Treesearch

In 1996 the Forest Act (Decree 101-96) was approved, giving life to the National Forest Institute (INAB) as the autonomous and decentralized public entity responsible for forest administration outside protected areas. Together with the Forest Act, the State of Guatemala, through INAB, created the Forest Incentives Program (PNFOR) to promote the establishment of plantations and sustainable forest management. Given the experiences with PINFOR, and the demands of small holders and community groups, in 2007 the Forest Incentives Program for Smallholders (PINPEP) was created through the...

Central America, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru are projected to experience an increase over the short term in the number of recorded wildfires and area affected, accompanied by an obvious loss of housing units, infrastructure and in extreme cases human lives. Hence, there is an indisputable need for Wildfire Protection and Fire Management to be assumed responsibly and on an academic basis by professionals in forest and related sciences in Latin America, which necessitates the adoption and development of a "Latin American Strategy for Strengthening Fire...

Economic decision-making in wildfire defense and fire management programs is not easy when performed under efficiency criteria. The determination of variables to be considered and the lack of data analyzed in relation to the results achieved by the action plans adopted to reduce the impact of fires condition the adoption of strategic solutions, both in the management of the landscape against fires and in suppression operations. If, by itself, the decision on how much, where and how to invest protection budgets is complex, the choice in environments of risk and uncertainty undoubtedly...

Using the same choice experiment surveys and same specification of mixed logit models are used in California (CA) and Florida (FL) to compare homeowners willingness to pay (WTP) for two types of fuel reduction programs. Comparing the WTP of homeowners in CA and FL for private and public wildfire risk reduction show that WTP for the private actions among households who perceive low to moderate wildfire risk is quite low, and probably lower than what their cost share would be for making significant wildfire risk reductions on their property and to their residence. However, these same...

Valuation of natural resources requires a multifunctional vision incorporating market and nonmarket values like environmental services and landscape goods. Though widely used in forest firest analysis, teledetection has never been used in the economic valuation of forest fires damages. Application of this tool in the valuation of forest fires damages provides a versatile tool with many benefits. For example, it allows identification and valuation of large forest fires inexpensively compare to on the ground monitoring by providing periodic information of vegetation post-fire behavior. Using...

This study was undertaken to determine the factors causing forest fires in Serik and Tasagil forest provinces of Antalya Forest Regional Directory in Turkey. These neighboring forest provinces including 78 forest villages was the site of one of the biggest forest fires in the Turkish Recorded History affecting about 15000 hectares. The area is also known to have a high frequency of forest fires. To accomplish this goal, we gathered information on 21 forest related characteristics, 22 socioeconomic factors for the years from 1998-2010, fire number, and two different index derived by...

The increasing use of prescribed fires, as a fire management technique for preventing wildfires and reducing their impact, demands the development of tools that enable performing the necessary studies for determining application opportunities in the territory. The generation of interesting uses of this technique not only directed to the control of forest fuel loads, but also to the creation and maintenance of operational scenarios related to the extinction and suppression of forest fires, requires analysis of the landscape on the basis of the multiple variables that influence decision-makin...

This work examines the perceived impact of sociopolitical factors on large fire decision making. The study is based on a set of 74 large fires in USDA Forest Service Regions 5 and 6 for the years 2009-2013. All participants were fire managers, some as part of units affected by incidents and others associated with incident management teams. A protocol was developed and implemented to support a combination of information collection approaches, including interviews, survey-type data collection, and encoding of information from incident documentation sources. Participants were asked whether...

This presentation introduces the project "Development of a Forest Fire Danger System for Mexico" funded by the Mexican Forest Agency CONAFOR. The goal of the 3-year project is to develop an operational fire danger system for mapping daily and forecasted fire risk occurrence and fire propagation danger in Mexico, which will be online for decision-making on fire management by CONAFOR and fire management actors in Mexico. The presentation summarizes the project goals and structure and the results from the first year of the project, including: 1) The development of a fire occurrence risk...

The forest of the Distrito Central (Central District) and surrounding areas is affected in the dry season by wildfires, adding to the damage caused by the bark beetle, which makes it necessary to coordinate inter-agency efforts to address this problem. The U.S. government through USAID via International Programs was able to bring specialists from the U.S. Forest Service to support the establishment and start-up of the Inter-Agency Wildfire Operations Center (known by its Spanish acronym COIIF). COIIF is an inter-agency center that coordinates efforts for monitoring, detection, surveillance...