Abstract
Fire management agencies undertake a range of fire management strategies to reduce the risk posed by future wildfires. This can include fuel treatments (prescribed burning and mechanical removal), suppression and community engagement. However, no agency has an unlimited budget and numerically optimal solutions can rarely be implemented, if indeed they do exist. Agencies are trying to quantify the extent to which their management actions reduce risk across multiple values in the most cost-effective manner. In this paper, we examine the cost-effectiveness of a range of prescribed burning strategies across multiple landscapes in south-eastern Australia. Landscapes considered include vegetated areas surrounding the cities of Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and Sydney. Using a simulation approach, we examine the potential range of fires that could occur in a region with varying levels of edge and landscape prescribed burning treatment regimes. Damages to assets are measured for houses, lives, transmission lines, carbon and ecological assets. Costs of treatments are estimated from published models and all data are analysed using multi-criteria decision analysis. Cost-effectiveness of prescribed burning varies widely between regions. Variations primarily relate to the spatial configuration of assets and natural vegetation. Regions with continuous urban interface adjacent to continuous vegetation had the most cost-effective fuel treatment strategies. In contrast, those regions with fragmented vegetation and discontinuous interfaces demonstrated the lowest cost-effectiveness of treatments. Quantifying the extent to which fuel treatments can reduce the risk to assets is vital for determining the location and extent of treatments across a landscape.
Highlights
Wildfires are a natural disturbance in many ecosystems but when they encounter human settlements/infrastructure/communities they can have devastating consequences
Prescribed burning is a form of fuel treatment: i.e., it aims to alter the quantity and structural complexity of fine fuel in a way that moderates the rate of spread and intensity of subsequent wildfires
Given that there are major variations in fire weather at regional scales, the upper extreme, effectiveness of prescribed burning can be expected to vary as a coupled function of vegetation type and climate
Summary
Wildfires are a natural disturbance in many ecosystems but when they encounter human settlements/infrastructure/communities they can have devastating consequences. Recent fires around the globe (e.g., Europe, USA, Chile and Australia,) have resulted in major losses of life, property, infrastructure and caused significant environmental changes (Bowman, 2018). These problems will be exacerbated under patterns of global change where expanding urban populations are increasingly moving into flammable parts of the landscape and fire regimes will shift in response to changing climates (Gill et al, 2013; Bowman and Moreira-Muñoz, 2019; Syphard and Keeley, 2019). Given that there are major variations in fire weather at regional scales, the upper extreme, effectiveness of prescribed burning can be expected to vary as a coupled function of vegetation type (inherent fuel dynamics structure) and climate (potential fire weather)
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