Measuring Outcomes of Treatments, Wildfires, and Other Disturbances

A team of forest service scientists and managers is developing powerful metrics to understand how landscapes are changing as a result of thinning treatments, prescribed burning, wildfires, and other natural disturbances. These new outcome-based change metrics will allow forest managers to pinpoint how things like wildfire risk to nearby communities may have decreased as a result of recent vegetation management projects on the National Forests as well as serve as a powerful new tool to prioritize future treatments and resources.

Outcome-based change metrics quantify outcomes before and after fuels reduction treatments (like prescribed fire or thinning) and describe measurable changes following wildfire and other natural disturbances. These metrics provide a way to systematically track and report trends over time, help predict how well forests and communities are likely to fare in the face of future wildfire, and aid land managers in planning treatments most likely to reach desired outcomes. Outcome-based change metrics supplement reporting of outputs like acres treated with measurable outcomes associated with change in wildfire risk, avoided economic costs, and changes in ecological conditions over longer periods of time. Using this new approach, the Forest Service will be able to consistently describe changes to landscapes following fuel reduction treatments, wildfires, and other disturbances, and how these changes translate to future wildfire risk. 

Led by Forest Service Research and Development in collaboration with Fire and Aviation Management and the National Forest System, a team of Forest Service experts are developing outcome-based change metrics for 21 landscapes in the Western United States at highest risk of wildfire. These high-risk landscapes encompass 48 million acres of public and private lands where communities, critical infrastructure, and natural resources are at high risk of destructive wildfire and where focused risk reduction investments have been occurring. Outcome-based change metrics can be used across all lands we manage.

Outcome-based change metrics are anchored to the concept of landscape resilience and the factors that affect the ability of communities and landscapes to recover from fire. There are ten interrelated pillars of landscape resilience (for example, fire-adapted communities) and we are developing metrics that quantify progress towards or away from desired outcomes within a pillar of landscape resilience. For example, within the fire-adapted community pillar, we identify what is at stake (such as number of homes), measure change in wildfire risk (to homes and other assets) and estimate the value of avoided losses that occur as a result of wildfire risk reduction. Currently this effort includes twenty metrics and economic valuations including change in wildfire risk to communities and powerlines, avoided economic loss of timber and recreation sites due to landscape changes, and changes in ecological conditions like water availability and forest stand density.