Treesearch

A new software tool has been developed to simulate surface wind speed and direction at the 100m to 300 m scale. This tool is useful when trying to estimate fire behavior in mountainous terrain. It is based on widely used computational fluid dynamics technology and has been tested against measured wind flows. In recent years it has been used to support fire management decisions to improve firefighter and public safety, understand the environmental conditions associated with entrapment fires, improve prescribed fire prescriptions, and estimate fire potential. Outputs from this tool include...

Prescribed burning is essential on Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Not only is it needed to manage the volatile fuels, but also to manage the complex system of fire maintained habitats found here. Fire management on the Refuge presents unique challenges. In addition to the restraints to prescribed burning that are common to many prescribed burning programs, Refuge fire managers must also consider the special needs of an operational space port. By using an active program of education, demonstration and negotiation with the Space Center, the Refuge has been able to maintain a...

How can a unit learn in everyday fuels programs and from program reviews? How can a unit move from living in the “report card” culture to discovering more effective ways to improve what it knows and how it learns? Six specific tasks are critical to organizational learning according to David A. Garvin of Harvard Business School. By engaging in these tasks a unit can significantly improve both its programs and its learning. To further assist field units, an organizational learning survey has been recently developed by the Harvard Business School in cooperation with the Lessons Learned...

Projections of fire season severity that integrate historical weather and fire information can be used by fire managers when making decisions about allocating and prioritizing firefighting resources. They enable fire managers to anticipate fire activity and pre-position resources to maximize public and firefighter safety, reduce environmental impacts, and lower firefighting costs. This research determines the potential severity of fire seasons in the Pacific Northwest by using statistical techniques that correlate weather data and annual-acreage-burned figures for five fire management...

This paper evaluated potential forest product market impacts in the U.S. West of increases in the supply of wood from thinnings to reduce fire hazard. Evaluations are done using the Fuel Treatment Market-West model for a set of hypothetical fuel treatment scenarios, which include stand-density-index (SDI) and thin-from-below (TFB) treatment regimes at alternative levels of harvest administrative fees or subsidies. Results show that even with industry bearing the assumed administrative costs of thinning programs, substantial volumes of wood could be thinned, but more so in coastal regions...

This paper identifies timberland areas in 12 western states where thinning treatments (1) are judged to be needed to reduce fire hazard and (2) may “pay for themselves” at a scale to make investment in forest product processing a realistic option. A web-based tool - Fuel Treatment Evaluator 3.0 - is used to select high-fire-hazard timberland plots from the Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA) database and provide results of simulated thinning treatments. Areas were identified where either torching or crowning is likely during wildfires when wind speeds are below 25...

This paper highlights the very successful collaborative approach to community wildfire hazard reduction being used in the 5 county NW Region of the Washington State Department of Natural Resources. NW Region cooperators have created a successful model to help affected communities reduce their risks to wildland fire. Identified high risk communities have been approached by a multi-agency team with Firewise education and hazard assessment methodology. Participating communities have received mini-Firewise workshops, community hazard assessments and hazard mitigation planning assistance. By...

In the fall of 2003, the Rocky Mountain Ranger District of the Lewis and Clark National Forest initiated a multi-year, large-scale prescribed burn in the Scapegoat Wilderness. The objectives of this burn were to make the non-wilderness side of the wilderness boundary more defensible from wildfire and to establish conditions that will allow fire to play a more natural role within the wilderness in the future. Using this prescribed burn as a case study, qualitative research was conducted in 2005 to understand the local ranger district’s public outreach efforts and its subsequent influence on...

This manuscript details a collaborative effort that reduced the risk of wildfire in an affluent, wildland-urban interface community in southern California while simultaneously minimizing the environmental impact to the site. FARSITE simulations illustrated the potential threat to the community of Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County, California, where multimillion-dollar homes were located immediately above a designated open space area that consisted primarily of 60-year-old, decadent chaparral. Post-treatment fire behavior simulations demonstrated the potential ability to moderate fire...

Thinning mature forest stands to wide spacing is prescribed to reduce crown bulk density and likelihood of severe crown fire behaviour. However, it may adversely affect surface fuel load, moisture content and within-stand wind, which influence surface fire behaviour and crowning potential. Comparison of a mature lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. var. latifolia Engelm.) stand in southeastern British Columbia to an adjacent stand with half the basal area removed by thinning to 4 m inter-tree spacing found a decrease in canopy interception of rainfall and increases in solar radiation,...