Fire- and carbon-oriented management across Pacific Northwest forests

Project Description

This study has three complementary parts.

Ecoregions included in the study area. USDA Forest Service map by Abigail Kaminski.

1. Survey family forest owners with fewer than 5,000 acres on the west side of the Cascades. Researchers are conducting surveys of forest management strategies these landowners are using to adapt to increasing fire risk.
2. Interview federal, state, tribal, and private forest owners with more than 5,000 acres about their perceptions of wildfire and climate change, current forest management goals and practices, the strategies they are using to address wildfire and climate change, and the kinds of programs or policies that could help them do so.
3. Leverage insights from these interviews and surveys to model an array of silvicultural strategies that balance fire resistance goals with nonfire-related management goals.

Purpose and Scope

This research will increase understanding about fuels and carbon management in western Oregon and Washington and northwest California and how such management can change forest conditions and outcomes over multi-owner forested landscapes. We seek to better understand the following:

1. How landowners and managers in west-side forests perceive fire risk and the effects of climate change.
2. If, why, and how they choose to manage that risk.
3. How landowners consider climate change mitigation and adaptation in forest management decisions.
4. The effectiveness and economic feasibility of silvicultural alternatives for enhancing resistance to wildfire and increasing carbon sequestration and storage in these forests and the wood products they generate.

Methods

Social science research will provide a foundation for a model-based effort.

We will first interview and survey public, private, and tribal forest landowners and managers to gather primary data on past, current, and intended future fuels and carbon management and the underlying goals and context that motivate these efforts. We will interview managers representing approximately 90 forest ownerships and live-capture key information reported during the interview using an online survey tool.

After interviews are completed and recordings are transcribed, we will analyze interview transcripts by using qualitative analysis software. This will allow us to systematically extract, document, compare, and identify themes in information provided by the interviewees. Information on current forest management goals and practices that is captured through interviews will inform the subsequent modeling work.

We will then model forest management prescriptions, including elements that address fuel treatment effectiveness, carbon implications, and economic feasibility, to simulate stand and landscape outcomes. Along with the interview data, we will use Forest Inventory and Analysis data on forest conditions and the Forest Vegetation Simulator under the BioSum framework (http://biosum.info(link is external)). BioSum connects Forest Inventory and Analysis data on forest conditions with the Forest Vegetation Simulator to depict the impact of management actions on fire resistance and other stand characteristics, simultaneously estimating treatment costs and wood production co-benefits.

The simulations will explore outcomes from currently applied landowner management activities—that may or may not promote fire resistance or climate benefits through net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions—and contrast those with alternative management actions focused on enhancing fire resistance, including under the potentially more severe fire weather expected with climate change.

This research focuses on landscapes that represent a cross-section of fire regimes and ecoregions within the study area.

Image: The BioSum framework connects Forest Inventory and Analysis data with the Forest Vegetation Simulator and treatment cost simulations to predict how prospective management alternatives will translate to fire resistance, climate mitigation, and sustainable production of feedstocks for renewable wood products and bioenergy.