Wildfire risk as a socioecological pathology (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Dilemma of Wildfire Definition: What It Reveals and What It Implies
2020
This paper presents the results of an explorative survey, based on a questionnaire sent by email, about how wildfire experts, operating in different countries, perceive wildfire and express their mindset by defining “wildfire” from a list of 14 terms and how they justify their preference for the term selected as the most important. Using a five-point Likert Scale, results from 221 valid replies indicate a general convergence toward a reduced number of terms. Six of them exhibit a mean >3.20 (Disturbance, Natural hazard, Climate-sensitive hazard, Socio-ecological hazard, Socio-ecological disturbance, and Social-ecological hazard). The three most preferred terms (i.e., Disturbance, Natural hazard, and Climate-sensitive hazard) reflect wildfire as a natural process or phenomenon (about 59% of the replies). The three terms characterized by both the social and ecological adjectives (i.e., Socio-ecological hazard, Socio-ecological disturbance, Social-ecological hazard) occupy relativel...
PLoS Currents, 2012
Introduction Wildfires are common globally. Although there has been considerable work done on the health effects of wildfires in countries such as the USA where they occur frequently there has been relatively little work to investigate health effects in the United Kingdom. Climate change may increase the risk of increasing wildfire frequency, therefore there is an urgent need to further understand the health effects and public awareness of wildfires. This study was designed to review current evidence about the health effects of wildfires from the UK standpoint. Methods A comprehensive literature review of international evidence regarding wildfire related health effects was conducted in January 2012. Further information was gathered from authors' focus groups. Results A review of the published evidence shows that human health can be severely affected by wildfires. Certain populations are particularly vulnerable. Wood smoke has high levels of particulate matter and toxins. Respiratory morbidity predominates, but cardiovascular, ophthalmic and psychiatric problems can also result. In addition severe burns resulting from direct contact with the fire require care in special units and carry a risk of multi-organ complications. The wider health implications from spreading air, water and land pollution are of concern. Access to affected areas and communication with populations living within them is crucial in mitigating risk. Conclusion This study has identified factors that may reduce public health risk from wildfires. However more research is needed to evaluate longer term health effects from wildfires. An understanding of such factors is vital to ensure preparedness within health care services for such events.
Community risk due to wildland urban interface fires: a top-down perspective
Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020
Recent wildfire events, in the United States and around the world, have resulted in thousands of homes destroyed and many lives lost, leaving communities and policy makers, with the question as DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this thesis to my dearest parents v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Health and Economic Impact of Wildfires: Literature Review
2008
This review study synthesizes available literature in epidemiology, economics and wildfirerelated studies to provide essential information for the valuation of health costs associated with wildfire events. We review three areas within these literatures: key health outcomes to be evaluated, association between wildfire smoke and health outcomes, and valuation of health effects. We find that the key health outcomes are mortality, restricted activity days (including work days lost), hospital admissions, respiratory symptoms, and self-treatment. Our review shows somewhat inconsistent results between the conventional and wildfire-related PM epidemiology studies. We summarize the recent estimates of per unit cost of mortality and morbidity and present recommendations for evaluators.
Some Wildfire Ignition Causes Pose More Risk of Destroying Houses than Others
PLOS ONE, 2016
Many houses are at risk of being destroyed by wildfires. While previous studies have improved our understanding of how, when and why houses are destroyed by wildfires, little attention has been given to how these fires started. We compiled a dataset of wildfires that destroyed houses in New South Wales and Victoria and, by comparing against wildfires where no houses were destroyed, investigated the relationship between the distribution of ignition causes for wildfires that did and did not destroy houses. Powerlines, lightning and deliberate ignitions are the main causes of wildfires that destroyed houses. Powerlines were 6 times more common in the wildfires that destroyed houses data than in the wildfires where no houses were destroyed data and lightning was 2 times more common. For deliberate-and powerline-caused wildfires, temperature, wind speed, and forest fire danger index were all significantly higher and relative humidity significantly lower (P < 0.05) on the day of ignition for wildfires that destroyed houses compared with wildfires where no houses were destroyed. For all powerline-caused wildfires the first house destroyed always occurred on the day of ignition. In contrast, the first house destroyed was after the day of ignition for 78% of lightning-caused wildfires. Lightning-caused wildfires that destroyed houses were significantly larger (P < 0.001) in area than human-caused wildfires that destroyed houses. Our results suggest that targeting fire prevention strategies around ignition causes, such as improving powerline safety and targeted arson reduction programmes, and reducing fire spread may decrease the number of wildfires that destroy houses.
1 Title: Is there a link between actual and perceived wildfire danger? Author and Affiliation
2015
Over the last 20 years, costs for wildfire initial attack in the U.S. have increased significantly. The increased cost relates to wildfire suppression practices as well as the growing number of wildland urban interface (WUI) homes. Requiring WUI residents to pay an annual tax for their wildfire risk would lower costs to the general taxpayer. Willingness-to-pay (WTP) for wildfire prevention, in relation to both perceived and actual wildfire danger, was the focus of this study. Colorado WUI residents had a high awareness of wildfire risk and were willing to pay over $400 annually to reduce this risk. Respondents beliefs about wildfire frequency were comparable to the original natural wildfire regimes of their areas pre-European settlement. Keywords: GIS; wildfire risk; stakeholder; contingent valuation; Colorado.
Levels of Risk: Perspectives from the Lost Creek Fire
Risk has been considered as the probability of experiencing adverse events. Understanding risk and vulnerability is essential to disaster management and recovery. Through qualitative interviews in a community that experienced a wildfire, 'at-risk' and 'feeling at-risk' themes were identified for both the individuals and community in this study. Internal and external circumstances along with varying levels of dependence influenced the reports of risk. Individual and community risk during a major wildfire is discussed in order to explain links to community resiliency. Such understandings can aid in the development of appropriate measures to reduce short- and long-term impacts from natural disasters.
Social Vulnerability and Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface: Literature synthesis
Ecosystem Workforce Program Working Paper Series, 2019
This paper presents a review of social vulnerability research as it relates to wildfire hazards in order to advance its application by people involved in wildland fire management in their efforts to address the social diversity and complexity they face in their wildfire prevention, mitigation, and suppression activities. The concept of social vulnerability refers to the socially constructed potential or susceptibility of people (as individuals, households, or communities) to be negatively affected by hazard events, such as wildfires. Thus, social vulnerability is a measure of the socioeconomic factors that combine to make a wildfire more of a disaster for some than others. The overall objective of this paper is to clarify areas of debate, clearly define and contrast disparate approaches, and synthesize findings that may help address vulnerability to wildfires and other natural hazards.
Environmental Health, 2020
Background Wildfire events are increasing in prevalence in the western United States. Research has found mixed results on the degree to which exposure to wildfire smoke is associated with an increased risk of mortality. Methods We tested for an association between exposure to wildfire smoke and non-traumatic mortality in Washington State, USA. We characterized wildfire smoke days as binary for grid cells based on daily average PM 2.5 concentrations, from June 1 through September 30, 2006–2017. Wildfire smoke days were defined as all days with assigned monitor concentration above a PM 2.5 value of 20.4 μg/m 3 , with an additional set of criteria applied to days between 9 and 20.4 μg/m 3 . We employed a case-crossover study design using conditional logistic regression and time-stratified referent sampling, controlling for humidex. Results The odds of all-ages non-traumatic mortality with same-day exposure was 1.0% (95% CI: − 1.0 - 4.0%) greater on wildfire smoke days compared to non-w...
Environmental Research Letters
Large and severe wildfires are an observable consequence of an increasingly arid American West. There is increasing consensus that human communities, land managers, and fire managers need to adapt and learn to live with wildfires. However, a myriad of human and ecological factors constrain adaptation, and existing science-based management strategies are not sufficient to address fire as both a problem and solution. To that end, we present a novel risk-science approach that aligns wildfire response decisions, mitigation opportunities, and land management objectives by consciously integrating social, ecological and fire management system needs. We use fire-prone landscapes of the US Pacific Northwest as our study area, and report on and describe how three complementary risk-based analytic tools—quantitative wildfire risk assessment, mapping of suppression difficulty, and atlases of potential control locations—can form the foundation for adaptive governance in fire management. Together...
Social Vulnerability and Wildfire in the Wildland- Urban Interface
2019
The University of Oregon is an equal-opportunity, affirmative-action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This publication will be made available in accessible formats upon request. ©2019 University of Oregon.
Social disorder, accidents, and municipal wildfires
Societal safeguards, established by those who have shared perceptions of the importance of safety and taking preventative measures, reduce the incidence of accidents that harm people and damage property. These safeguards prevent or discourage community members from partaking in careless behaviors that often lead to accidents. Wildland urban interface communities that recognize the importance of safety and taking preventive measures are likely to have a lower rate of accidental wildfire. Research has established a strong link between a positive safety culture and a reduction in accidents. This paper tests whether the lack of societal safeguards results in higher rates of accidental wildfires by modeling unintentional human caused wildfires as a function of constructed 'Broken Window' indices. Abandoned buildings and unkempt infrastructure identify areas with social disorder, where individuals are more likely to partake in careless behaviors that result in frequent accidents. ...
Impact of human factors on wildfire occurrence in Mississippi, United States
Forest Policy and Economics
Fires have important ecological and socioeconomic effects in fire-prone regions globally. Human-caused wildfires often pose considerable safety and environmental hazards, and can result in sizeable economic losses. This study analyzed the relative importance of temporal, spatial, and socioeconomic factors on occurrence of 52,532 human-caused wildfires in Mississippi that burned during 1991-2005. The probability of human-caused wildfires was modeled using a multinomial logit regression for unordered nominal outcomes. Results indicated that in comparison to incendiary wildfires, other types of human-caused wildfires were most likely to occur in summer. Wildfires caused by equipment use, children, and debris burning were more likely than incendiary wildfires to occur in close proximity to primary roads and railroad tracks, whereas close proximity to population centers increased the relative likelihood of wildfires caused by debris burning. Socioeconomic characteristics also influenced occurrence of many human-caused wildfires. Wildfires caused by children and debris burning were more likely than incendiary wildfires to occur in densely populated areas, whereas wildfires caused by debris burning, equipment use, and related to smoking were more likely in areas with high unemployment rates and large proportions of people below the poverty level. Wildfires related to smoking were also more likely than incendiary wildfires to occur in areas with higher median income. These findings will be helpful in predicting wildfire occurrence as well as developing new wildfire awareness and prevention strategies, allocating resources, and reducing wildfire damage costs in Mississippi and other fire-prone regions.
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PLOS ONE
Participatory planning networks made of government agencies, stakeholders, citizens and scientists are receiving attention as a potential pathway to build resilient landscapes in the face of increased wildfire impacts due to suppression policies and land-use and climate changes. A key challenge for these networks lies in incorporating local knowledge and social values about landscape into operational wildfire management strategies. As large wildfires overcome the suppression capacity of the fire departments, such strategies entail difficult decisions about intervention priorities among different regions, values and socioeconomic interests. Therefore there is increasing interest in developing tools that facilitate decisionmaking during emergencies. In this paper we present a method to democratize wildfire strategies by incorporating social values about landscape in both suppression and prevention planning. We do so by reporting and critically reflecting on the experience from a pilot participatory process conducted in a region of Catalonia (Spain). There, we built a network of researchers, practitioners and citizens across spatial and governance scales. We combined knowledge on expected wildfires, landscape co-valuation by relevant actors, and citizen participation sessions to design a wildfire strategy that minimized the loss of social values. Drawing on insights from political ecology and transformation science, we discuss what the attempt to democratize wildfire strategies entails in terms of power relationships and potential for social-ecological transformation. Based on our experience, we suggest a trade-off between current wildfire risk levels and democratic management in the fire-prone regions of many western countries. In turn, the political negotiation about the landscape effects of wildfire expert knowledge is shown as a potential transformation pathway towards lower risk landscapes that can redefine agency over landscape and foster community re-learning on a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111
Climate, Environment, and Disturbance History Govern Resilience of Western North American Forests
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
Before the advent of intensive forest management and fire suppression, western North American forests exhibited a naturally occurring resistance and resilience to wildfires and other disturbances. Resilience, which encompasses resistance, reflects the amount of disruption an ecosystem can withstand before its structure or organization qualitatively shift to a different basin of attraction. In fire-maintained forests, resilience to disturbance events arose primarily from vegetation pattern-disturbance process interactions at several levels of organization. Using evidence from 15 ecoregions, spanning forests from Canada to Mexico, we review the properties of forests that reinforced qualities of resilience and resistance. We show examples of multi-level landscape resilience, of feedbacks within and among levels, and how conditions have changed under climatic and management influences. We highlight geographic similarities and important differences in the structure and organization of historical landscapes, their forest types, and in the conditions that have changed resilience and resistance to abrupt or large-scale Hessburg et al. Resilience in North American Forests disruptions. We discuss the role of the regional climate in episodically or abruptly reorganizing plant and animal biogeography and forest resilience and resistance to disturbances. We give clear examples of these changes and suggest that managing for resilient forests is a construct that strongly depends on scale and human social values. It involves human communities actively working with the ecosystems they depend on, and the processes that shape them, to adapt landscapes, species, and human communities to climate change while maintaining core ecosystem processes and services. Finally, it compels us to embrace management approaches that incorporate ongoing disturbances and anticipated effects of climatic changes, and to support dynamically shifting patchworks of forest and non-forest. Doing so could make these shifting forest conditions and wildfire regimes less disruptive to individuals and society.
Fire
Here, we show that the last century of fire suppression in the western U.S. has resulted in fire intensities that are unique over more than 900 years of record in ponderosa pine forests (Pinus ponderosa). Specifically, we use the heat-sensitive luminescence signal of archaeological ceramics and tree-ring fire histories to show that a recent fire during mild weather conditions was more intense than anything experienced in centuries of frequent wildfires. We support this with a particularly robust set of optically stimulated luminescence measurements on pottery from an archaeological site in northern New Mexico. The heating effects of an October 2012 CE prescribed fire reset the luminescence signal in all 12 surface samples of archaeological ceramics, whereas none of the 10 samples exposed to at least 14 previous fires (1696–1893 CE) revealed any evidence of past thermal impact. This was true regardless of the fire behavior contexts of the 2012 CE samples (crown, surface, and smolderi...
Sustainability
Although increasing concern about climate change has raised awareness of the fundamental role of forest ecosystems, forests are threatened by human-induced impacts worldwide. Among them, wildfire risk is clearly the result of the interaction between human activities, ecological domains, and climate. However, a clear understanding of these interactions is still needed both at the global and local levels. Numerous studies have proven the validity of the socioecological system (SES) approach in addressing this kind of interdisciplinary issue. Therefore, a systematic review of the existing literature on the application of SES frameworks to forest ecosystems is carried out, with a specific focus on wildfire risk management. The results demonstrate the existence of different methodological approaches that can be grouped into seven main categories, which range from qualitative analysis to quantitative spatially explicit investigations. The strengths and limitations of the approaches are di...
Risk Management and Analytics in Wildfire Response
Current Forestry Reports
Purpose of ReviewThe objectives of this paper are to briefly review basic risk management and analytics concepts, describe their nexus in relation to wildfire response, demonstrate real-world application of analytics to support response decisions and organizational learning, and outline an analytics strategy for the future.Recent FindingsAnalytics can improve decision-making and organizational performance across a variety of areas from sports to business to real-time emergency response. A lack of robust descriptive analytics on wildfire incident response effectiveness is a bottleneck for developing operationally relevant and empirically credible predictive and prescriptive analytics to inform and guide strategic response decisions. Capitalizing on technology such as automated resource tracking and machine learning algorithms can help bridge gaps between monitoring, learning, and data-driven decision-making.SummaryBy investing in better collection, documentation, archiving, and analy...
What Do the Australian Black Summer Fires Signify for the Global Fire Crisis?
Fire
The 2019–20 Australian fire season was heralded as emblematic of the catastrophic harm wrought by climate change. Similarly extreme wildfire seasons have occurred across the globe in recent years. Here, we apply a pyrogeographic lens to the recent Australian fires to examine the range of causes, impacts and responses. We find that the extensive area burnt was due to extreme climatic circumstances. However, antecedent hazard reduction burns (prescribed burns with the aim of reducing fuel loads) were effective in reducing fire severity and house loss, but their effectiveness declined under extreme weather conditions. Impacts were disproportionately borne by socially disadvantaged regional communities. Urban populations were also impacted through prolonged smoke exposure. The fires produced large carbon emissions, burnt fire-sensitive ecosystems and exposed large areas to the risk of biodiversity decline by being too frequently burnt in the future. We argue that the rate of change in f...
Environmental Research Letters
Large and severe wildfires are an observable consequence of an increasingly arid American West. There is increasing consensus that human communities, land managers, and fire managers need to adapt and learn to live with wildfires. However, a myriad of human and ecological factors constrain adaptation, and existing science-based management strategies are not sufficient to address fire as both a problem and solution. To that end, we present a novel risk-science approach that aligns wildfire response decisions, mitigation opportunities, and land management objectives by consciously integrating social, ecological and fire management system needs. We use fire-prone landscapes of the US Pacific Northwest as our study area, and report on and describe how three complementary risk-based analytic tools—quantitative wildfire risk assessment, mapping of suppression difficulty, and atlases of potential control locations—can form the foundation for adaptive governance in fire management. Together...
A Systematic Review of Relationships Between Mountain Wildfire and Ecosystem Services
Landscape Ecology
Context Consideration of human-environment dimensions of wildfire make ecosystem services (ES) a useful framework for understanding wildfire challenges and devising viable management strategies. Scientific literature on wildfire and ES is growing rapidly, but connections are disparate and evolving. Objectives We review relationships between mountain wildfire and a comprehensive list of 50 relevant ES informed by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Our conceptual framework is used to evaluate underlying mechanisms and the direction and scale of wildfire impacts on ES. Methods We focus the review on the Colorado Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, one of the best-studied landscapes in the world for understanding fire-ES relationships and evaluating how regional differences contribute to broader understanding of ES globally. We begin our review by considering key relationships, followed by a structured literature search of wildfire impacts with tabulated trends and findings. Results Key findings from the review: (1) current fire regimes mostly have negative impacts on ES, with some positive effects on cultural services, (2) changes to vegetation composition and structure are the most common mechanism, (3) mechanisms acting at local and landscape scales impact ES at broader scales, (4) intermediate services warrant attention and management resources, and (5) regional differences may provide opportunities for stronger global synthesis. Conclusions Familiarity with landscape legacies, current land use practices, and stakeholder values uniquely positions landscape ecologists to contribute to future studies of wildfire-ES connections. A framework that considers the complete suite of ES can guide researchers to seek collaborations that more completely characterize their regions. Keywords Human dimensions Á Environmental/ ecological mechanisms Á Scales of mechanisms Á Scales of impact Á Intermediate services Á Cultural services Á Landscape legacy Á ES gradient of transformation Á Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) Á Colorado Front Range
Rethinking resilience to wildfire
Nature Sustainability
Resilience thinking has grown broadly from the well-established concept of ecological resilience 17 , which focuses on the capacity of a system to maintain the same general structure, composition, and
The Dilemma of Wildfire Definition: What It Reveals and What It Implies
2020
This paper presents the results of an explorative survey, based on a questionnaire sent by email, about how wildfire experts, operating in different countries, perceive wildfire and express their mindset by defining “wildfire” from a list of 14 terms and how they justify their preference for the term selected as the most important. Using a five-point Likert Scale, results from 221 valid replies indicate a general convergence toward a reduced number of terms. Six of them exhibit a mean >3.20 (Disturbance, Natural hazard, Climate-sensitive hazard, Socio-ecological hazard, Socio-ecological disturbance, and Social-ecological hazard). The three most preferred terms (i.e., Disturbance, Natural hazard, and Climate-sensitive hazard) reflect wildfire as a natural process or phenomenon (about 59% of the replies). The three terms characterized by both the social and ecological adjectives (i.e., Socio-ecological hazard, Socio-ecological disturbance, Social-ecological hazard) occupy relativel...
Recognizing Women Leaders in Fire Science
Fire
Across the breadth of fire science disciplines, women are leaders in fire research and development. We want to acknowledge some of these leaders to promote diversity across our disciplines. In Fire, we are also happy to announce a new Special Collection, through which we will continue to acknowledge current and future Diversity Leaders in Fire Science by inviting contributions from the leaders in this editorial, among others.
Fire Science, 2021
After reading this chapter, you should be able to 1. Build a table of costs and benefits of fires and then describe in your own words how you think those can be balanced to inform people making decisions about fires, 2. Articulate how smoke can compromise human health and name several strategies for reducing the vulnerability of people to smoke from fires, 3. Develop three short statements you can use to inform people about fire, and for one of them how you will adapt them to communicate with people from different perspectives within wildland-urban interface communities, and 4. Explain, based on the fire science you learned in this and previous chapters, one strategy for protecting fire fighters and other people and their homes and communities from fires long-term.
PLOS ONE, 2019
Dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) projections are often put forth to aid resource managers in climate change-related decision making. However, interpreting model results and understanding their uncertainty can be difficult. Sources of uncertainty include embedded assumptions about atmospheric CO 2 levels, uncertain climate projections driving DGVMs, and DGVM algorithm selection. For western Oregon and Washington, we implemented an Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS) decision support model using MC2 DGVM results to characterize biomass loss risk. MC2 results were driven by climate projections from 20 General Circulation Models (GCMs) and Earth System Models (ESMs), under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5, with and without assumed fire suppression, for three different time periods. We produced maps of mean, minimum, and maximum biomass loss risk and uncertainty for each RCP / +/-fire suppression / time period. We characterized the uncertainty due to RCP, fire suppression, and climate projection choice. Finally, we evaluated whether fire or climate maladaptation mortality was the dominant driver of risk for each model run. The risk of biomass loss generally increases in current high biomass areas within the study region through time. The pattern of increased risk is generally south to north and upslope into the Coast and Cascade mountain ranges and along the coast. Uncertainty from climate future choice is greater than that attributable to RCP or +/-fire suppression. Fire dominates as the driving factor for biomass loss risk in more model runs than mortality. This method of interpreting DGVM results and the associated uncertainty provides managers with data in a form directly applicable to their concerns and should prove helpful in adaptive management planning.
Restoration Ecology, 2017
As approaches to ecological restoration become increasingly large scale and collaborative, there is a need to better understand social aspects of restoration and how they influence land management. In this article, we examine social perspectives that influence the determination of ecological reference conditions in restoration. Our analysis is based on in-depth interviews with diverse stakeholders involved in collaborative restoration of fire-adapted forest landscapes. We conducted interviews with 86 respondents from six forest collaboratives that are part of the U.S. Forest Service's Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program. Collaboratives use a variety of approaches to develop reference conditions, including historic, contemporary, and future scenarios. Historical conditions prior to European settlement (nineteenth century or "pre-settlement" conditions), or prior to more recent grazing, logging, and exclusion of fire, were the predominant type of reference used in all sites. Stakeholders described benefits and limitations of reference conditions. Primary benefits include (1) providing a science-based framework for bringing stakeholders together around a common vision; (2) gaining social understanding and acceptance of the underlying need for restoration; and (3) serving to neutralize otherwise value-laden discussions about multiple, sometimes competing, resource objectives. Limitations stem from (1) concerns over social conflict when reference conditions are perceived to contradict other stakeholder values and interests, (2) differing interpretations of reference condition science, (3) inappropriate application or over-generalization of reference information, and (4) limited relevance of historical references for current and future conditions in some ecosystems. At the same time, collaboratives are adopting innovative strategies to address conceptual and methodological limitations of reference conditions.
The recent worldwide increase of large, uncontrolled, and catastrophic wildfires events, caused important socio-economic issues and with considerable effects to the natural environment. Wildfires’ impacts on social-ecological systems derive from the complicated and multidimensional interconnected relationships between society and ecosystems. To enforce environmental and community resilience against wildfires, it is critical to holistically comprehend the local social-ecological systems. In this paper we present a holistic social-ecological systems resilience approach, built on performance-based wildfire engineering, that is envisioned to be a steppingstone towards the social-ecological resilience after a wildfire. To attain this objective, the performance assessment and design series of actions are disaggregated into explicit components of a rigorous mathematical framework. They are linked to a causal inference chain, providing an integrated picture, and enabling decision analysis t...
PLOS ONE, 2022
Since their introduction two decades ago, Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) have become a common planning tool for improving community preparedness and risk mitigation in fire-prone regions, and for strengthening coordination among federal and state land management agencies, local government, and residents. While CWPPs have been the focus of case studies, there are limited large-scale studies to understand the extent of, and factors responsible for, variation in stakeholder participation—a core element of the CWPP model. This article describes the scale and scope of participation in CWPPs across the western United States. We provide a detailed account of participants in over 1,000 CWPPs in 11 states and examine how levels of participation and stakeholder diversity vary as a function of factors related to planning process, planning context, and the broader geographic context in which plans were developed. We find that CWPPs vary substantially both by count and diversity of ...
Reviewing the links and feedbacks between climate change and air pollution in Europe
Frontiers in Environmental Science
Feedbacks between air pollutants and meteorology play a crucial role in the direction of the response of future climate and air pollution. These feedbacks are important to understand and quantify the potential impact of adaptation and mitigation policies setup for protecting the population against air pollution and heat stress. We review the interactions between climate and air pollution, with special focus on the projections of air pollution under different future climate scenarios and time horizons, based on a literature review of research articles and reports from the last decade. The assessment focuses on 1) the specific impacts of climate change on air pollution and natural particle and precursor emissions in Europe in the near future (2030), by mid-century (2050) and by end of the century (2100), 2) impacts on air pollution due to changes in emissions vs. changes in climate, 3) feedbacks from air pollution on climate, 4) impacts of climate change on wildland fires and air poll...
Fire-Smart Territories: a proof of concept based on Mosaico approach
Context Here we develop a practical framework (Mosaico) and report a real-world example of early implementation of a Fire-Smart Territory (FST) in Sierra de Gata-Las Hurdes region of central Spain. Objectives We aimed to assess the impact of landscape changes induced by local land managers (indirect prevention) on simulated fire spread under different governance scenarios developed in 2016-2021. Methods Following a participatory process in the region, we received 250 proposals for intervention (49.6% from agriculturalists, 22.8% from forest producers -mainly resin tappers-, and 27.6% from shepherds). From the 94 (37.6%) proposals implemented by the end of the study, we quantified changes in fuel models over the whole territory (Scenario 1, S1). Then, we simulated fires in 20 ignition points to estimate area burned in S1 and three other governance scenarios. Results To date, the sole intervention of LLMs results in a low to moderate impact (current mean: 10.5; median: 1.8), which can...
European Journal of Forest Research, 2018
Increasing wildfire threats and costs escalate the complexity of forest fire management challenges, which is grounded in complex interactions between ecological, social, economic, and policy factors. It is immersed in this difficult context that decision-makers must settle on an investment mix within a portfolio of available options, subject to limited funds and under great uncertainty. We model intra-annual fire management as a problem of multistage capacity investment in a portfolio of management resources, enabling fuel treatments and fire preparedness. We consider wildfires as the demand, with uncertainty in the severity of the fire season and in the occurrence, time, place, and severity of specific fires. We focus our analysis on the influence of changes in the volatility of wildfires and in the costs of escaped wildfires, on the postponement of capacity investment along the year, on the optimal budget, and on the investment mix. Using a hypothetical test landscape, we verify that the value of postponement increases significantly for scenarios of increased uncertainty (higher volatility) and higher escape costs, as also does the optimal budget (although not proportionally to the changes in the escape costs). Additionally, the suppression/prevention budget ratio is highly sensitive to changes in escape costs, while it remains mostly insensitive to changes in volatility. Furthermore, we show the policy implications of these findings at operational (e.g., spatial solutions) and strategic levels (e.g., climate change). Exploring the impact of increasing escape costs in the optimal investment mix, we identified in our instances four qualitative system stages, which can be related to specific socioecological contexts and used as the basis for policy (re)design. In addition to questioning some popular myths, our results highlight the value of fuel treatments and the contextual nature of the optimal portfolio mix.
Adaptation Strategies and Approaches for Managing Fire in a Changing Climate
Climate
As the effects of climate change accumulate and intensify, resource managers juggle existing goals and new mandates to operationalize adaptation. Fire managers contend with the direct effects of climate change on resources in addition to climate-induced disruptions to fire regimes and subsequent ecosystem effects. In systems stressed by warming and drying, increased fire activity amplifies the pace of change and scale of severe disturbance events, heightening the urgency for management action. Fire managers are asked to integrate information on climate impacts with their professional expertise to determine how to achieve management objectives in a changing climate with altered fire regimes. This is a difficult task, and managers need support as they incorporate climate adaptation into planning and operations. We present a list of adaptation strategies and approaches specific to fire and climate based on co-produced knowledge from a science–management partnership and pilot-tested in ...
Forests, 2020
The large wildfires of June 2017 disturbed many communities in central Portugal. The civil parish of Alvares was severely affected, with about 60% of its area burnt. Assessing the risk of large wildfires affecting local communities is becoming increasingly important, to reduce potential losses in the future. In this study, we assessed wildfire risk for the 36 villages of Alvares parish, by combining hazard, exposure and vulnerability analysis at the settlement scale. Hazard was obtained from fire spread simulations, which integrated exposure together with population and building density within each village. Vulnerability was based on the sociodemographic characteristics of the population, ranked with a hierarchical cluster analysis. Coping capacity was also integrated, considering the distance of each village to the fire station and the time needed for residents to reach a shelter. We simulated 12 different land management scenarios, regarding the implementation of a fuel-break netw...