Research and management issues in large-scale fire modeling

Abstract

In 1996, a team of North American fire scientists and resource managers convened to assess the effects of fire disturbance on ecosystems and to develop scientific recommendations for future fire research and management activities. These recommendations - elicited with the Analytic Hierarchy Process - include numerically ranked scientific and managerial questions and responses. Currently, understanding fire effects and extrapolating fire-effects knowledge to large spatial scales is limited, because most data have been collected at small spatial scales for site-specific applications. Although we need more large-scale fire-effects data, it is more efficient to concentrate efforts on improving and linking existing models that simulate fire effects in a georeferenced format while integrating empirical data as they become available. A major component of this effort should be improved communication between modelers and managers to develop modeling tools that can be used in a planning context. The priority issues and approaches elicited in this workshop setting provide a template for current and future fire science and fire management programs.

Citation

Peterson, David L.; Schmoldt, Daniel L. 2000. Research and management issues in large-scale fire modeling. Proceedings, Resource Technology ''98 Nordic. Finnish Forest Research Institute, Research Paper 791. 10 pp.