lessons learned from this event." This statement, and a regional delegation, was the impetus for an information collection team from the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center to visit with...

How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters in the wildland-urban interface

PubMed Central

Calkin, David E.; Cohen, Jack D.; Finney, Mark A.; Thompson, Matthew P.

2014-01-01

Recent fire seasons in the western United States are some of the most damaging and costly on record. Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface on the Colorado Front Range, resulting in thousands of homes burned and civilian fatalities, although devastating, are not without historical reference. These fires are consistent with the characteristics of large, damaging, interface fires that threaten communities across much of the western United States. Wildfires are inevitable, but the destruction of homes, ecosystems, and lives is not. We propose the principles of risk analysis to provide land management agencies, first responders, and affected communities who face the inevitability of wildfires the ability to reduce the potential for loss. Overcoming perceptions of wildland-urban interface fire disasters as a wildfire control problem rather than a home ignition problem, determined by home ignition conditions, will reduce home loss. PMID:24344292

Inviting other professions to help reduce wildfire property losses

Treesearch

A. Fege; J. Absher

2007-01-01

Preventing structure loss has become a major focal point of wildland firefighting. Most days it feels like wildland fire professionals and land managers are become more and more responsible for reducing property losses in the wildland/urban interface (WUI).What if this impression-and reality-could change?

Mulch flammability

Treesearch

Wayne Zipperer; Alan Long; Brian Hnton; Alexander Maranghides; William Mell

2007-01-01

Regardless of how horrible and devastating wildland fires are portrayed by the media, they are a natural disturbance that many native ecosystems depend on for regeneration. As the population of the United States increases, more individuals are building their homes in wildlands rather than urban landscapes. Homes built in undeveloped wildland vegetation create areas...

Sustainability and wildland fire: The origins of Forest Service Wildland Fire Research

Treesearch

Diane M. Smith

2017-01-01

On June 1, 2015, the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Branch of Research. Established in 1915 to centralize and elevate the pursuit of research throughout the agency, the Branch of Research focused on everything from silvicultural investigations conducted by the experiment stations to...

Safe separation distance score: A new metric for evaluating wildland firefighter safety zones using lidar

Treesearch

Michael J. Campbell; Philip E. Dennison; Bret W. Butler

2016-01-01

Safety zones are areas where firefighters can retreat to in order to avoid bodily harm when threatened by burnover or entrapment from wildland fire. At present, safety zones are primarily designated by firefighting personnel as part of daily fire management activities. Though critical to safety zone assessment, the effectiveness of this approach is inherently limited...

Evaluating wildland fire danger and prioritizing vegetation and fuels treatments

Treesearch

Paul F. Hessburg; Keith M. Reynolds; Robert E. Keane; Kevin M. James; R. Brion Salter

2010-01-01

We present a prototype decision support system for evaluating wild-land fire danger and prioritizing subwatersheds for vegetation and fuels treatment. We demonstrate the use of the system with an example from the Rocky Mountain region in the State of Utah, which represents a planning area of about 4.8 million ha and encompasses 575 complete subwatersheds. In a logic...

Urban users of wildland areas as forest fire risks

Treesearch

William S. Folkman

1979-01-01

A telephone survey of 1500 households in metropolitan Los Angeles and San Francisco was made to (1) determine extent of wildland use by residents of the two metropolitan areas, reasons for non-use, and the characteristics of users; (2) describe and analyze activities, knowledge, and attitudes of users which may contribute to their fire risk; and (3) assess selected...

National strategic plan: modeling and data systems for wildland fire and air quality.

Treesearch

David V. Sandberg; Colin C. Hardy; Roger D. Ottmar; J.A. Kendall Snell; Ann Acheson; Janice L. Peterson; Paula Seamon; Peter Lahm; Dale Wade

1999-01-01

This strategic plan is a technical discussion of the implementation and development of models and data systems used to manage the air quality impacts of wildland and prescribed fires. Strategies and priorities in the plan were generated by the Express Team (chartered by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group) and a diverse group of 86 subject matter experts who...

Assessing fire risk in the wildland-urban interface.

Treesearch

Robert G. Haight; David T. Cleland; Roger B. Hammer; Volker B. Radeloff; T. Scott Rupp

2004-01-01

Identifying areas of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) that are prone to severe wildfire is an important step in prioritizing fire prevention and preparedness projects. Our objective is to determine at a regional scale the relative risk of severe wildfire in WUI areas and the numbers of people and houses in high-risk areas. For a study area in northern lower Michigan...

An improved canopy wind model for predicting wind adjustment factors and wildland fire behavior

Treesearch

W. J. Massman; J. M. Forthofer; M. A. Finney

2017-01-01

The ability to rapidly estimate wind speed beneath a forest canopy or near the ground surface in any vegetation is critical to practical wildland fire behavior models. The common metric of this wind speed is the "mid-flame" wind speed, UMF. However, the existing approach for estimating UMF has some significant shortcomings. These include the assumptions that...

Wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface: A simulation study in northwestern Wisconsin

Treesearch

Avi Bar Massada; Volker C. Radeloff; Susan I. Stewart; Todd J. Hawbaker

2009-01-01

The rapid growth of housing in and near the wildland-urban interface (WUI) increases wildfire risk to lives and structures. To reduce fire risk, it is necessary to identify WUI housing areas that are more susceptible to wildfire. This is challenging, because wildfire patterns depend on fire behavior and spread, which in turn depend on ignition locations, weather...

Assessing fire risk in the wildland-urban interface

Treesearch

Robert G. Haight; David T. Cleland; Roger B. Hammer; Volker C. Radeloff; T. Scott Rupp

2004-01-01

Identifying areas of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) that are prone to severe wildfire is an important step in prioritizing fire prevention and preparedness projects. Our objective is to determine at a regional scale the relative risk of severe wildfire in WUI areas and the numbers of people and houses in high-risk areas. For a study area in northern lower Michigan...

Assessing high reliability practices in wildland fire management: an exploration and benchmarking of organizational culture

Treesearch

Anne E. Black; Brooke Baldauf McBride

2013-01-01

In an effort to improve organizational outcomes, including safety, in wildland fire management, researchers and practitioners have turned to a domain of research on organizational performance known as High Reliability Organizing (HRO). The HRO paradigm emerged in the late 1980s in an effort to identify commonalities among organizations that function under hazardous...

Learning as a shared responsibility: Insights from a series of dialogic workshops with practitioners, leaders, and researchers (Abstract)

Treesearch

Anne Black; Dave Thomas; Jennifer Ziegler; Jim Saveland

2012-01-01

For some time now, the wildland fire community has been interested in 'organizational learning' as a way to improve safety and overall performance. For instance, in the US, federal agencies have established and continue to support the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, sponsored several national conferences and are currently considering how incident...

Learning as a shared responsibility: Insights from a series of dialogic workshops with practitioners, leaders, and researchers

Treesearch

Anne E. Black; Dave Thomas; Jennifer Ziegler; J. Saveland

2012-01-01

For some time now, the wildland fire community has been interested in 'organizational learning' as a way to improve safety and overall performance. For instance, in the US, federal agencies have established the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, sponsored several national conferences, and are currently considering how incident reviews might be used to...

Progress towards and barriers to implementation of a risk framework for US federal wildland fire policy and decision making

Treesearch

David C. Calkin; Mark A. Finney; Alan A. Ager; Matthew P. Thompson; Krista M. Gebert

2011-01-01

In this paper we review progress towards the implementation of a riskmanagement framework for US federal wildland fire policy and operations. We first describe new developments in wildfire simulation technology that catalyzed the development of risk-based decision support systems for strategic wildfire management. These systems include new analytical methods to measure...

Barriers to implementation of risk management for federal wildland fire management agencies in the United States

Treesearch

Dave Calkin; Matthew P. Thompson; Alan A. Ager; Mark Finney

2010-01-01

In this presentation we review progress towards the implementation of a risk-based management framework for U.S. Federal wildland fire policy and operations. We first describe new developments in wildfire simulation technology that catalyzed the development of risk-based decision support systems for strategic wildfire management. These systems include new analytical...

A survey of vegetation and wildland fire hazards on the Nevada Test Site

Treesearch

Dennis J. Hansen; W. Kent Ostler

2008-01-01

In the springs of 2004, 2005, and 2006, surveys were conducted on the Nevada Test Site (NTS) to characterize vegetation resources and climatic components of the environment that contribute to wildland fires. The NTS includes both Great Basin Desert and Mojave Desert ecosystems and a transitional zone between these two deserts. The field surveys assessed 211 sites along...

Communicating the wildland fire message: Influences on knowledge and attitude change in two case studies

Treesearch

Eric Toman; Bruce Shindler

2006-01-01

Current wildland fire policy calls for citizen involvement in planning and management. To be effective in their efforts to engage outside stakeholders, resource professionals need to understand citizens’ understanding and attitudes toward current practices as well as how to best communicate about proposed actions. A variety of outreach methods have been used to...

Modeling acute respiratory illness during the 2007 San Diego wildland fires using a coupled emissions-transport system and generalized additive modeling

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background A study of the impacts on respiratory health of the 2007 wildland fires in and around San Diego County, California is presented. This study helps to address the impact of fire emissions on human health by modeling the exposure potential of proximate populations to atmospheric particulate matter (PM) from vegetation fires. Currently, there is no standard methodology to model and forecast the potential respiratory health effects of PM plumes from wildland fires, and in part this is due to a lack of methodology for rigorously relating the two. The contribution in this research specifically targets that absence by modeling explicitly the emission, transmission, and distribution of PM following a wildland fire in both space and time. Methods Coupled empirical and deterministic models describing particulate matter (PM) emissions and atmospheric dispersion were linked to spatially explicit syndromic surveillance health data records collected through the San Diego Aberration Detection and Incident Characterization (SDADIC) system using a Generalized Additive Modeling (GAM) statistical approach. Two levels of geographic aggregation were modeled, a county-wide regional level and division of the county into six sub regions. Selected health syndromes within SDADIC from 16 emergency departments within San Diego County relevant for respiratory health were identified for inclusion in the model. Results The model captured the variability in emergency department visits due to several factors by including nine ancillary variables in addition to wildfire PM concentration. The model coefficients and nonlinear function plots indicate that at peak fire PM concentrations the odds of a person seeking emergency care is increased by approximately 50% compared to non-fire conditions (40% for the regional case, 70% for a geographically specific case). The sub-regional analyses show that demographic variables also influence respiratory health outcomes from smoke. Conclusions The model developed in this study allows a quantitative assessment and prediction of respiratory health outcomes as it relates to the location and timing of wildland fire emissions relevant for application to future wildfire scenarios. An important aspect of the resulting model is its generality thus allowing its ready use for geospatial assessments of respiratory health impacts under possible future wildfire conditions in the San Diego region. The coupled statistical and process-based modeling demonstrates an end-to-end methodology for generating reasonable estimates of wildland fire PM concentrations and health effects at resolutions compatible with syndromic surveillance data. PMID:24192051

Forecasting wildland fire behavior using high-resolution large-eddy simulations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Munoz-Esparza, D.; Kosovic, B.; Jimenez, P. A.; Anderson, A.; DeCastro, A.; Brown, B.

2016-12-01

Wildland fires are responsible for large socio-economic impacts. Fires affect the environment, damage structures, threaten lives, cause health issues, and involve large suppression costs. These impacts can be mitigated via accurate fire spread forecast to inform the incident management team. To this end, the state of Colorado is funding the development of the Colorado Fire Prediction System (CO-FPS). The system is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model enhanced with a fire behavior module (WRF-Fire). Realistic representation of wildland fire behavior requires explicit representation of small scale weather phenomena to properly account for coupled atmosphere-wildfire interactions. Moreover, transport and dispersion of biomass burning emissions from wildfires is controlled by turbulent processes in the atmospheric boundary layer, which are difficult to parameterize and typically lead to large errors when simplified source estimation and injection height methods are used. Therefore, we utilize turbulence-resolving large-eddy simulations at a resolution of 111 m to forecast fire spread and smoke distribution using a coupled atmosphere-wildfire model. This presentation will describe our improvements to the level-set based fire-spread algorithm in WRF-Fire and an evaluation of the operational system using 12 wildfire events that occurred in Colorado in 2016, as well as other historical fires. In addition, the benefits of explicit representation of turbulence for smoke transport and dispersion will be demonstrated.

New tendencies in wildland fire simulation for understanding fire phenomena: An overview of the WFDS system capabilities in Mediterranean ecosystems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pastor, E.; Tarragó, D.; Planas, E.

2012-04-01

Wildfire theoretical modeling endeavors predicting fire behavior characteristics, such as the rate of spread, the flames geometry and the energy released by the fire front by applying the physics and the chemistry laws that govern fire phenomena. Its ultimate aim is to help fire managers to improve fire prevention and suppression and hence reducing damage to population and protecting ecosystems. WFDS is a 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a fire-driven flow. It is particularly appropriate for predicting the fire behaviour burning through the wildland-urban interface, since it is able to predict the fire behaviour in the intermix of vegetative and structural fuels that comprise the wildland urban interface. This model is not suitable for operational fire management yet due to computational costs constrains, but given the fact that it is open-source and that it has a detailed description of the fuels and of the combustion and heat transfer mechanisms it is currently a suitable system for research purposes. In this paper we present the most important characteristics of the WFDS simulation tool in terms of the models implemented, the input information required and the outputs that the simulator gives useful for understanding fire phenomena. We briefly discuss its advantages and opportunities through some simulation exercises of Mediterranean ecosystems.

Forecasting wildland fire behavior using high-resolution large-eddy simulations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Munoz-Esparza, D.; Kosovic, B.; Jimenez, P. A.; Anderson, A.; DeCastro, A.; Brown, B.

2017-12-01

Wildland fires are responsible for large socio-economic impacts. Fires affect the environment, damage structures, threaten lives, cause health issues, and involve large suppression costs. These impacts can be mitigated via accurate fire spread forecast to inform the incident management team. To this end, the state of Colorado is funding the development of the Colorado Fire Prediction System (CO-FPS). The system is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model enhanced with a fire behavior module (WRF-Fire). Realistic representation of wildland fire behavior requires explicit representation of small scale weather phenomena to properly account for coupled atmosphere-wildfire interactions. Moreover, transport and dispersion of biomass burning emissions from wildfires is controlled by turbulent processes in the atmospheric boundary layer, which are difficult to parameterize and typically lead to large errors when simplified source estimation and injection height methods are used. Therefore, we utilize turbulence-resolving large-eddy simulations at a resolution of 111 m to forecast fire spread and smoke distribution using a coupled atmosphere-wildfire model. This presentation will describe our improvements to the level-set based fire-spread algorithm in WRF-Fire and an evaluation of the operational system using 12 wildfire events that occurred in Colorado in 2016, as well as other historical fires. In addition, the benefits of explicit representation of turbulence for smoke transport and dispersion will be demonstrated.

The fuelbed: a key element of the Fuel Characteristic Classification System.

Treesearch

Cynthia L. Riccardi; Roger D. Ottmar; David V. Sandberg; Anne Andreu; Ella Elman; Karen Kopper; Jennifer Long

2007-01-01

Wildland fuelbed characteristics are temporally and spatially complex and can vary widely across regions. To capture this variability, we designed the Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS), a national system to create fuelbeds and classify those fuelbeds for their capacity to support fire and consume fuels. This paper describes the structure of the fuelbeds...

Writing syntheses for managers: Lessons from the Rainbow Series and Fire Effects Information System

Treesearch

Jane Kapler Smith; Kristin L. Zouhar; Janet Fryer

2009-01-01

Scientific knowledge is essential for sound wildland management, but this knowledge is a complex, ever-expanding resource. Managers often request syntheses or reviews of available knowledge, and scientists have responded with an increasing number of syntheses for managers. Unfortunately, little guidance is available for this kind of writing. While most scientists have...

An Accurate Fire-Spread Algorithm in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model Using the Level-Set Method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Muñoz-Esparza, Domingo; Kosović, Branko; Jiménez, Pedro A.; Coen, Janice L.

2018-04-01

The level-set method is typically used to track and propagate the fire perimeter in wildland fire models. Herein, a high-order level-set method using fifth-order WENO scheme for the discretization of spatial derivatives and third-order explicit Runge-Kutta temporal integration is implemented within the Weather Research and Forecasting model wildland fire physics package, WRF-Fire. The algorithm includes solution of an additional partial differential equation for level-set reinitialization. The accuracy of the fire-front shape and rate of spread in uncoupled simulations is systematically analyzed. It is demonstrated that the common implementation used by level-set-based wildfire models yields to rate-of-spread errors in the range 10-35% for typical grid sizes (Δ = 12.5-100 m) and considerably underestimates fire area. Moreover, the amplitude of fire-front gradients in the presence of explicitly resolved turbulence features is systematically underestimated. In contrast, the new WRF-Fire algorithm results in rate-of-spread errors that are lower than 1% and that become nearly grid independent. Also, the underestimation of fire area at the sharp transition between the fire front and the lateral flanks is found to be reduced by a factor of ≈7. A hybrid-order level-set method with locally reduced artificial viscosity is proposed, which substantially alleviates the computational cost associated with high-order discretizations while preserving accuracy. Simulations of the Last Chance wildfire demonstrate additional benefits of high-order accurate level-set algorithms when dealing with complex fuel heterogeneities, enabling propagation across narrow fuel gaps and more accurate fire backing over the lee side of no fuel clusters.

Mitigating wildland fire hazard using complex network centrality measures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Russo, Lucia; Russo, Paola; Siettos, Constantinos I.

2016-12-01

We show how to distribute firebreaks in heterogeneous forest landscapes in the presence of strong wind using complex network centrality measures. The proposed framework is essentially a two-tire one: at the inner part a state-of- the-art Cellular Automata model is used to compute the weights of the underlying lattice network while at the outer part the allocation of the fire breaks is scheduled in terms of a hierarchy of centralities which influence the most the spread of fire. For illustration purposes we applied the proposed framework to a real-case wildfire that broke up in Spetses Island, Greece in 1990. We evaluate the scheme against the benchmark of random allocation of firebreaks under the weather conditions of the real incident i.e. in the presence of relatively strong winds.

Wildland fire potential: A tool for assessing wildfire risk and fuels management needs

Treesearch

Greg Dillon; James Menakis; Frank Fay

2015-01-01

Federal wildfire managers often want to know, over large landscapes, where wildfires are likely to occur and how intense they may be. To meet this need we developed a map that we call wildland fire potential (WFP) - a raster geospatial product that can help to inform evaluations of wildfire risk or prioritization of fuels management needs across very large spatial...

An evaluation of the Forest Service Hazardous Fuels Treatment Program—Are we treating enough to promote resiliency or reduce hazard?

Treesearch

Nicole M. Vaillant; Elizabeth D. Reinhardt

2017-01-01

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy recognizes that wildfire is a necessary natural process in many ecosystems and strives to reduce conflicts between fire-prone landscapes and people. In an effort to mitigate potential negative wildfire impacts proactively, the Forest Service fuels program reduces wildland fuels. As part of an internal program...

Assessing values of air quality and visibility at risk from wildland fires.

Treesearch

Sue A. Ferguson; Steven J. McKay; David E. Nagel; Trent Piepho; Miriam L. Rorig; Casey Anderson; Lara Kellogg

2003-01-01

To assess values of air quality and visibility at risk from wildland fire in the United States, we generated a 40-year database that includes twice daily values of wind, mixing height, and a ventilation index that is the product of windspeed and mixing height. The database provides the first nationally consistent map of surface wind and ventilation index. In addition,...

Seeking common ground: protecting homes from wildfires while making forests more resilient to fire

Treesearch

Noreen Parks; Alan Ager

2011-01-01

Federal policies direct public-land managers to reduce wildfire risks for urban areas close to wildlands, while broader agency goals call for landscape restoration to create fire-resilient forests. This study used wildfires simulation modeling to examine the tradeoffs between focusing fuel reduction efforts on a wildland-urban interface (WUI) in Oregon’s Blue Mountains...

Effects of climate oscillations on wildland fire potential in the continental United States

Treesearch

Shelby A. Mason; Peter E. Hamlington; Benjamin D. Hamlington; W. Matt Jolly; Chad M. Hoffman

2017-01-01

The effects of climate oscillations on spatial and temporal variations in wildland fire potential in the continental U.S. are examined from 1979 to 2015 using cyclostationary empirical orthogonal functions (CSEOFs). The CSEOF analysis isolates effects associated with the modulated annual cycle and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The results show that, in early...

Pleasing some of the people some of the time: How authors, subjects, and readers assess "Audience" in wildland fire incident reviews

Treesearch

Jennifer A. Ziegler; Anne E. Black

2012-01-01

When unexpected outcomes occur in wildland fire, reports from incident reviews carry a symbolic value beyond the factual information they contain. Popular perception of incident reviews is that the organization has identified the root cause with an eye toward system change, and that the final report chronicles "the" final, definitive, and authoritative...

Goals, obstacles and effective strategies of wildfire mitigation programs in the Wildland-Urban Interface

Treesearch

Margaret A. Reams; Terry K. Haines; Cheryl R. Renner; Michael W. Wascom; Harish Kingre

2005-01-01

The dramatic expansion into the Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) places property, natural assets, and human life at risk from wildfire destruction. The U.S. National Fire Plan encourages communities to implement laws and outreach programs for pre-fire planning to mitigate the risk to area residents. Starting in 2003, we surveyed the administrators of regulatory and...

Wide Dynamic Range Multiband Infrared Radiometer for In-Fire Measurements of Wildland Fire Radiant Flux Density

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kremens, R.; Dickinson, M. B.; Hardy, C.; Skowronski, N.; Ellicott, E. A.; Schroeder, W.

2016-12-01

We have developed a wide dynamic range (24-bit) data acquisition system for collection of radiant flux density (FRFD) data from wildland fires. The data collection subsystem was designed as an Arduino `shield' and incorporates a 24-bit analog-to-digital converter, precision voltage reference, real time clock, microSD card interface, audible annuciator and interface for various digital communication interfaces (RS232, I2C, SPI, etc.). The complete radiometer system consists of our custom-designed `shield', a commercially available Arduino MEGA computer circuit board and a thermopile sensor -amplifier daughter board. Software design and development is greatly assisted by the availability of a library of public-domain, user-implemented software. The daughter board houses a 5-band radiometer using thermopiles designed for this experiment (Dexter Research Corp., Dexter, MI) to allow determination of the total FRFD from the fire (using a wide band thermopile with a KRS-5 window, 0.1 - 30 um), the FRFD as would be received by an orbital asset like MODIS (3.95 um center wavelength (CWL) and 10.95 CWL, corresponding to MODIS bands 21/22 and 31, respectively) and wider bandpass (0.1-5.5 um and 8-14 um) corresponding to the FRFD recorded by `MWIR' and `LWIR' imaging systems. We required a very wide dynamic range system in order to be able to record the flux density from `cold' ground before the fire, through the `hot' flaming combustion stage, to the `cool' phase after passage of the fire front. The recording dynamic range required (with reasonable resolution at the lowest temperatures) is on the order of 106, which is not currently available in commercial instrumentation at a price point, size or feature set that is suitable for wildland fire investigations. The entire unit, along with rechargeable battery power supply is housed in a fireproof aluminum chassis box, which is then mounted on a mast at a height of 5 - 7 m above the fireground floor. We will report initial results on observation of wildland fires using this system for prescribed fires in the pitch-pine scrub oak forest type and the use of the system to determine the differences between actual and remotely sensed measures of FRFD, which is of importance in quantifying the release of CO2 and other fire products from wildland fire combustion.

Mapping wildland fuels for fire management across multiple scales: integrating remote sensing, GIS, and biophysical modeling

USGS Publications Warehouse

Keane, Robert E.; Burgan, Robert E.; Van Wagtendonk, Jan W.

2001-01-01

Fuel maps are essential for computing spatial fire hazard and risk and simulating fire growth and intensity across a landscape. However, fuel mapping is an extremely difficult and complex process requiring expertise in remotely sensed image classification, fire behavior, fuels modeling, ecology, and geographical information systems (GIS). This paper first presents the challenges of mapping fuels: canopy concealment, fuelbed complexity, fuel type diversity, fuel variability, and fuel model generalization. Then, four approaches to mapping fuels are discussed with examples provided from the literature: (1) field reconnaissance; (2) direct mapping methods; (3) indirect mapping methods; and (4) gradient modeling. A fuel mapping method is proposed that uses current remote sensing and image processing technology. Future fuel mapping needs are also discussed which include better field data and fuel models, accurate GIS reference layers, improved satellite imagery, and comprehensive ecosystem models.

Human influence on California fire regimes.

PubMed

Syphard, Alexandra D; Radeloff, Volker C; Keeley, Jon E; Hawbaker, Todd J; Clayton, Murray K; Stewart, Susan I; Hammer, Roger B

2007-07-01

Periodic wildfire maintains the integrity and species composition of many ecosystems, including the mediterranean-climate shrublands of California. However, human activities alter natural fire regimes, which can lead to cascading ecological effects. Increased human ignitions at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) have recently gained attention, but fire activity and risk are typically estimated using only biophysical variables. Our goal was to determine how humans influence fire in California and to examine whether this influence was linear, by relating contemporary (2000) and historic (1960-2000) fire data to both human and biophysical variables. Data for the human variables included fine-resolution maps of the WUI produced using housing density and land cover data. Interface WUI, where development abuts wildland vegetation, was differentiated from intermix WUI, where development intermingles with wildland vegetation. Additional explanatory variables included distance to WUI, population density, road density, vegetation type, and ecoregion. All data were summarized at the county level and analyzed using bivariate and multiple regression methods. We found highly significant relationships between humans and fire on the contemporary landscape, and our models explained fire frequency (R2 = 0.72) better than area burned (R2 = 0.50). Population density, intermix WUI, and distance to WUI explained the most variability in fire frequency, suggesting that the spatial pattern of development may be an important variable to consider when estimating fire risk. We found nonlinear effects such that fire frequency and area burned were highest at intermediate levels of human activity, but declined beyond certain thresholds. Human activities also explained change in fire frequency and area burned (1960-2000), but our models had greater explanatory power during the years 1960-1980, when there was more dramatic change in fire frequency. Understanding wildfire as a function of the spatial arrangement of ignitions and fuels on the landscape, in addition to nonlinear relationships, will be important to fire managers and conservation planners because fire risk may be related to specific levels of housing density that can be accounted for in land use planning. With more fires occurring in close proximity to human infrastructure, there may also be devastating ecological impacts if development continues to grow farther into wildland vegetation.

Human influence on California fire regimes

USGS Publications Warehouse

Syphard, A.D.; Radeloff, V.C.; Keeley, J.E.; Hawbaker, T.J.; Clayton, M.K.; Stewart, S.I.; Hammer, R.B.

2007-01-01

Periodic wildfire maintains the integrity and species composition of many ecosystems, including the mediterranean-climate shrublands of California. However, human activities alter natural fire regimes, which can lead to cascading ecological effects. Increased human ignitions at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) have recently gained attention, but fire activity and risk are typically estimated using only biophysical variables. Our goal was to determine how humans influence fire in California and to examine whether this influence was linear, by relating contemporary (2000) and historic (1960-2000) fire data to both human and biophysical variables. Data for the human variables included fine-resolution maps of the WUI produced using housing density and land cover data. Interface WUI, where development abuts wildland vegetation, was differentiated from intermix WUI, where development intermingles with wildland vegetation. Additional explanatory variables included distance to WUI, population density, road density, vegetation type, and ecoregion. All data were summarized at the county level and analyzed using bivariate and multiple regression methods. We found highly significant relationships between humans and fire on the contemporary landscape, and our models explained fire frequency (R2 = 0.72) better than area burned (R2 = 0.50). Population density, intermix WUI, and distance to WUI explained the most variability in fire frequency, suggesting that the spatial pattern of development may be an important variable to consider when estimating fire risk. We found nonlinear effects such that fire frequency and area burned were highest at intermediate levels of human activity, but declined beyond certain thresholds. Human activities also explained change in fire frequency and area burned (1960-2000), but our models had greater explanatory power during the years 1960-1980, when there was more dramatic change in fire frequency. Understanding wildfire as a function of the spatial arrangement of ignitions and fuels on the landscape, in addition to nonlinear relationships, will be important to fire managers and conservation planners because fire risk may be related to specific levels of housing density that can be accounted for in land use planning. With more fires occurring in close proximity to human infrastructure, there may also be devastating ecological impacts if development continues to grow farther into wildland vegetation. ?? 2007 by the Ecological Society of America.

Spatial allocation of market and nonmarket values in wildland fire management: A case study

Treesearch

John W. Benoit; Armando González-Cabán; Francis M. Fujioka; Shyh-Chin Chen; José J. Sanchez

2013-01-01

We developed a methodology to evaluate the efficacy of fuel treatments by estimating their costs and potential costs/losses with and without treatments in the San Jacinto Ranger District of the San Bernardino National Forest, California. This district is a typical southern California forest complex containing a large amount of high-valued real estate. We chose four...

A combustion model of vegetation burning in "Tiger" fire propagation tool

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Giannino, F.; Ascoli, D.; Sirignano, M.; Mazzoleni, S.; Russo, L.; Rego, F.

2017-11-01

In this paper, we propose a semi-physical model for the burning of vegetation in a wildland fire. The main physical-chemical processes involved in fire spreading are modelled through a set of ordinary differential equations, which describe the combustion process as linearly related to the consumption of fuel. The water evaporation process from leaves and wood is also considered. Mass and energy balance equations are written for fuel (leaves and wood) assuming that combustion process is homogeneous in space. The model is developed with the final aim of simulating large-scale wildland fires which spread on heterogeneous landscape while keeping the computation cost very low.

Evaluating and operationalizing unmanned aircraft for wildland fire use

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Watts, A.

2015-12-01

Many potential uses of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) related to wildland fire research and operations have been demonstrated, but the vast majority of these have been proof-of-concept or one-time flights. Scientists, practitioners, and firefighting agencies look forward to the widespread adoption of this powerful technology and its regular use. Similarly, the UAS industry awaits opportunities for commercialization. Our collaboration brings together UAS industry, research and management agencies, and universities in the USA and Canada to investigate the perceived effectiveness of UAS for wildland fire use, and the factors affecting their commercial-scale employment. Our current and future activities include market research, training and technology transfer, and deployment of UAS over fires to promote development of sensors as well as their safe integration into fire operations. We will present initial results, and as a part of our presentation we also invite participation of the AGU community for planned future project phases. We anticipate that the outcomes of our work will be useful to potential users who are unfamiliar with UAS, and to researchers and practitioners with experience or an interest in their use in fire and related natural-resource disciplines.

Informing the network: Improving communication with interface communities during wildland fire

USGS Publications Warehouse

Taylor, J.G.; Gillette, S.C.; Hodgson, R.W.; Downing, J.L.; Burns, M.R.; Chavez, D.J.; Hogan, J.T.

2007-01-01

An interagency research team studied fire communications that took place during different stages of two wildfires in southern California: one small fire of short duration and one large fire of long duration. This "quick- response" research showed that pre-fire communication planning was particularly effective for smaller fire events and parts of that planning proved invaluable for the large fire event as well. Information seeking by the affected public relied on locally convenient sources during the small fire. During the large fire, widespread evacuations disrupted many of the local informal communication networks. Residents' needs were for "real-time, " place-specific information: precise location, severity, size, and direction of spread of the fires. Fire management agencies must contribute real-time, place-specific fire information when it is most needed by the affected public, as they try to make sense out of the chaos of a wildland fire. Disseminating fire information as broadly as possible through multiple pathways will maximize the probability of the public finding the information they need. ?? Society for Human Ecology.

Fire risk in the road landscape patterns of the state of Paraná, Brazil - planning grants for the wildland-urban interface

Treesearch

Daniela Biondi; Antonio Carlos Batista; Angeline Martini

2013-01-01

Urban growth worldwide has generated great concern in the planning of the different environments belonging to the wildland-urban interface. One of the problems that arise is the landscape treatment given to roads, which must not only comply with aesthetic and ecological principles, but also be functional, adding functions relating to forest fire prevention and control...

Estimating contribution of wildland fires to ambient ozone levels in National Parks in the Sierra Nevada, California

Treesearch

Haiganoush K. Preisler; Shiyuan (Sharon) Zhong; Annie Esperanza; Timothy J. Brown; Andrzej Bytnerowicz; Leland Tarnay

2010-01-01

Data from four continuous ozone and weather monitoring sites operated by the National Park Service in Sierra Nevada, California, are used to develop an ozone forecasting model and to estimate the contribution of wildland fires on ambient ozone levels. The analyses of weather and ozone data pointed to the transport of ozone precursors from the Central Valley as an...

Examining the influence of biophysical conditions on wildland-urban interface homeowners' wildfire risk mitigation activities in fire-prone landscapes

Treesearch

Christine S. Olsen; Jeffrey D. Kline; Alan A. Ager; Keith A. Olsen; Karen C. Short

2017-01-01

Expansion of the wildland–urban interface (WUI) and the increasing size and number of wildfires has policy-makers and wildfire managers seeking ways to reduce wildfire risk in communities located near fire-prone forests. It is widely acknowledged that homeowners can reduce their exposure to wildfire risk by using nonflammable building materials and reducing tree...

The effects of hazardous fuel reduction treatments in the wildland urban interface on the activity of bark beetles infesting ponderosa pine

Treesearch

Christopher J. Fettig; Joel D. McMillin; John. A. Anhold; Shakeeb M. Hamud; Steven J. Seybold; Robert R. Borys

2008-01-01

(Please note, this is an abstract only) Selective logging, fire suppression, forest succession, and climatic changes have resulted in high fire hazards over large areas of the western United States. Federal and state hazardous fuel reduction programs have increased accordingly to reduce the risk, extent and severity of these events, particularly in the wildland urban...

The effect of mechanical fuel reduction treatments in the wildland-urban interface on the amount and distribution of bark beetle-caused tree mortality

Treesearch

Christopher J. Fettig; Joel D. McMillin; John A. Anhold; Shakeeb M. Hamud; Robert R. Borys; Steven J. Seybold

2007-01-01

Selective logging, fire suppression, forest succession, and climatic changes have resulted in high fire hazards over large areas of the western USA. Federal and state hazardous fuel reduction programs have increased accordingly to reduce the risk, extent and severity of these events, particularly in the wildland urban interface. In this study, we examined the effect of...

Fire in the wildland-urban interface: Selecting and maintaining firewise plants for landscaping

Treesearch

J. Douglas Doran; Cotton K. Randall; Alan J. Long

2004-01-01

One of the major issues in the southern wildland-urban interface is the loss of homes to wildfire. For homeowners who live in an area with a medium to high risk of wildfire, this document provides useful information for protecting your property (see University of Florida/IFAS publication FOR 71 "Landscaping in Florida with Fire in Mind” to determine your wildfire...

An inverse method to estimate stem surface heat flux in wildland fires

Treesearch

Anthony S. Bova; Matthew B. Dickinson

2009-01-01

Models of wildland fire-induced stem heating and tissue necrosis require accurate estimates of inward heat flux at the bark surface. Thermocouple probes or heat flux sensors placed at a stem surface do not mimic the thermal response of tree bark to flames.We show that data from thin thermocouple probes inserted just below the bark can be used, by means of a one-...

Living with fire: How social scientists are helping wildland-urban interface communities reduce wildfire risk

Treesearch

Brian Cooke; Daniel Williams; Travis Paveglio; Matthew Carroll

2016-01-01

Reducing wildfire risk to lives and property is a critical issue for policy makers, land managers, and citizens who reside in high-risk fire areas of the United States - this is especially the case in the Rocky Mountain region and other western states. In order for a wildfire risk reduction effort to be effective in a U.S. wildland-urban interface (WUI)...

The Alberta smoke plume observation study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Anderson, Kerry; Pankratz, Al; Mooney, Curtis; Fleetham, Kelly

2018-02-01

A field project was conducted to observe and measure smoke plumes from wildland fires in Alberta. This study used handheld inclinometer measurements and photos taken at lookout towers in the province. Observations of 222 plumes were collected from 21 lookout towers over a 6-year period from 2010 to 2015. Observers reported the equilibrium and maximum plume heights based on the plumes' final levelling heights and the maximum lofting heights, respectively. Observations were tabulated at the end of each year and matched to reported fires. Fire sizes at assessment times and forest fuel types were reported by the province. Fire weather conditions were obtained from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System (CWFIS). Assessed fire sizes were adjusted to the appropriate size at plume observation time using elliptical fire-growth projections. Though a logical method to collect plume observations in principle, many unanticipated issues were uncovered as the project developed. Instrument limitations and environmental conditions presented challenges to the investigators, whereas human error and the subjectivity of observations affected data quality. Despite these problems, the data set showed that responses to fire behaviour conditions were consistent with the physical processes leading to plume rise. The Alberta smoke plume observation study data can be found on the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System datamart (Natural Resources Canada, 2018) at http://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/datamart.

Fish Mercury Loads and Lake Productivity Are Not Impacted by Wildland Fire in Northern Minnesota

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Riggs, C.; Kolka, R. K.; Nater, E. A.; Witt, E.; Wickman, T.; Woodruff, L. G.; Butcher, J.

2016-12-01

Wildland fire can significantly alter mercury (Hg) cycling on land and in adjacent aquatic environments. In addition to enhancing local atmospheric Hg deposition, fire can influence terrestrial movement of Hg and other elements into lakes via runoff from burned upland soil. However, the impact of fire on water quality and the accumulation of Hg in fish remains equivocal. We investigated the effects of fire - specifically a low severity prescribed fire and moderate severity wildfire - on young-of-the-year yellow perch (Perca flavescens) and lake chemistry in two small remote watersheds in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota using a paired watershed approach (fire-impacted vs. control watershed). Prior to fire, surface soil in the two study watersheds contained significant loads of Hg, mainly from atmospheric deposition. We expected fire to increase transport and deposition of Hg from smoke and burned soil into the fire-impacted lake, leading to changes in lake productivity and fish Hg loads. In contrast to our prediction, and despite significant effects of the moderate severity wildfire fire on upland soil Hg stocks, fish Hg accumulation and lake productivity were not affected by fire. Instead, climate and lake water levels were the strongest predictors of lake chemistry and fish responses in our study lakes. Our results suggest that low to moderate severity wildland fire does not alter lake productivity nor Hg accumulation in young-of-the-year yellow perch in these small, shallow lakes in the northern deciduous and boreal forest region. The effect of a high severity fire remains to be tested.

Laboratory Experiments Lead to a New Understanding of Wildland Fire Spread

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cohen, J. D.; Finney, M.; McAllister, S.

2015-12-01

Wildfire flame spread results from a sequence of ignitions where adjacent fuel particles heat from radiation and convection leading to their ignition. Surprisingly, after decades of fire behavior research an experimentally based, fundamental understanding of wildland fire spread processes has not been established. Modelers have commonly assumed radiation to be the dominant heating mechanism; that is, radiation heat transfer primarily determines wildland fire spread. We tested this assumption by focusing on how fuel ignition occurs with a renewed emphasis on experimental research. Our experiments show that fuel particle size can non-linearly influence a fuel particle's convective heat transfer. Fine fuels (less than 1 mm) can convectively cool in ambient air such that radiation heating is insufficient for ignition and thus fire spread. Given fire spread with insufficient radiant heating, fuel particle ignition must occur convectively from flame contact. Further experimentation reveals that convective heating and particle ignition occur when buoyancy-induced instabilities and vorticity force flames down and forward to produce intermittent contact with the adjacent fuel bed. Experimental results suggest these intermittent forward flame extensions are buoyancy driven with predictable average frequencies for flame zones ranging from laboratory (10-2 m) to field scales (101m). Measured fuel particle temperatures and boundary conditions during spreading laboratory fires reveal that convection heat transfer from intermittent flame contact is the principal mechanism responsible for heating fine fuel particles to ignition. Our experimental results describe how fine fuel particles convectively heat to ignition from flame contact related to the buoyant dynamics of spreading flame fronts. This research has caused a rethinking of some of the most basic concepts in wildland fuel particle ignition and flame spread.

Application of a mesoscale atmospheric coupled fire model BRAMS-SFIRE to Alentejo wildland fire and comparison of performance with the fire model WRF-SFIRE

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Menezes, Isilda; Freitas, Saulo; Stockler, Rafael; Mello, Rafael; Ribeiro, Nuno; Corte-Real, João; Surový, Peter

2015-04-01

Models of fuel with the identification of vegetation patterns of Montado ecosystem in Portugal was incorporated in the mesoscale Brazilian Atmospheric Modeling System (BRAMS) and coupled with a spread wildland fire model. The BRAMS-FIRE is a new system developed by the Centro de Previsão de Tempo e Estudos Climáticos (CPTEC/INPE, Brazil) and the Instituto de Ciências Agrárias e Ambientais Mediterrâneas (ICAAM, Portugal). The fire model used in this effort was originally, developed by Mandel et al. (2013) and further incorporated in the Weather Research and Forecast model (WRF). Two grids of high spatial resolution were configured with surface input data and fuel models integrated for simulations using both models BRAMS-SFIRE and WRF-SFIRE. One grid was placed in the plain land and the other one in the hills to evaluate different types of fire propagation and calibrate BRAMS-SFIRE. The objective is simulating the effects of atmospheric circulation in local scale, namely the movements of the heat front and energy release associated to it, obtained by this two models in an episode of wildland fire which took place in Alentejo area in the last decade, for application to planning and evaluations of agro wildland fire risks. We aim to model the behavior of forest fires through a set of equations whose solutions provide quantitative values of one or more variables related to the propagation of fire, described by semi-empirical expressions that are complemented by experimental data allow to obtain the main variables related advancing the perimeter of the fire, as the propagation speed, the intensity of the fire front and fuel consumption and its interaction with atmospheric dynamic system References Mandel, J., J. D. Beezley, G. Kelman, A. K. Kochanski, V. Y. Kondratenko, B. H. Lynn, and M. Vejmelka, 2013. New features in WRF-SFIRE and the wildfire forecasting and danger system in Israel. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, submitted, Numerical Wildfires, Cargèse, France, May 13-18, 2013.

Fine-scale spatial climate variation and drought mediate the likelihood of reburning.

PubMed

Parks, Sean A; Parisien, Marc-André; Miller, Carol; Holsinger, Lisa M; Baggett, Larry Scott

2018-03-01

In many forested ecosystems, it is increasingly recognized that the probability of burning is substantially reduced within the footprint of previously burned areas. This self-limiting effect of wildland fire is considered a fundamental emergent property of ecosystems and is partly responsible for structuring landscape heterogeneity (i.e., mosaics of different age classes), thereby reducing the likelihood of uncharacteristically large fires in regions with active fire regimes. However, the strength and longevity of this self-limiting phenomenon is not well understood in most fire-prone ecosystems. In this study, we quantify the self-limiting effect in terms of its strength and longevity for five fire-prone study areas in western North America and investigate how each measure varies along a spatial climatic gradient and according to temporal (i.e., annual) climatic variation. Results indicate that the longevity (i.e., number of years) of the self-limiting effect ranges between 15 yr in the warm and dry study area in the southwestern United States to 33 yr in the cold, northern study areas in located in northwestern Montana and the boreal forest of Canada. We also found that spatial climatic variation has a strong influence on wildland fire's self-limiting capacity. Specifically, the self-limiting effect within each study area was stronger and lasted longer in areas with low mean moisture deficit (i.e., wetter and cooler settings) compared to areas with high mean moisture deficit (warmer and drier settings). Last, our findings show that annual climatic variation influences wildland fire's self-limiting effect: drought conditions weakened the strength and longevity of the self-limiting effect in all study areas, albeit at varying magnitudes. Overall, our study provides support for the idea that wildland fire contributes to spatial heterogeneity in fuel ages that subsequently mediate future fire sizes and effects. However, our findings show that the strength and longevity of the self-limiting effect varies considerably according to spatial and temporal climatic variation, providing land and fire managers relevant information for effective planning and management of fire and highlighting that fire itself is an important factor contributing to fire-free intervals. © 2017 by the Ecological Society of America.

Measuring wildland fire leadership: the crewmember perceived leadership scale

Treesearch

Alexis L. Waldron; David P. Schary; Bradley J. Cardinal

2015-01-01

The aims of this research were to develop and test a scale used to measure leadership in wildland firefighting using two samples of USA wildland firefighters. The first collection of data occurred in the spring and early summer and consisted of an online survey. The second set of data was collected towards late summer and early fall (autumn). The second set of...

Residents warming up to fuels management: homeowners? acceptance of wildfire and fuels management in the wildland-urban interface

Treesearch

Greg Winter; Christine Vogt; Sarah McCaffrey

2006-01-01

Many wildland fire managers, concerned about public acceptance of local fuels management programs, want to better communicate with local residents about these programs. Research at diverse study sites shows wildland-urban interface (WUI) residents rely on common factors to decide whether or not to support particular fuels management approaches such as prescribed...

Using structure locations as a basis for mapping the wildland urban interface

Treesearch

Avi Bar-Massada; Susan I. Stewart; Roger B. Hammer; Miranda H. Mockrin; Volker C. Radeloff

2013-01-01

The wildland urban interface (WUI) delineates the areas where wildland fire hazard most directly impacts human communities and threatens lives and property, and where houses exert the strongest influence on the natural environment. Housing data are a major problem for WUI mapping. When housing data are zonal, the concept of a WUI neighborhood can be captured easily in...

Wildland Fire Induced Heating of Dome 375 Perma-Con®

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Flores, Eugene Michael

AET-1 was tasked by ADEM with determining the temperature rise in the drum contents of drums stored in the Dome 375 Perma-Con® at TA-54 given a wildland fire. The wildland fire causes radiative and convective heating on the Perma-Con® exterior. The wildland fire time histories for the radiative and convective heating environment were provided to AET-1 by EES-16. If the calculated temperature rise results in a drum content temperature over 40 °C, then ADEM desires a design solution to ensure the peak temperature remains below 40 °C. An axi-symmetric FE simulation was completed to determine the peak temperature of themore » contents of a drum stored in the Dome 375 Perma-Con® during a wildland fire event. Three wildland fire time histories for the radiative and convective heat transfer were provided by EES-16 and were inputs for the FE simulation. The maximum drum content temperature reached was found to be 110 °C while using inputs from the SiteG_2ms_4ign_wind_from_west.xlsx time history input and not including the SWB in the model. Including the SWB in the results in a peak drum content temperature of 61 °C for the SiteG_2ms_4ign_wind_from_west.xlsx inputs. EES-16 decided that by using fuel mitigation efforts, such as mowing the grass and shrubs near the Perma-Con® they could reduce the shrub/grass fuel loading near the Perma-Con® from 1.46 kg/m 2 to 0.146 kg/m 2 and by using a less conservative fuel loading for the debris field inside the Dome 375 perimeter, reducing it from 0.58 kg/m2 to 0.058 kg/m 2 in their model. They also greatly increased the resolution of their radiation model and increased the accuracy of their model’s required convergence value. Using this refined input the maximum drum content temperature was found to be 28 °C with no SWB present in the model. Additionally, this refined input model was modified to include worst case emissivity values for the concrete, drum and Perma-Con® interior, along with adding a 91 second long residual radiative heat flux of 2,000 W/m2 to the end of the refined wildland fire input. For this case the maximum drum content temperature was found to be 32 °C. For Rev. 2 of this calculation and additional simulation was run that included a cable fire heat flux on the exterior of the Perma-Con® that was calculated by FP-DO. Including the cable fire heat flux in the model without the SWB resulted in a peak drum content temperature over time of 43 °C. Including the SWB in the simulation with the cable fire heat flux resulted in a peak drum content temperature over time of 35 °C.« less

The Joint Fire Science Program Fire Exchange Network: Facilitating Knowledge Exchange About Wildland Fire Science Across the U.S.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

York, A.; Blocksome, C.; Cheng, T.; Creighton, J.; Edwards, G.; Frederick, S.; Giardina, C. P.; Goebel, P. C.; Gucker, C.; Kobziar, L.; Lane, E.; Leis, S.; Long, A.; Maier, C.; Marschall, J.; McGowan-Stinski, J.; Mohr, H.; MontBlanc, E.; Pellant, M.; Pickett, E.; Seesholtz, D.; Skowronski, N.; Stambaugh, M. C.; Stephens, S.; Thode, A.; Trainor, S. F.; Waldrop, T.; Wolfson, B.; Wright, V.; Zedler, P.

2014-12-01

The Joint Fire Science Program's (JFSP) Fire Exchange Network is actively working to accelerate the awareness, understanding, and adoption of wildland fire science information by federal, tribal, state, local, and private stakeholders within ecologically similar regions. Our network of 15 regional exchanges provides timely, accurate, and regionally relevant science-based information to assist with fire management challenges. Regional activities, through which we engage fire and resource managers, scientists, and private landowners, include online newsletters and announcements, social media, regionally focused web-based clearinghouses of relevant science, field trips and demonstration sites, workshops and conferences, webinars and online training, and syntheses and fact sheets. Exchanges also help investigators design research that is relevant to regional management needs and assist with technology transfer to management audiences. This poster provides an introduction to and map of the regional exchanges.

A comparison of three approaches for simulating fine-scale surface winds in support of wildland fire management: Part I. Model formulation and comparison against measurements

Treesearch

Jason M. Forthofer; Bret W. Butler; Natalie S. Wagenbrenner

2014-01-01

For this study three types of wind models have been defined for simulating surface wind flow in support of wildland fire management: (1) a uniform wind field (typically acquired from coarse-resolution (,4 km) weather service forecast models); (2) a newly developed mass-conserving model and (3) a newly developed mass and momentumconserving model (referred to as the...

Predicting watershed sediment yields after wildland fire with the InVEST sediment retention model at large geographic extent in the western USA: accuracy and uncertainties

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sankey, J. B.; Kreitler, J.; McVay, J.; Hawbaker, T. J.; Vaillant, N.; Lowe, S. E.

2014-12-01

Wildland fire is a primary threat to watersheds that can impact water supply through increased sedimentation, water quality decline, and change the timing and amount of runoff leading to increased risk from flood and sediment natural hazards. It is of great societal importance in the western USA and throughout the world to improve understanding of how changing fire frequency, extent, and location, in conjunction with fuel treatments will affect watersheds and the ecosystem services they supply to communities. In this work we assess the utility of the InVEST Sediment Retention Model to accurately characterize vulnerability of burned watersheds to erosion and sedimentation. The InVEST tools are GIS-based implementations of common process models, engineered for high-end computing to allow the faster simulation of larger landscapes and incorporation into decision-making. The InVEST Sediment Retention Model is based on common soil erosion models (e.g., RUSLE -Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation) and determines which areas of the landscape contribute the greatest sediment loads to a hydrological network and conversely evaluate the ecosystem service of sediment retention on a watershed basis. We evaluate the accuracy and uncertainties for InVEST predictions of increased sedimentation after fire, using measured post-fire sedimentation rates available for many watersheds in different rainfall regimes throughout the western USA from an existing, large USGS database of post-fire sediment yield [synthesized in Moody J, Martin D (2009) Synthesis of sediment yields after wildland fire in different rainfall regimes in the western United States. International Journal of Wildland Fire 18: 96-115]. The ultimate goal of this work is to calibrate and implement the model to accurately predict variability in post-fire sediment yield as a function of future landscape heterogeneity predicted by wildfire simulations, and future landscape fuel treatment scenarios, within watersheds.

Comparing fire severity models from post-fire and pre/post-fire differenced imagery

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Wildland fires are common in rangelands worldwide. The potential for high severity fires to affect long-term changes in rangelands is considerable, and for this reason assessing fire severity shortly after the fire is critical. Such assessments are typically carried out following Burned Area Emergen...

Implementation of National Fire Plan treatments near the wildland-urban interface in the western United States.

PubMed

Schoennagel, Tania; Nelson, Cara R; Theobald, David M; Carnwath, Gunnar C; Chapman, Teresa B

2009-06-30

Because of increasing concern about the effects of catastrophic wildland fires throughout the western United States, federal land managers have been engaged in efforts to restore historical fire behavior and mitigate wildfire risk. During the last 5 years (2004-2008), 44,000 fuels treatments were implemented across the western United States under the National Fire Plan (NFP). We assessed the extent to which these treatments were conducted in and near the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where they would have the greatest potential to reduce fire risk in neighboring homes and communities. Although federal policies stipulate that significant resources should be invested in the WUI, we found that only 3% of the area treated was within the WUI, and another 8% was in an additional 2.5-km buffer around the WUI, totaling 11%. Only 17% of this buffered WUI is under federal ownership, which significantly limits the ability of federal agencies to implement fire-risk reduction treatments near communities. Although treatments far from the WUI may have some fire mitigation benefits, our findings suggest that greater priority must be given to locating treatments in and near the WUI, rather than in more remote settings, to satisfy NFP goals of reducing fire risk to communities. However, this may require shifting management and policy emphasis from public to private lands.

A Causal Inference Analysis of the Effect of Wildland Fire ...

EPA Pesticide Factsheets

Wildfire smoke is a major contributor to ambient air pollution levels. In this talk, we develop a spatio-temporal model to estimate the contribution of fire smoke to overall air pollution in different regions of the country. We combine numerical model output with observational data within a causal inference framework. Our methods account for aggregation and potential bias of the numerical model simulation, and address uncertainty in the causal estimates. We apply the proposed method to estimation of ozone and fine particulate matter from wildland fires and the impact on health burden assessment. We develop a causal inference framework to assess contributions of fire to ambient PM in the presence of spatial interference.

BehavePlus fire modeling system: Past, present, and future

Treesearch

Patricia L. Andrews

2007-01-01

Use of mathematical fire models to predict fire behavior and fire effects plays an important supporting role in wildland fire management. When used in conjunction with personal fire experience and a basic understanding of the fire models, predictions can be successfully applied to a range of fire management activities including wildfire behavior prediction, prescribed...

What Will the Western Wildlands Be Like in the Year 2000...Future Perfect or Future Imperfect?

Treesearch

Carol L. Rice

1987-01-01

Profound changes have taken place in the western wildlands during the 20th century that will have great impact on land management policy and operations. Wildlands are being developed. Reduction of fire has altered plant species relationships in terms of dominance and density. The number of ignitions will continue to increase. The trends unchanged will result in greater...

A changing landscape in the wildland-urban interface: permanent and seasonal home owners, recreation and fuel management

Treesearch

Christine A. Vogt; Stanley J. Cindrity

2003-01-01

This paper reports research completed in the fall/winter seasons of 2001/2002 on home owners living in the wildland urban interface for the USDA Forest Service. The primary research focus was to understand human dimensions of wildland fire, particularly attitudes toward and approval of three fuel treatment types (prescribed burning, mechanical thinning, and defensible...

Methods and devices used in the wildfire localization for the protection of forest ecosystems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kasymov, D. P.; Fateyev, V. N.; Zima, V. P.

2017-11-01

The development of devices for localization and extinguishing of wildland fires based on knowledge of the flame structure, including the drying zone, heating, pyrolysis, mixing with oxygen in the air, using relatively small energy disturbances (shock waves), which minimizes the damage caused to the environment have been represented. Using of the considered technical solutions leading to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of activities to combat wildland fires has been shown.

The theory, direction, and magnitude of ecosystem fire probability as constrained by precipitation and temperature.

PubMed

Guyette, Richard; Stambaugh, Michael C; Dey, Daniel; Muzika, Rose Marie

2017-01-01

The effects of climate on wildland fire confronts society across a range of different ecosystems. Water and temperature affect the combustion dynamics, irrespective of whether those are associated with carbon fueled motors or ecosystems, but through different chemical, physical, and biological processes. We use an ecosystem combustion equation developed with the physical chemistry of atmospheric variables to estimate and simulate fire probability and mean fire interval (MFI). The calibration of ecosystem fire probability with basic combustion chemistry and physics offers a quantitative method to address wildland fire in addition to the well-studied forcing factors such as topography, ignition, and vegetation. We develop a graphic analysis tool for estimating climate forced fire probability with temperature and precipitation based on an empirical assessment of combustion theory and fire prediction in ecosystems. Climate-affected fire probability for any period, past or future, is estimated with given temperature and precipitation. A graphic analyses of wildland fire dynamics driven by climate supports a dialectic in hydrologic processes that affect ecosystem combustion: 1) the water needed by plants to produce carbon bonds (fuel) and 2) the inhibition of successful reactant collisions by water molecules (humidity and fuel moisture). These two postulates enable a classification scheme for ecosystems into three or more climate categories using their position relative to change points defined by precipitation in combustion dynamics equations. Three classifications of combustion dynamics in ecosystems fire probability include: 1) precipitation insensitive, 2) precipitation unstable, and 3) precipitation sensitive. All three classifications interact in different ways with variable levels of temperature.

A Numerical Study of Atmospheric Perturbations Induced by Heat From a Wildland Fire: Sensitivity to Vertical Canopy Structure and Heat Source Strength

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kiefer, Michael T.; Zhong, Shiyuan; Heilman, Warren E.; Charney, Joseph J.; Bian, Xindi

2018-03-01

An improved understanding of atmospheric perturbations within and above a forest during a wildland fire has relevance to many aspects of wildland fires including fire spread, smoke transport and dispersion, and tree mortality. In this study, the ARPS-CANOPY model, a version of the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS) model with a canopy parameterization, is utilized in a series of idealized numerical experiments to investigate the influence of vertical canopy structure on the atmospheric response to a stationary sensible heat flux at the ground ("fire heat flux"), broadly consistent in magnitude with the sensible heat flux from a low-intensity surface fire. Five vertical canopy structures are combined with five fire heat flux magnitudes to yield a matrix of 25 simulations. Analyses of the fire-heat-flux-perturbed u component of the wind, vertical velocity, kinetic energy, and temperature show that the spatial pattern and magnitude of the perturbations are sensitive to vertical canopy structure. Both vertical velocity and kinetic energy exhibit an increasing trend with increasing fire heat flux that is stronger for cases with some amount of overstory vegetation than cases with exclusively understory vegetation. A weaker trend in cases with exclusively understory vegetation indicates a damping of the atmospheric response to the sensible heat from a surface fire when vegetation is most concentrated near the surface. More generally, the results presented in this study suggest that canopy morphology should be considered when applying the results of a fire-atmosphere interaction study conducted in one type of forest to other forests with different canopy structures.

The theory, direction, and magnitude of ecosystem fire probability as constrained by precipitation and temperature

PubMed Central

Guyette, Richard; Stambaugh, Michael C.; Dey, Daniel

2017-01-01

The effects of climate on wildland fire confronts society across a range of different ecosystems. Water and temperature affect the combustion dynamics, irrespective of whether those are associated with carbon fueled motors or ecosystems, but through different chemical, physical, and biological processes. We use an ecosystem combustion equation developed with the physical chemistry of atmospheric variables to estimate and simulate fire probability and mean fire interval (MFI). The calibration of ecosystem fire probability with basic combustion chemistry and physics offers a quantitative method to address wildland fire in addition to the well-studied forcing factors such as topography, ignition, and vegetation. We develop a graphic analysis tool for estimating climate forced fire probability with temperature and precipitation based on an empirical assessment of combustion theory and fire prediction in ecosystems. Climate-affected fire probability for any period, past or future, is estimated with given temperature and precipitation. A graphic analyses of wildland fire dynamics driven by climate supports a dialectic in hydrologic processes that affect ecosystem combustion: 1) the water needed by plants to produce carbon bonds (fuel) and 2) the inhibition of successful reactant collisions by water molecules (humidity and fuel moisture). These two postulates enable a classification scheme for ecosystems into three or more climate categories using their position relative to change points defined by precipitation in combustion dynamics equations. Three classifications of combustion dynamics in ecosystems fire probability include: 1) precipitation insensitive, 2) precipitation unstable, and 3) precipitation sensitive. All three classifications interact in different ways with variable levels of temperature. PMID:28704457

Firebrands and spotting ignition in large-scale fires

Treesearch

Eunmo Koo; Patrick J. Pagni; David R. Weise; John P. Woycheese

2010-01-01

Spotting ignition by lofted firebrands is a significant mechanism of fire spread, as observed in many largescale fires. The role of firebrands in fire propagation and the important parameters involved in spot fire development are studied. Historical large-scale fires, including wind-driven urban and wildland conflagrations and post-earthquake fires are given as...

The 2016 Ft. McMurray Wildfire: Déjà vu or re-thinking the scope wildland and urban-wildland interface fires on water supplies?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Silins, U.; Emelko, M.; Cooke, C. A.; Charrois, J. W. A.; Stone, M.

2016-12-01

A growing number of large severe wildfires have impacted drinking water supplies of both small and larger municipalities in western North America over the past 20 years. While some of these fires include components of wildland-urban interface fire impacts to water or water treatment infrastructure, the vast majority have been wildland fires in critical source water supply regions serving these municipalities. A large body of research has provided key insights on magnitude, variability, and longevity of post-wildfire impacts on erosion, sediment production, and water quality, however assessing the impact of wildfires on water supplies often requires measuring or predicting the downstream propagation of upstream wildfire impacts to water supplies and this remains a comparatively less well explored area of wildfire-water research. The 2016 Horse River wildfire during May-June burned 590,000 ha. forcing the evacuation of the entire City of McMurray ( 90,000 residents) and represents the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history ($3.6 billion in insurable losses alone). While the wildfire impacted extensive source water supply regions in the area surrounding Ft. McMurray, this fire serves to illustrate a broader range of challenging wildfire-water science and engineering research issues that are needed to assess the impacts of this and potentially other large wildfires on water supplies. Unlike wildfires in headwaters regions, these include unique challenges in assessing impacts of burned tributaries adjacent sources from a large wildfire situated immediately surrounding a very large river system (Athabasca River), post-fire contaminant dilution, mixing, and transport, and contaminant runoff from severely burned residential and commercial/industrial regions of the city on downstream water supplies among others.

Public acceptance of wildland fire and fuel management: panel responses in seven locations.

PubMed

Toman, Eric; Shindler, Bruce; McCaffrey, Sarah; Bennett, James

2014-09-01

Wildland fire affects both public and private resources throughout the United States. A century of fire suppression has contributed to changing ecological conditions and accumulated fuel loads. Managers have used a variety of approaches to address these conditions and reduce the likelihood of wildland fires that may result in adverse ecological impacts and threaten communities. Public acceptance is a critical component of developing and implementing successful management programs. This study examines the factors that influence citizen support for agency fuel reduction treatments over time-particularly prescribed fire and mechanical vegetation removal. This paper presents findings from a longitudinal study examining resident beliefs and attitudes regarding fire management and fuels treatments in seven states: Arizona, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The study was implemented in two phases over a 6-year period using mail surveys to residents of communities adjacent to federal lands in each location. Questions replicated measures from the original project as well as some new items to allow a more in-depth analysis of key concepts. The study design enables comparisons over time as well as between locations. We also assess the factors that influence acceptance of both prescribed fire and mechanical vegetation removal. Findings demonstrate a relative stability of attitudes toward fuels management approaches over time and suggest that this acceptance is strongly influenced by confidence in resource managers and beliefs that the treatments would result in positive outcomes.

The interaction of fire and mankind: Introduction†

PubMed Central

Chaloner, William G.

2016-01-01

Fire has been an important part of the Earth system for over 350 Myr. Humans evolved in this fiery world and are the only animals to have used and controlled fire. The interaction of mankind with fire is a complex one, with both positive and negative aspects. Humans have long used fire for heating, cooking, landscape management and agriculture, as well as for pyrotechnologies and in industrial processes over more recent centuries. Many landscapes need fire but population expansion into wildland areas creates a tension between different interest groups. Extinguishing wildfires may not always be the correct solution. A combination of factors, including the problem of invasive plants, landscape change, climate change, population growth, human health, economic, social and cultural attitudes that may be transnational make a re-evaluation of fire and mankind necessary. The Royal Society meeting on Fire and mankind was held to address these issues and the results of these deliberations are published in this volume. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’. PMID:27216519

Wildland fire in ecosystems: effects of fire on flora

Treesearch

James K. Brown; Jane Kapler Smith

2000-01-01

VOLUME 2: This state-of-knowledge review about the effects of fire on flora and fuels can assist land managers with ecosystem and fire management planning and in their efforts to inform others about the ecological role of fire. Chapter topics include fire regime classification, autecological effects of fire, fire regime characteristics and postfire plant community...

Remote Sensing of Wildland Fire-Induced Risk Assessment at the Community Level.

PubMed

Ahmed, M Razu; Rahaman, Khan Rubayet; Hassan, Quazi K

2018-05-15

Wildland fires are some of the critical natural hazards that pose a significant threat to the communities located in the vicinity of forested/vegetated areas. In this paper, our overall objective was to study the structural damages due to the 2016 Horse River Fire (HRF) that happened in Fort McMurray (Alberta, Canada) by employing primarily very high spatial resolution optical satellite data, i.e., WorldView-2. Thus, our activities included the: (i) estimation of the structural damages; and (ii) delineation of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) and its associated buffers at certain intervals, and their utilization in assessing potential risks. Our proposed method of remote sensing-based estimates of the number of structural damages was compared with the ground-based information available from the Planning and Development Recovery Committee Task Force of Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB); and found a strong linear relationship (i.e., r² value of 0.97 with a slope of 0.97). Upon delineating the WUI and its associated buffer zones at 10 m, 30 m, 50 m, 70 m and 100 m distances; we found existence of vegetation within the 30 m buffers from the WUI for all of the damaged structures. In addition, we noticed that the relevant authorities had removed vegetation in some areas between 30 m and 70 m buffers from the WUI, which was proven to be effective in order to protect the structures in the adjacent communities. Furthermore, we mapped the wildland fire-induced vulnerable areas upon considering the WUI and its associated buffers. Our analysis revealed that approximately 30% of the areas within the buffer zones of 10 m and 30 m were vulnerable due to the presence of vegetation; in which, approximately 7% were burned during the 2016 HRF event that led the structural damages. Consequently, we suggest to remove the existing vegetation within these critical zones and also monitor the region at a regular interval in order to reduce the wildland fire-induced risk.

Laboratory investigation of fire transfer from exterior wood decks to buildings in the wildland-urban interface

Treesearch

Laura E. Hasburgh; Donald S. Stone; Samuel L. Zelinka

2017-01-01

In the wildland-urban interface, wood decks are a target for wildfire and may be ignited by firebrands or flaming debris. Wood decks also present a potential source for ignition of structures in the wildland-urban interface. However, their role in ignition of the adjacent structure is unclear and current regulation is based in part on anecdotal evidence. This paper...

Evaluation of wildfire patterns at the wildland-urban fringe across the continental U.S.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kinoshita, A. M.; Hogue, T. S.

2014-12-01

Wildfires threaten ecosystems and urban development across the United States, posing significant implications for land management and natural processes such as watershed hydrology. This study investigates the spatial association between large wildfires and urbanization. Several geospatial dataset are combined to map wildfires (Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity for 1984 to 2012) and housing density (SILVIS Lab Spatial Analysis for Conservation and Sustainability decadal housing density for 1940 to 2030) relative to natural wildlands across the contiguous U.S. Several buffers (i.e. 25 km) are developed around wildlands (Protected Areas Database of the United States) to quantify the change and relationship in spatial fire and housing density patterns. Since 1984, wildfire behavior is cyclical and follows general climatology, where warmer years have more and larger fires. Ignition locations also follow transportation corridors and development which provide easy accessibility to wildlands. In California, both fire frequency and total acres burned exhibit increasing trends (statistically significant at 95%). The 1980s average wildfire frequency and total acres burned was 3100 fires and approximately 1200 km2, respectively. These numbers have increased to 2200 fires and over 1500 km2 in the 2010 to 2012 period alone. Initial observations also show that decennial population and area burned for four major Californian counties (Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Shasta) show strong correlation between the last decade of burned area, urban-fringe proximity, and urbanization trends. Improving our understanding of human induced wildfire regimes provides key information on urban fringe communities most vulnerable to the wildfire risks and can help inform regional development planning.

Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Science Program 2015 Research Accomplishments

Treesearch

Faith Ann Heinsch; Charles W. McHugh; Colin C. Hardy

2016-01-01

The Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Science Program (FFS) of the U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station focuses on fundamental and applied research in wildland fire, from fire physics and fire ecology to fuels management and smoke emissions. Located at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana, the scientists, engineers, technicians, and support...

National Fire Plan Research and Development 2001 Business Summary

Treesearch

USDA Forest Service

2002-01-01

Wildland fire remains a serious concern to the people of our Nation. This concern has been turned into action in the form of the National Fire Plan (NFP), an accelerated interagency effort, begun after the disastrous 2000 fire season, to step up, coordinate, and concentrate activity on reducing fire risks.

Fuels planning: science synthesis and integration; forest structure and fire hazard fact sheet 02: fire hazard

Treesearch

Rocky Mountain Research Station USDA Forest Service

2004-01-01

Fire hazard reflects the potential fire behavior and magnitude of effects as a function of fuel conditions. This fact sheet discusses crown fuels, surface fuels, and ground fuels and their contribution and involvement in wildland fire.Other publications in this series...

How did prefire treatments affect the Biscuit Fire?

Treesearch

Crystal Raymond; David L. Peterson

2005-01-01

Most scientific literature supports forest thinning to reduce the severity of wildland fires, but the effectiveness of thinning in modifying fire behavior has not been well documented. The Biscuit Fire of 2002 offered a great opportunity to study the effects of mechanical thinning on fire behavior during a megafire.

36 CFR 34.6 - Fires.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

2012-07-01

... administrative site shall comply with applicable standards prescribed by the National Fire Codes, Federal OSHA... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 1 2012-07-01 2012-07-01 false Fires. 34.6 Section 34.6... ADMINISTRATIVE SITE REGULATIONS § 34.6 Fires. (a) All wildland, vehicular or structural fires shall be reported...

36 CFR 34.6 - Fires.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... administrative site shall comply with applicable standards prescribed by the National Fire Codes, Federal OSHA... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 1 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Fires. 34.6 Section 34.6... ADMINISTRATIVE SITE REGULATIONS § 34.6 Fires. (a) All wildland, vehicular or structural fires shall be reported...

36 CFR 34.6 - Fires.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

2013-07-01

... administrative site shall comply with applicable standards prescribed by the National Fire Codes, Federal OSHA... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 1 2013-07-01 2013-07-01 false Fires. 34.6 Section 34.6... ADMINISTRATIVE SITE REGULATIONS § 34.6 Fires. (a) All wildland, vehicular or structural fires shall be reported...

36 CFR 34.6 - Fires.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... administrative site shall comply with applicable standards prescribed by the National Fire Codes, Federal OSHA... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Fires. 34.6 Section 34.6... ADMINISTRATIVE SITE REGULATIONS § 34.6 Fires. (a) All wildland, vehicular or structural fires shall be reported...

36 CFR 34.6 - Fires.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

2014-07-01

... administrative site shall comply with applicable standards prescribed by the National Fire Codes, Federal OSHA... 36 Parks, Forests, and Public Property 1 2014-07-01 2014-07-01 false Fires. 34.6 Section 34.6... ADMINISTRATIVE SITE REGULATIONS § 34.6 Fires. (a) All wildland, vehicular or structural fires shall be reported...

Analysis of the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer contextual algorithm for small fire detection

Treesearch

W. Wang; J.J. Qu; X. Hao; Y. Liu

2009-01-01

In the southeastern United States, most wildland fires are of low intensity. Asubstantial number of these fires cannot be detected by the MODIS contextual algorithm. Toimprove the accuracy of fire detection for this region, the remote-sensed characteristics ofthese fires have to be systematically...

Closing the wildland fire heat budget - measurements in the field at intermediate and operational scales

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dickinson, M.; Kremens, R.; Bova, A. S.

2012-12-01

Closing the wildland fire heat budget involves characterizing the heat source and energy dissipation across the range of variability in fuels and fire behavior. Meeting this challenge will lay the foundation for predicting direct ecological effects of fires and fire-atmosphere coupling. Here, we focus on the relationships between the fire radiation field, as measured from the zenith, fuel consumption, and the behavior of spreading flame fronts. Experiments were conducted in 8 m x 8 m outdoor plots using pre-conditioned wildland fuels characteristic of mixed-oak forests of the eastern United States. Using dual-band radiometers with a field of view of about 18.5 m^2 at a height of 4.2 m, we found a near-linear increase in fire radiative energy density (FRED) over a range of fuel consumption between 0.15 kg m^-2 to 3.25 kg m^-2. Using an integrated heat budget, we estimate that the fraction of total theoretical combustion energy density radiated from the plot averaged 0.17, the fraction of latent energy transported in the plume averaged 0.08, and the fraction accounted for by the combination of fire convective energy transport and soil heating averaged 0.72. Future work will require, at minimum, instantaneous and time-integrated estimates of energy transported by radiation, convection, and soil heating across a range of fuels. We introduce the Rx-CADRE project through which such measurements are being made.

Wildland fire in ecosystems: effects of fire on air

Treesearch

David V. Sandberg; Roger D. Ottmar; Janice L. Peterson

2002-01-01

This state-of-knowledge review about the effects of fire on air quality can assist land, fire, and air resource managers with fire and smoke planning, and their efforts to explain to others the science behind fire-related program policies and practices to improve air quality. Chapter topics include air quality regulations and fire; characterization of emissions from...

Current status and future needs of the BehavePlus Fire Modeling System

Treesearch

Patricia L. Andrews

2014-01-01

The BehavePlus Fire Modeling System is among the most widely used systems for wildland fire prediction. It is designed for use in a range of tasks including wildfire behaviour prediction, prescribed fire planning, fire investigation, fuel hazard assessment, fire model understanding, communication and research. BehavePlus is based on mathematical models for fire...

Fire Organization and Administration: Report of Futuring Group 3

Treesearch

1987-01-01

Futuring Group 3 identified 12 trends that determine the way fire administrators must plan and budget for efficient wildland/urban fire protection organizations in the future. Five key visions and associated strategies were also identified.

The use of fuel breaks in landscape fire management

USGS Publications Warehouse

Agee, James K.; Bahro, Berni; Finney, Mark A.; Omi, Philip N.; Sapsis, David B.; Skinner, Carl N.; Van Wagtendonk, Jan W.; Weatherspoon, C. Phillip

2000-01-01

Shaded fuelbreaks and larger landscape fuel treatments, such as prescribed fire, are receiving renewed interest as forest protection strategies in the western United States. The effectiveness of fuelbreaks remains a subject of debate because of differing fuelbreak objectives, prescriptions for creation and maintenance, and their placement in landscapes with differing fire regimes. A well-designed fuelbreak will alter the behavior of wildland fire entering the fuel-altered zone. Both surface and crown fire behavior may be reduced. Shaded fuelbreaks must be created in the context of the landscape within which they are placed. No absolute standards for fuelbreak width or fuel reduction are possible, although recent proposals for forested fuelbreaks suggest 400 m wide bands where surface fuels are reduced and crown fuels are thinned. Landscape-level treatments such as prescribed fire can use shaded fuelbreaks as anchor points, and extend the zone of altered fire behavior to larger proportions of the landscape. Coupling fuelbreaks with area-wide fuel treatments can reduce the size, intensity, and effects of wildland fires.

Burning, fire prevention and landscape productions among the Pemon, Gran Sabana, Venezuela: toward an intercultural approach to wildland fire management in Neotropical Savannas.

PubMed

Sletto, Bjørn; Rodriguez, Iokiñe

2013-01-30

Wildland fire management in savanna landscapes increasingly incorporates indigenous knowledge to pursue strategies of controlled, prescriptive burning to control fuel loads. However, such participatory approaches are fraught with challenges because of contrasting views on the role of fire and the practices of prescribed burning between indigenous and state fire managers. Also, indigenous and state systems of knowledge and meanings associated with fire are not monolithic but instead characterized by conflicts and inconsistencies, which require new, communicative strategies in order to develop successful, intercultural approaches to fire management. This paper is based on long-term research on indigenous Pemon social constructs, rules and regulations regarding fire use, and traditional system of prescribed burning in the Gran Sabana, Venezuela. The authors review factors that act as constraints against successful intercultural fire management in the Gran Sabana, including conflicting perspectives on fire use within state agencies and in indigenous communities, and propose strategies for research and communicative planning to guide future efforts for more participatory and effective fire management. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A review of fire interactions and mass fires

Treesearch

Mark A. Finney; Sara S. McAllister

2011-01-01

The character of a wildland fire can change dramatically in the presence of another nearby fire. Understanding and predicting the changes in behavior due to fire-fire interactions cannot only be life-saving to those on the ground, but also be used to better control a prescribed fire to meet objectives. In discontinuous fuel types, such interactions may elicit fire...

Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Program: 2014 Research Accomplishments

Treesearch

Faith Ann Heinsch; Robin J. Innes; Colin C. Hardy; Kristine M. Lee

2015-01-01

The Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Science Program (FFS) of the U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station focuses on fundamental and applied research in wildland fire, from fire physics and fire ecology to fuels management and smoke emissions. Located at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana, the scientists, engineers, technicians, and support staff in FFS...

The quest for all-purpose plants

Treesearch

Susan L. Frommer; David R. Weise

1995-01-01

The fire safety of a home in the wildland/urban interface is influenced by several factors-one of which is the presence and proximity of vegetation to the home. Landscaping may either provide a significant barrier to fire spread and thus potentially increase a home's fire safety or favor fire spread and reduce a home's fire safety. However, fire safety of...

An Overview of FlamMap Fire Modeling Capabilities

Treesearch

Mark A. Finney

2006-01-01

Computerized and manual systems for modeling wildland fire behavior have long been available (Rothermel 1983, Andrews 1986). These systems focus on one-dimensional behaviors and assume the fire geometry is a spreading line-fire (in contrast with point or area-source fires). Models included in these systems were developed to calculate fire spread rate (Rothermel 1972,...

Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Science Program: 2013 Research accomplishments

Treesearch

Faith Ann Heinsch; Robin J. Innes; Colin C. Hardy; Kristine M. Lee

2014-01-01

The Fire, Fuel, and Smoke Science Program (FFS) of the U.S. Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, focuses on fundamental and applied research in wildland fire, from fire physics and fire ecology to fuels management and smoke emissions. Located at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana, the scientists, engineers, technicians, and support staff in...

Fire-management policies and programs

Treesearch

S.J. Husari; K.S. McKelvey

1996-01-01

For most of this century the goal of fire management in the Sierra was to control fire. The policy was aggressively and successfully ap-plied, substantially reducing annual acres burned. This goal was based on a fire policy that emphasized keeping wildland fires as small and inexpensive as possible. As the role of fire in maintaining Sierran ecosystems has been...

FEES: design of a Fire Economics Evaluation System

Treesearch

Thomas J. Mills; Frederick W. Bratten

1982-01-01

The Fire Economics Evaluation System (FEES)--a simulation model--is being designed for long-term planning application by all public agencies with wildland fire management responsibilities. A fully operational version of FEES will be capable of estimating the economic efficiency, fire-induced changes in resource outputs, and risk characteristics of a range of fire...

Yellowstone National Park and the summer of fire

Treesearch

Diane Smith

2013-01-01

Because of their close relationships with fires, western forest ecosystems are considered fire dependent. If we hope to sustain the communities of trees, plants, and animals that characterize these wildland forests, we need to understand the natural role of fire, changes brought about by suppressing fire, and alternatives for restoring some reasonable semblance of the...

Fire Risk and Residential Development: A GIS Analysis

Treesearch

Jennifer L. Rechel; James B. Davis; Ted K. Bradshaw

1992-01-01

Population growth is rapid in rural areas in California. This growth into the wildland-urban interface makes fire protection and suppression more difficult. Fire managers have opportunities to reduce fire danger by improving housing development patterns; however, the overall density and placement of houses is usually set by criteria other than fire danger. By...

Classifying and comparing spatial models of fire dynamics

Treesearch

Geoffrey J. Cary; Robert E. Keane; Mike D. Flannigan

2007-01-01

Wildland fire is a significant disturbance in many ecosystems worldwide and the interaction of fire with climate and vegetation over long time spans has major effects on vegetation dynamics, ecosystem carbon budgets, and patterns of biodiversity. Landscape-Fire-Succession Models (LFSMs) that simulate the linked processes of fire and vegetation development in a spatial...

Estimation of wildfire size and risk changes due to fuels treatments

Treesearch

M. A. Cochrane; C. J. Moran; M. C. Wimberly; A. D. Baer; M. A. Finney; K. L. Beckendorf; J. Eidenshink; Z. Zhu

2012-01-01

Human land use practices, altered climates, and shifting forest and fire management policies have increased the frequency of large wildfires several-fold. Mitigation of potential fire behaviour and fire severity have increasingly been attempted through pre-fire alteration of wildland fuels using mechanical treatments and prescribed fires. Despite annual treatment of...

Fire in Wildland ecosystems—opening comments

Treesearch

Tom Nichols

1995-01-01

More than 25 years ago, the pioneering work in fire ecology by Harold Biswell and others encouraged the incorporation of prescribed fire into fire management policies. However, the use in California of prescribed fire in fuels treatment, wilderness management, or ecosystem maintenance programs has not been particularly extensive. Only a fraction of wilderness areas,...

Laboratory fire behavior measurements of chaparral crown fire

Treesearch

C. Sanpakit; S. Omodan; D. Weise; M Princevac

2015-01-01

In 2013, there was an estimated 9,900 wildland fires that claimed more than 577,000 acres of land. That same year, about 542 prescribed fires were used to treat 48,554 acres by several agencies in California. Being able to understand fires using laboratory models can better prepare individuals to combat or use fires. Our research focused on chaparral crown fires....