National Fire Plan Research Articles

National Park Service fire restoration, policies versus results: What went wrong

In the 1960s the US National Park Service developed a policy designed to restore the natural ecological role of wildland fire. The policy was driven by growing understanding of ecosystem management benefits, as reflected in the 1963 Leopold Report on wildlife management in national parks. The new policy was designed to reverse decades of aggressive wildfire suppression that had caused disruptions in habitats and vegetative communities, and unnaturally high wildland fuel accumulation. More than 50 years later, the policy has largely failed to achieve its goals. This failure is due not just to climate change and the rise of new fire regimes dominated by mega-fires. It also was due to a lack of clear and unified organizational commitment by many parks, along with continued administrative comfort with fire suppression-oriented thinking, particularly during the window of opportunity between 1970 and 2000. During this time program emphasis shifted from ecosystem restoration to hazard fuels reduction, and program direction from Natural Resources staff to Emergency Services personnel. Efforts to establish a balance between emergency response thinking and resource management thinking largely failed due to institutional barriers and funding/staffing decisions driven by the threat of large wildfires. Park managers became wary of natural fire regime restoration efforts after the 1988 Yellowstone fires and the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire. This accelerated the demise of the Leopold Report vision of restoring and maintaining the ecological role of natural fire. In its place, wildfire suppression philosophy again became predominant, as reflected in the National Fire Plan with its focus away from ecological fire use and toward hazard fuel reduction in support of protecting the wildland urban interface. Restoring the Leopold Report vision requires an interdivisional commitment by Park emergency response and resources management organizations, guided by leadership at all organizational levels. It now may be timely to establish an NPS advisory board on wildland fire management similar to the one that produced the Leopold Report. This Board should review wildland fire policy implementation over the past 58 years, determine whether the ecosystem restoration paradigm is still valid, and if so, then the types of leadership and organizational changes required to achieve it.

Historical and future global burned area with changing climate and human demography

Summary Wildfires influence terrestrial carbon cycling and represent a safety risk, and yet a process-based understanding of their frequency and spatial distributions remains elusive. We combine satellite-based observations with an enhanced dynamic global vegetation model to make regionally resolved global assessments of burned area (BA) responses to changing climate, derived from 34 Earth system models and human demographics for 1860–2100. Limited by climate and socioeconomics, recent BA has decreased, especially in central South America and mesic African savannas. However, future simulations predict increasing BA due to changing climate, rapid population density growth, and urbanization. BA increases are especially notable at high latitudes, due to accelerated warming, and over the tropics and subtropics, due to drying and human ignitions. Conversely, rapid urbanization also limits BA via enhanced fire suppression in the immediate vicinity of settlements, offsetting the potential for dramatic future increases, depending on warming extent. Our analysis provides further insight into regional and global BA trends, highlighting the importance of including human demographic change in models for wildfire under changing climate.

Economic and policy factors driving adoption of institutional woody biomass heating systems in the U.S.

Abundant stocks of woody biomass that are associated with active forest management can be used as fuel for bioenergy in many applications. Though factors driving large-scale biomass use in industrial settings have been studied extensively, small-scale biomass combustion systems commonly used by institutions for heating have received less attention. A zero inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model is employed to identify economic and policy factors favorable to installation and operation of these systems. This allows us to determine the effectiveness of existing policies and identify locations where conditions offer the greatest potential for additional promotion of biomass use. Adoption is driven by heating needs, fossil fuel prices, and proximity to woody biomass resources, specifically logging residues, National Forests, and fuel treatments under the National Fire Plan.

Understory Plant Community Responses to Fuel-Reduction Treatments and Seeding in an Upland Piñon-Juniper Woodland

Woody plant expansion and infilling into nonwooded rangeland ecosystems have been observed worldwide. Such expansion may lead to declines in herbaceous understory plant communities and increased fuel loads in rangelands. Under the US National Fire Plan, fuel-reduction treatments have been implemented over vast expanses of western forest types to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and restore historical ecosystem structure, function, and diversity. The benefits of fuel-reduction may, however, also carry inherent ecological risk such as promoting non-native species colonization. Here, we compare understory plant community responses to three commonly used fuel-reduction treatments with seeding applications in an upland piñon (Pinus edulis Engelm.)–juniper (Juniperus osteosperma [Torr.] Little) woodland on the Colorado Plateau: 1) mechanical mastication, 2) lop and slash piled then burned (pile burn), and 3) lop and scatter followed by a broadcast burn (broadcast burn). Data were collected pretreatment (2009) and one (2010), two (2011), and six (2015) growing seasons post treatment. We found while understory perennial herbaceous plant cover remained low 1 and 2 yr post treatment, it increased by > 700% in all fuel-reduction treatment plots six growing seasons post treatment. Furthermore, while we observed minor increases in invasive annual grass, Bromus tectorum L. (cheatgrass), colonization in 2010 and 2011, there were substantial increases in B. tectorum cover by 2015. B. tectorum cover varied among treatments with the greatest cover in the unseeded mastication plot at nearly 30%. Seeding applications did not increase overall seed mix species cover but enhanced seed mix species richness and, thus, may have increased resistance to B. tectorum invasion in seeded treatment plots. Our findings offer valuable insights to the ecological consequences of fuel-reduction activities in piñon-juniper woodlands through comparison of common fuel-reduction treatments and seeding applications and highlight differences in understory plant community responses to treatments across short to longer time scales.

The Plan and the Pork. Factors Influencing Agency Implementation of the National Fire Plan

What are the structural influences on public agency management? In this paper, we examine how the environment advances or undermines agency managerial effectiveness. We examine the implementation o...

The Influence of Market Proximity on National Forest Hazardous Fuels Treatments

The US Department of Agriculture Forest Service's focus on hazardous fuels reduction has increased since the adoption of the National Fire Plan in 2001. However, appropriations for hazardous fuels reduction still lag behind wildfire suppression spending. Offsetting fuels treatment costs through biomass utilization or by using innovative administrative mechanisms such as stewardship contracting are two approaches to stretching appro- priated dollars further across the landscape. We use fuels treatment data (n 8,451 locations) to ask how wood- processing infrastructure influences where and how much hazardous fuels treatments, biomass utilization, and stewardship contracting occur on national forests in Oregon and Washington. We found that national forest ranger districts that are relatively close in proximity to sawmills or biomass facilities treated more overall ha and more wildland-urban interface ha and used stewardship contracting on more ha than ranger districts further away and that there was a threshold distance for these effects (40 minutes). We also found that proximity to sawmills and biomass facilities influenced the location and extent of hazardous fuels treatments that incorporated biomass utilization or were administered through a stewardship contract. Our analysis suggests that to be effective at offsetting some of the costs of hazardous fuels reduction and treat a greater extent of the landscape, policy strategies may need to focus on supporting a network of wood-processing facilities that is distributed across forest-based communities. FOR .S CI. 59(5):566-577.

Social science research related to wildfire management: an overview of recent findings and future research needs

As with other aspects of natural-resource management, the approach to managing wildland fires has evolved over time as scientific understanding has advanced and the broader context surrounding management decisions has changed. Prior to 2000 the primary focus of most fire research was on the physical and ecological aspects of fire; social science research was limited to a small number of studies. However, as more people moved into fire-prone areas interest grew in understanding relevant social dynamics. This growing interest was supported by increased funding for fire research overall with the creation of the Joint Fire Science Program in 1998 and the National Fire Plan in 2000. In subsequent years, a significant body of research has developed on the human dimensions of wildland fire covering diverse topics including: attitudes towards pre-fire mitigation, social acceptability of fire and fuels management, community preparedness, public response during fires, citizen–agency communications and post-fire recovery. This paper reports on two aspects of a Joint Fire Science Program project intended to take stock of the key social science lessons provided to date: a basic review of findings in the non-economic fire social science literature and identification of future research needs.

Restoration relevance of recent National Fire Plan treatments in forests of the western United States

The US National Fire Plan (NFP) is among the largest forest‐restoration initiatives worldwide, removing wild‐land fuels on about 11 million hectares and costing over $6 billion. We evaluated the extent to which areas treated under the NFP – from 2004 to 2008, in forest ecosystems outside the wildland–urban interface in 11 western states (“West”) – were predicted to need restoration, due to disruption of fire regimes and expected fuels buildup. Fuel‐reduction treatments were implemented on about 1% of the West's forested areas. Forty‐three percent of the treated area was predicted to have high‐restoration need – almost twice as much as expected, given the distribution of these forests. However, an equal amount was in mixed‐ or uncertain‐need forests, and 14% occurred in low‐need forests, suggesting that managers need additional information on fire‐regime disruptions in some forest ecosystems to help prioritize restoration activities. Only one‐quarter of the West's forested area shows strong evidence of uncharacteristic fuels buildup, which is often emphasized as the primary cause of current wildfire problems, potentially directing attention away from other important drivers such as climate change and an expanding wildland–urban interface.

National Fire Plan fuels treatments target the wildland–urban interface in the western United States

The article “Implementation of National Fire Plan treatments in the wildland–urban interface in the western United States” (1) is misleading because it is based on wildland–urban interface (WUI) designations not used by federal agencies or their state and local partners. Moreover, by omitting any examination of the allotment of program monies to WUI and non-WUI areas, it misses a significant opportunity to measure program priorities. As a result, its conclusions fail to provide any new insights to improve protection for the WUI.

Determinants of National Fire Plan Fuels Treatment Expenditures: A Revealed Preference Analysis for Northern New Mexico

The accumulation of fire fuels in forests throughout the world contributes significantly to the severity of wildfires. To combat the threat of wildfire, especially in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), US federal land management agencies have implemented a number of forest restoration and wildfire risk reduction programs. In the spirit of revealed preference analyses, the objective of this study is to investigate the pattern and determinants of National Fire Plan (NFP) expenditures for fuel reduction treatments in northern New Mexico (USA). Estimation results from a set of Generalized Estimating Equations models are mixed with respect to risk reduction hypotheses, and also raise issues regarding how risk reduction should be defined for a region characterized by both pockets of urban sprawl into the WUI and large areas of chronic rural poverty. Program preferences for project funding under the federal Collaborative Forest Restoration Program in New Mexico are shown to be distinctly different (e.g., exhibiting greater concern for social equity) than for other NFP-funded projects.

An object-oriented approach to assessing changes in tree cover in the Colorado Front Range 1938–1999

In the wake of numerous catastrophic wildfires, forest management policies have been implemented in recent years in the United States with the goals of reducing fire risk, including the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. A key premise underlying these policies is that fire suppression has resulted in denser forests than were present historically that now have higher fire risk. To evaluate this premise for the northern Front Range, Colorado, we used object-oriented image analysis to compare change in tree cover delineated from historical and modern imagery. Historical photographs from 1938 and 1940 were scanned, orthorectified, and overlaid on Digital Orthoimagry Quarter Quadrangles (DOQQs) from 1999. Using an object-oriented image analysis technique, the photos were then finely segmented and classified into two classes: tree and non-tree. Trees are heterogeneous in appearance in black and white aerial photography, so we employed separate membership functions to identify four visually distinct types: ‘interior forest’, ‘isolated trees’, ‘dark forest’, and ‘edge forest’. Our classification strategy employed spatial relationships between objects in addition to spectral information, so that our classification is fairly robust to variations in illumination. Based on the classification of fine objects, we then calculated the percent tree cover within a larger set of objects for the two time periods. We estimate that average tree density across the study area increased minimally (4%) during the 60-year period, with considerable spatial variation across the landscape. The results of the analysis illustrate that, consistent with independent tree-ring evidence, the highest increase in tree density is in areas characterized by low initial density, south-facing slopes, low elevations, and ponderosa pine dominance. In contrast, the highest elevation areas dominated by mixed conifer and lodgepole pine forests revealed no significant change in tree cover. Furthermore, there is no significant difference between objects dominated by low, medium, and high departure from historical conditions, as classified in the Landfire Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) data product. The results of the study can help managers prioritize forest treatments aimed at restoring pre-suppression forest structure.

Implementation of National Fire Plan treatments near the wildland-urban interface in the western United States.

Because of increasing concern about the effects of catastrophic wildland fires throughout the western United States, federal land managers have been engaged in efforts to restore historical fire behavior and mitigate wildfire risk. During the last 5 years (2004-2008), 44,000 fuels treatments were implemented across the western United States under the National Fire Plan (NFP). We assessed the extent to which these treatments were conducted in and near the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where they would have the greatest potential to reduce fire risk in neighboring homes and communities. Although federal policies stipulate that significant resources should be invested in the WUI, we found that only 3% of the area treated was within the WUI, and another 8% was in an additional 2.5-km buffer around the WUI, totaling 11%. Only 17% of this buffered WUI is under federal ownership, which significantly limits the ability of federal agencies to implement fire-risk reduction treatments near communities. Although treatments far from the WUI may have some fire mitigation benefits, our findings suggest that greater priority must be given to locating treatments in and near the WUI, rather than in more remote settings, to satisfy NFP goals of reducing fire risk to communities. However, this may require shifting management and policy emphasis from public to private lands.

A Project for Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity

Elected officials and leaders of environmental agencies need information about the effects of large wildfires in order to set policy and make management decisions. Recently, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC), which implements and coordinates the National Fire Plan (NFP) and Federal Wildland Fire Management Policies (National Fire Plan 2004), adopted a strategy to monitor the effectiveness of the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA). One component of this strategy is to assess the environmental impacts of large wildland fires and identify the trends of burn severity on all lands across the United States. To that end, WFLC has sponsored a six-year project, Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), which requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDA-FS) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to map and assess the burn severity for all large current and historical fires. Using Landsat data and the differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) algorithm, the USGS Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) and USDA-FS Remote Sensing Applications Center will map burn severity of all fires since 1984 greater than 202 ha (500 ac) in the east, and 404 ha (1,000 ac) in the west. The number of historical fires from this period combined with current fires occurring during the course of the project will exceed 9,000. The MTBS project will generate burn severity data, maps, and reports, which will be available for use at local, state, and national levels to evaluate trends in burn severity and help develop and assess the effectiveness of land management decisions. Additionally, the information developed will provide a baseline from which to monitor the recovery and health of fire-affected landscapes over time. Spatial and tabular data quantifying burn severity will augment existing information used to estimate risk associated with a range of current and future resource threats. The annual report of 2004 fires has been completed. All data and results will be distributed to the public on a Web site.

Determining landscape extent for succession and disturbance simulation modeling

Dividing regions into manageable landscape units presents special problems in landscape ecology and land management. Ideally, a landscape should be large enough to capture a broad range of vegetation, environmental and disturbance dynamics, but small enough to be useful for focused management objectives. The purpose of this study was to determine the optimal landscape size to summarize ecological processes for two large land areas in the southwestern United States. We used a vegetation and disturbance dynamics model, LANDSUMv4, to simulate a set of nine scenarios involving systematically varied topography, map resolution, and model parameterizations of fire size and fire frequency. Spatial input data were supplied by the LANDscape FIRE Management Planning System (LANDFIRE) prototype project, an effort that will provide comprehensive and scientifically credible mid-scale data to support the National Fire Plan. We analyzed output from 2,000 year simulations to determine the thresholds of landscape condition based on the variability of burned area and dominant vegetation coverage. Results show that optimal landscape extent using burned area variability is approximately 100 km2 depending on topography, map resolution, and model parameterization. Variability of dominant vegetation area is generally higher and the optimal landscape sizes are larger in comparison to those features determined from burned area. Using the LANDFIRE project as a case study, we determined landscape size and map resolution for a large mapping project, and showed that optimal landscape size depends upon geographical, ecological, and management context.

Using simulated historical time series to prioritize fuel treatments on landscapes across the United States: The LANDFIRE prototype project

Canopy and surface fuels in many fire-prone forests of the United States have increased over the last 70 years as a result of modern fire exclusion policies, grazing, and other land management activities. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act and National Fire Plan establish a national commitment to reduce fire hazard and restore fire-adapted ecosystems across the USA. The primary index used to prioritize treatment areas across the nation is Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) computed as departures of current conditions from the historical fire and landscape conditions. This paper describes a process that uses an extensive set of ecological models to map FRCC from a departure statistic computed from simulated time series of historical landscape composition. This mapping process uses a data-driven, biophysical approach where georeferenced field data, biogeochemical simulation models, and spatial data libraries are integrated using spatial statistical modeling to map environmental gradients that are then used to predict vegetation and fuels characteristics over space. These characteristics are then fed into a landscape fire and succession simulation model to simulate a time series of historical landscape compositions that are then compared to the composition of current landscapes to compute departure, and the FRCC values. Intermediate products from this process are then used to create ancillary vegetation, fuels, and fire regime layers that are useful in the eventual planning and implementation of fuel and restoration treatments at local scales. The complex integration of varied ecological models at different scales is described and problems encountered during the implementation of this process in the LANDFIRE prototype project are addressed.

Modeling Fuel Treatment Costs on Forest Service Lands in the Western United States

Abstract Years of successful fire suppression have led to high fuel loads on the nation's forests, and steps are being taken by the nation's land management agencies to reduce these fuel loads. However, to achieve desired outcomes in a fiscally responsible manner, the cost and effectiveness in reducing losses due to wildland fire of different fuel treatments in different forest settings must be understood. Currently, prioritizing fuel treatment activities and planning budget expenditures is limited by a lack of accurate cost data. The primary objective of this research was to develop regression models that may be used to estimate the cost of hazardous fuel reduction treatments based on USDA Forest Service Region, biophysical setting, treatment type, and design. A survey instrument was used to obtain activity-specific information directly from fire management officers at Forest Service Ranger Districts for treatments occurring between 2001 and 2003. For both prescribed burns and mechanical activities, treatment size described the largest amount of variation in cost per acre, with increased size reducing cost per acre, on average. We confirmed that data on Forest Service fuel treatment activities maintained in the National Fire Plan Operations and Reporting System were not sufficiently accurate for reasonable cost analysis and modeling.

Goals, obstacles and effective strategies of wildfire mitigation programs in the Wildland–Urban Interface

Abstract The dramatic expansion into the Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI) places property, natural assets, and human life at risk from wildfire destruction. The U.S. National Fire Plan encourages communities to implement laws and outreach programs for pre-fire planning to mitigate the risk to area residents. Starting in 2003, we surveyed the administrators of regulatory and voluntary wildfire risk reduction programs in 25 U.S. states. These state and local programs are listed on the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service's National Wildfire Programs Database website, www.wildfireprograms.usda.gov , and are concerned with vegetation management on private lands. Analyses of the administrators' responses suggest several new insights about these risk mitigation efforts, including 1) how they are organized, 2) what they are trying to accomplish, 3) what are the obstacles, and 4) how well they may be working. In our study we describe the goals and objectives of these programs as well as the obstacles confronting managers. Further, we explore trends in these programs including participation in collaborative planning and use of program evaluation to measure progress toward goals. Additionally, we explore the program managers' perceptions of what are their most effective programs for creating defensible space.

A process for modeling short- and long-term risk in the southern Oregon Cascades

Evaluating tradeoffs between the short- and long-term risks of different management scenarios in fire prone ecosystems is crucial to implementation of the National Fire Plan and the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (H.R. 1904). We demonstrate a process for conducting these relative risk assessments using models and data generally available via the public domain. Our risk assessment process integrates information about the ecological characteristics of the landscape, vegetation dynamics as related to different management scenarios, and fire modeling, to generate inputs for effects analyses on water temperature, peak flows, landslides, and northern spotted owls ( Strix occidentalis caurina). The process is demonstrated for current management with owl foraging emphasis and no management scenarios in a 325,000 ha landscape in southwestern Oregon. The current management with owl foraging emphasis scenario represents a reasonable portrayal of current land management policies and allocations with an emphasis on providing spotted owl foraging habitat across the landscape. The no management scenario portrays only vegetation dynamics as projected by a growth and yield model. Results from both management scenarios were subjected to fire and effects modeling. Simulation results indicated that risk metrics used in this demonstration were sensitive to the manner in which we described and attributed the landscape and our model formulations and thus, were useful measures for relative risk assessments. Model simulations demonstrated that the potential for uncharacteristic fire increased five-fold within the first 20 years under both management scenarios. The area burned by crown fire and uncharacteristic fire also increased over time for both management scenarios. Both management scenarios resulted in a decline of spotted owl habitat, with the current management with owl foraging emphasis scenario creating more unfavorable conditions. We attribute the relatively high long-term risk of the current management with owl foraging emphasis scenario to a combination of the large-scale passive management approach instituted on a substantial portion of the landscape (approximately 55% of the assessment area), the presence of plantation-based forestry (approximately 22% of the area), and by default, the limited opportunity to implement hazardous fuels reduction at a scale large enough to influence landscape-level fuel patterns. These preliminary results suggest that a spatially explicit, more aggressive hazardous fuels reduction management scenario, that may conflict with current land management policies and allocations, is needed to reduce the continuity of hazardous fuels and sustain healthy forest conditions and spotted owl habitat.

Policies for risk assessment in federal land and resource management decisions

Laws and policies require federal land and resource management agencies, and regulatory agencies charged with conserving imperiled species, to assess risks associated with proposed actions and to manage wildland fire risks and habitat for species-at-risk of extinction. For most all federal land management activities, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires analysis of risks and other adverse consequences of proposed actions, and documentation of short- and long-term effects of a range of management alternatives, including no action. To reduce wildland fire risks on federal lands, the National Fire Plan was developed in 2000. Reducing hazardous fuels is one of the Plan's objectives. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003 requires, among other things, that courts balance short- and long-term effects of proposed action and no action before enjoining fuel-reduction treatment projects. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 prohibits any federal action that would “jeopardize” a species-at-risk of extinction or adversely affect habitat. Evaluations of projects that could pose such risks are assessed during consultation between the agency proposing action and regulatory agencies. Recent policies modify this process for National Fire Plan implementation projects. Current regulations for implementing the National Forest Management Act of 1976 require assessing species-at-risk on National Forest System lands. Proposed regulations call for balancing short- and long-term risks. It is unclear what form risk assessments should take to support agency and court decisions about risk trade-offs. One option is adapting the US Environmental Protection Agency's ecological risk assessment procedures so that management trade-offs can be evaluated.

Policy issues relevant to risk assessments, balancing risks, and the National Fire Plan: Needs and opportunities

The needs and opportunities for assessing and managing risks posed by wildfire are identified through synthesis of natural resources agency and conservation group perspectives. Risk assessment is needed primarily to compare environmental effects of management alternatives, including effects on habitat for threatened and endangered species. This need for comparative risk assessment (CRA) is driven by policies requiring federal agencies to consider risks and other adverse effects, as well as benefits, when planning and implementing land and resource management projects. An active, adaptive approach to wildfire risk management is highly desirable. Clear objectives are needed, consistent with a long-term vision of what the land should look like. Effective risk communications can help organizations build trust with stakeholders. Several improvements in existing laws and policies could encourage comparisons of active management risks and risk-reduction benefits with risks of no action when fuel loads may result in uncharacteristically severe wildfire effects on resource values, including fish and wildlife habitat. Despite some weaknesses, CRA asks important questions and encourages more transparent decision-making processes.