Treesearch

Wildfire’s economic, ecological and social impacts are on the rise, fostering the realisation that business-as-usual fire management in the United States is not sustainable. Current response strategies may be inefficient and contributing to unnecessary responder exposure to hazardous conditions, but significant knowledge gaps constrain clear and comprehensive descriptions of how changes in response strategies and tactics may improve outcomes. As such, we convened a special session at an international wildfire conference to synthesise ongoing research focused on obtaining a better understand...

Despite large commitments of personnel and equipment to wildfire suppression, relatively little is known about the factors that affect how many resources are ordered and assigned to wildfire incidents and the variation in resources across incident management teams (IMTs). Using detailed data on suppression resource assignments for IMTs managing the highest complexity wildfire incidents (Type 1 and Type 2), this paper examines daily suppression resource use and estimates the variation in resource use between IMTs. Results suggest that after controlling for fire and landscape characteristics,...

Wildland firefighters must assess potential fire behaviour in order to develop appropriate strategies and tactics that will safely meet objectives. Fire danger indices integrate surface weather conditions to quantify potential variations in fire spread rates and intensities and therefore should closely relate to observed fire behaviour. These indices could better inform fire management decisions if they were linked directly to observed fire behaviour. Here, we present a simple framework for relating fire danger indices to observed categorical wildland fire behaviour. Ordinal logistic...

Currently, limited research on large-fire suppression effectiveness suggests fire managers may over-allocate resources relative to values to be protected. Coupled with observations that weather may be more important than resource abundance to achieve control objectives, resource use may be driven more by risk aversion than efficiency. To explore this potential, we investigated observed percentage of perimeter contained and self-reported containment values, the exposure index, and patterns of resource use during the containment and control phases of fire response. Fireline production...

During active fire incidents, decisions regarding where and how to safely and effectively deploy resources to meet management objectives are often made under rapidly evolving conditions, with limited time to assess management strategies or for development of backup plans if initial efforts prove unsuccessful. Under all but the most extreme fire weather conditions, topography and fuels are significant factors affecting potential fire spread and burn severity. We leverage these relationships to quantify the effects of topography, fuel characteristics, road networks and fire suppression...

Wildland firefighting in the United States is a complex and costly enterprise. While there are strong seasonal signatures for fire occurrence in specific regions of the United States, spatiotemporal occurrence of wildfire activity can have high inter-annual variability. Suppression resources come from a variety of jurisdictions and provide a wide range of skills, experience and associated mobility and logistical needs. Dispatch centres and regional and national resource allocation centres move suppression resources to respond to demand. However, little is known about the decision-making...

Characterising the impacts of wildland fire and fire suppression is critical information for fire management decision-making. Here, we focus on decisions related to the rare larger and longer-duration fire events, where the scope and scale of decision-making can be far broader than initial response efforts, and where determining and demonstrating efficiency of strategies and actions can be particularly troublesome. We organise our review around key decision factors such as context, complexity, alternatives, consequences and uncertainty, and for illustration contrast fire management in...

Resorcinol-formaldehyde adhesives can reinforce stress fractures that appear from wood surface preparation. Researchers have found that applying the resorcinol-formaldehyde prepolymer, hydroxymethylated resorcinol is thought to plasticize lignin components and stabilize stress fractures through reactions with lignin subunits and hemicelluloses in wood. In this study, a dilute solution of hydroxymethylated resorcinol (HMR) is cured in the presence of a crude milled-wood lignin (cMWL) from Acer saccharum and subsequently dissolved in dimethylsulfoxide-d6 to delineate reactivity with lignin...

This science update contains the findings of a 2013 canvass of all primary wood-using plants in Arkansas, and presents changes in product output and residue use since 2011. It complements the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) annual inventory of volume and removals from the State’s timberland. The canvass was conducted to determine the amount and source of wood receipts and annual timber product drain, by county, in 2013 and to determine interstate and cross-regional movement of industrial roundwood. Only primary wood-using mills were canvassed. Primary mills are those that process...

This science update contains the findings of a 2013 canvass of all primary wood-using plants in Alabama, and presents changes in product output and residue use since 2011. It complements the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) annual inventory of volume and removals from the State’s timberland. The canvass was conducted to determine the amount and source of wood receipts and annual timber product drain, by county, in 2013 and to determine interstate and cross-regional movement of industrial roundwood. Only primary wood-using mills were canvassed. Primary mills are those that process...