Fire Risk Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

2025, Forests

Ponderosa pine forests in the southwestern United States of America are overly dense, increasing the risk of high-intensity stand-replacing wildfires that result in the loss of terrestrial carbon and release of carbon dioxide, contributing to global climate change. Restoration is needed to restore forest structure and function so that a more natural regime of higher frequency, lower intensity wildfires returns. However, restoration has been hampered by the significant cost of restoration and other institutional barriers. To create additional revenue streams to pay for restoration, the National Forest Foundation supported the development of a methodology for the estimation and verification of carbon offsets generated by the restoration of ponderosa pine forests in northern Arizona. The methodology was submitted to the American Carbon Registry, a prominent carbon registry, but it was ultimately rejected. This paper presents a post-mortem examination of that methodology and the reasons it was rejected in order to improve the development of similar methodologies in the future. Using a mixed-methods approach, this paper analyzes the potential atmospheric carbon benefits of the proposed carbon offset methodology and the public and peer-reviewed comments from the associated review of the methodology. Results suggest a misalignment between the priorities of carbon registries and the context-specific ecosystem service benefits of this type of restoration; although findings confirm the potential for reductions in released carbon due to restoration, these results illuminate barriers that complicate registering these reductions as voluntary carbon offsets under current guidelines and best practices, especially on public land. These barriers include substantial uncertainty about the magnitude and timing of carbon benefits. Overcoming these barriers will require active reflexivity by the institutions that register voluntary carbon offsets and the institutions that manage public lands in the United States. Such reflexivity, or reconsideration of the concepts and purposes of carbon offsets and/or forest restoration, will allow future approaches to better align objectives for successfully registering restoration-based voluntary carbon offsets. Therefore, the results of this analysis can inform the development of future methodologies, policies, and projects with similar goals in the same or different landscapes.

2025

2025, Forest Science

An integrated suite of numerical models and analysis tools (NetMap) is created for three purposes: (1) Develop regional scale terrain databases in support of watershed science and resource management, (2) Automate numerous kinds of watershed analyses keying on environmental variability for diversifying resource management options, and (3) Improve tools and skills for interpreting watershed-level controls on aquatic systems, including natural disturbance. Hillslope attributes, such as erosion potential, sediment supply, road density, forest age, and fire risk are aggregated down to the channel habitat scale (20-200 m) allowing unique overlap analyses, and they are accumulated downstream in networks revealing patterns across multiple scales. Watershed attributes are aggregated up to subbasin scales (- 10,000 ha), allowing comparative analyses across large watersheds and landscapes. Approximately 25 automated tools address erosion risk, habitat indices, channel classification, habitat ...

2025, krisweb.com

Recent advances in thinking about ecosystem behavior over the past several decades have primarily taken the form of qualitative concepts. Although they represent major innovations in a number of fields, they have also fueled a propensity for arm waving and speculation when it comes to understanding how increasing scale changes our perceptions. Furthermore, this limitation has also encouraged natural resource managers and regulators to default to small scale, reductionist approaches in their fields. The present danger is that scientific myopia in the watershed sciences, focusing on small scales, is creating a number of problems that may weaken the support of policy makers for applying science to environmental questions and undermine the public's belief in the relevance of science in society. To attack the problem of scale, and hence complexity in watershed science, management, and regulation will require developing new interdisciplinary frameworks and theories that address a broad range of scales and scientific uncertainty, and that welcomes new forms of knowledge. In this article, we outline several universal principles that can be used to understand how measurement scale influences our perception of environments. When linked with an understanding of landscape processes, they allow us to predict how unique mixtures of climate, topography, vegetation, channel networks, and basin scale impose first-order constraints on spatial and temporal patterns of environmental variability, at any spatial scale. This form of knowledge is embodied in probability and frequency distributions, and they reveal the consequences of multiple interactions, over multiple scales, within landscapes. We present brief examples of how the behavior of forest ages, landsliding, sedimentation, and large organic debris loading to streams varies according to combinations of space and time scales. Finally, we suggest how this type of understanding might play out in watershed science, resource management, and regulation.

2025, Springer eBooks

Growing human populations llave Icd to the expansion of tlie Wildland-Urban Interface ( \ W I ) across the southeastern United States. The juxtaposition of build~ngs; infrastructure, and forests in the WUI creates challenges for natural resource managers. The presence of flammable vegetation, high rates of ht~man-caused ignitions and high building densities combine to increase risks of catastropllic loss from wildfire in the WU1. At the same time, fragmentation of large ownerships into smaller parcels and changing demograpl~ics may limit the possibilities for managing fuels with prescribed fire. To make effective d e c ~s ~o n s in this environment, lalid managers will need to integrate a large volr~~ne of information characterizing the physical features, biological characteristics, and human dimensions of these landscapes. Remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies are crucial in this regard. but they must also be integrated with field surveys, fire behavior models. and decision-support tools to carry out risk assessments and develop manapement plans for the WUI. This chapter outlines tile types of geospatial datascts that are currently available to map fuels and fire risk, provides exa~nples of how GIS has been applied in the WUI, and suggests fuh~re ~I I -e c t ~o n s for the integration of GIS datasets and spatial models to support forest management in the WU1.

2025

Wildfires leave a long-lasting scar on freshwater systems. A landmark study, published 23 June 2025 in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, reveals that the effects of wildfires on water quality can endure for up to eight years, a much longer span than previously estimated. Led by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder, the team analyzed over 100,000 water samples from 500 river basins across the Western U.S., making this the first large-scale investigation of how wildfires degrade water quality. 📉 Key contaminants and their durations Researchers assessed changes in five major water-quality indicators: Organic carbon, phosphorus, and turbidity (cloudiness) spiked dramatically in the first 1-5 years post-fire. Nitrogen and sediment levels remained elevated for as long as eight years. According to the analysis of 245 burned versus 293 unburned basins, peak post-fire concentrations were staggering: carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus reached 3-103 times pre-fire levels, while sediment crested at 19-286 times higher. However, a few watersheds are more affected.

2025, Forest Ecology and Management

2025

The Hawaiian Islands experience damaging wildfires on a yearly basis. Soil moisture or lack thereof, influences the amount and flammability of vegetation. The Keetch and Byram drought index (KBDI) estimates the amount of soil moisture by tracking daily maximum temperatures and rainfall. For the first time, the relationship between the KBDI and fire activity on the Hawaiian Islands is examined using a number of different techniques. The KBDI is calculated daily for a 20-year period and then tested on a monthly time-scale on four major Hawaiian Islands against total area burned (TAB). The use of monthly TAB data for an individual island is a necessity when considering the relatively low frequency of fire activity and the small spatial scale of the islands. The relationship between the KBDI with TAB is explored with a number of rigorous statistical methods. A strong relationship between the KBDI and fire activity for the islands of Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii is found. At present a network ...

2025

In fire risk, correct description of topographic and fuel properties is critical to improve fire danger assessment and fire behaviour modelling. Many rural areas are now scanned using LIDAR sensors. In some of these areas the information registered by the sensor includes not only the geometric characteristics of the Earth's surface, given by the coordinates (x,y,z) of the LiDAR point

2025

Resum: La present ponència mostra l'activitat investigadora duta a terme en l'àmbit de la resposta resistent dels revestiments de túnels realitzats a base d'anells de dovelles prefabricades de formigó. L'activitat s'inicià amb la realització d'una prova de càrrega in situ sobre un tram experimental ubicat dins la línea 9 del metro de Barcelona. Les conclusions obtingudes sobre el seu comportament van permetre desenvolupar models de simulació numèrica tant 2D com 3D ben contrastats amb els resultats experimentals de l'assaig. Aquesta recerca també inclou l'estudi del comportament longitudinal del revestiment, on es determina fins a quin punt la compressió longitudinal inicialment introduïda per la tuneladora es va dissipant en el temps per efecte de la fluència del revestiment, fet que condiciona la capacitat d'interacció longitudinal entre anells successius. brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC

2025, Land Economics

We extend existing stand-level models of forest landowner behavior in the presence of fire risk to include the level and timing of fuel management activities. These activities reduce losses if a stand ignites. Based on simulations, we find the standard result that fire risk reduces the optimal rotation age does not hold when landowners use fuel management. Instead, the optimal rotation age rises as fire risk increases. The optimal planting density decreases. The level of intermediate fuel treatment, but not its timing, is sensitive to the magnitude of fire risk. Cost-sharing is shown to be an effective instrument for encouraging fuel treatment.

2025

Progress made in recent years in fire science, particularly as applied to forest fire protection, coupled with the increased power offered by mathematical processors integrated into computers, has led to important developments in the field of dynamic and static simulation of forest fires. Furthermore, and similarly, econometric models applied to economic evaluation of natural resources have generated algorithms of great scientific consistency that have allowed determining the monetary value of resources that have not traditionally had a commercial or market interaction treatment. VISUAL-SEVEIF (Spanish acronym for System for the Economic Evaluation of Wildfires) is a software tool that allows working both in real time, simulating the spatial development of ground and canopy fires, and addressing the implementation of territorial studies by which possible fire evolutions are determined and characterized, subject to final spatial or temporal contour conditions. The spatial resolution of work will be conditioned by the quality and accuracy of fuel model mapping, as well as the characteristics of the digital terrain model, so that in high-precision models the results of the fire behavior dynamic can be up to a square meter.

2025, Ecological Informatics

A forest fire risk model was designed and applied to a South American Mediterranean ecosystem, taking into consideration three analysis groups: fire risk; danger of fire spread, or propagation; and damage potential over economic threat values. The study area for development and validation of the model was the Mediterranean zone of central Chile and employed data from historical records spanning a 14 year period (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010). Territorial data layers, combined with analysis of the statistical database and wildfire simulation have enabled areas of highest vulnerability to be defined with greater precision, especially in sectors associated with the urban-wildland interface (defined as the zone where man-made structures meet wildland). Maps generated by this model have enabled improvements to be made to the traditional mapping of fires currently undertaken in South American countries. The results shown here are applicable to other Mediterranean areas, where modifications are made to the entrance variables in the risk model.

2025

The potential impacts of post-fire erosion on water quality are well documented in the literature. To date, research in this area has focused primarily on post-fire erosion processes and water quality impacts in the context of fire severity and vulnerability of hydrological systems to fire impacts. Accordingly, model development has been driven by the need to predict post-fire erosion given the burn impact and different rainfall conditions. However, there are no tools available for land managers to predict frequency and magnitude of erosion events under variable fire and rainfall regimes. Over time, the fire regime represents an important variable that can lead to changes in risk, especially given the strong influence of anthropogenic activities and climate change on fire regimes. Across landscapes, the regional variability in both fire and rainfall regimes may result in different levels of risk depending on the likelihood of storms intersecting with burnt areas. Fire and storms represent stochastic processes in space and time, in contrast to the deterministic nature of geophysical post-fire erosion processes. In this paper we propose a new risk framework which incorporates regional fire and rainfall regimes as stochastic variables in a system where erosion processes and sensitivity to fire effects represent landscape vulnerability, which is sitespecific and driven by deterministic processes.

2025

The potential impacts of post-fire erosion on water quality are well documented in the literature. To date, research in this area has focused primarily on post-fire erosion processes and water quality impacts in the context of fire severity and vulnerability of hydrologic systems to fire impacts. Accordingly, model development has been driven by the need to predict post-fire erosion given the burn impact and different rainfall conditions. However, there are no tools available for land managers to predict frequency and magnitude of erosion events under variable fire and rainfall regimes. Over time, the fire regime represents an important variable that can lead to changes in risk, especially given the strong influence of anthropogenic activities and climate change on fire regimes. Across landscapes, the regional variability in both fire and rainfall regimes may result in different levels of risk depending on the likelihood of storms intersecting with burnt areas. Fire and storms repre...

2025, Geomorphology

Numerous reports of "flash floods", "mud torrents" and "landslides" in burnt landscapes of south-east Australia were only recently linked to debris flows and recognised as a significant process that warrant more detailed investigation. This paper provides a systematic documentation of high-magnitude erosion events after wildfire in south-east Australia, focusing on small (b 5 km 2 ), upland catchments in eastern Victoria that were burnt by wildfire between 2003 and 2009. The aims of the study were to i) collect and show evidence of debris flow occurrence after wildfire; ii) quantify erosion rates from debris flows and; iii) identify rainfall thresholds and key hydrological properties. The result showed that 13 out of the 16 recorded high-magnitude erosion events were runoff generated debris flows. These occurred in dry eucalypt forests burnt at high or very high severity in steep headwater catchments throughout the eastern uplands of Victoria. The debris flows were triggered by intense, short duration rainfall events (I 30 35-59 mm h -1 ) with annual exceedance probability in the order of 20%. This is the first paper to document the occurrence of post-fire runoff generated debris flows in Australia, so the discussion draws on literature from the western USA, where a large body of research has been dedicated to evaluating the risk posed by post-fire debris flows and their role in landscape processes. Typical features common to both systems include low infiltration capacity of burnt catchments; widespread sheet erosion and levee lined rills on steep upper hillslopes; and severe channel erosion initiated in response to convergent flow in previously un-scoured drainage lines. The depth of sheet erosion on surveyed slopes in the upper catchments (4.6 ± 0.96 mm to 18.4 ± 2.7 mm) indicates that hillslope material provides an important source of sediment. The average channel entrainment rate of three debris flows ranged from 0.6 to 1.4 m 3 m -1 . Runoff generated debris flows were not recorded in wet or damp forest types suggesting that this process is unlikely to operate in these forest environments. One isolated case of mass failure generated debris flow was recorded in wet forest. The outcome of the study indicates that runoff generated debris flows in dry eucalypt forest are an important process to be considered during post-fire risk assessment of hydrological hazards.

2025

Forest fires are a threat for both the environment and the security of citizens. This is particularly relevant in the Mediterranean, where the population density is high, and long dry summers drive vegetation into fireprone conditions. Policy makers underline the key role of prevention over damage reparation, and indeed efforts are conducted at regional, national and international level to develop tools supporting fire managers' activities. The preventive allocation of intervention resources is based on fire hazard maps; these should be updated frequently throughout the fire season. In this framework satellite remote sensing can play a key role, providing daily measurements in the optical domain for the determination of vegetation water content, a key parameter for the prediction of fire hazard. This paper outlines current practices adopted in Mediterranean Europe, analyses how earth observation data are used, and underlines areas of improvement. Strengths and weaknesses of algorithms for the retrieval of vegetation water content are discussed. Examples are provided with the production of remote sensing maps of vegetation moisture in three different areas of the Mediterranean: Campania (Italy), Tuscany (Italy) and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (France). Finally, a brief review describes current and forthcoming Earth Observation missions with the potential to support fire prevention activities.

2025, ResearchGate

At the CIFFRICA conference, I presented Michael, an innovative disaster management solution for Africa based on AI, IoT, and satellite imagery. The application enhances climate risk forecasting, early warning, and emergency response,... more

2025, International Journal of Engineering Technology Research & Management

This work examines the role of cognitive load in the augmented reality (AR) user experience, with the focus on keeping information presentation manageable to maximize usability and user satisfaction. As the incorporation of AR continues to be applied across a variety of fields, including education, gaming, and navigation, the delivery complexity of spatial information creates new cognitive demands. Intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load may substantially affect the ability of a user to efficiently interact with digital overlays and the real world concurrently. The research examines how various design factors including visual hierarchy, spatial alignment, adaptive content density, and contextual cues can diminish cognitive load without sacrificing functionality. The research builds on previous research, physiological information, and user-focused experiments to establish the most effective design solutions that facilitate attention management and recall of information. In addition, it investigates adaptive AR interfaces that adapt dynamically to user state, environment, and task complexity. Usability measures like user retention, task-completion time, and subjective mental workload are compared to determine effectiveness. The results provide actionable guidelines for developers and designers on how to create more intuitive AR systems that conform to human perceptual and cognitive capabilities. This study is especially relevant to AR applications designed for high-focus situations such as driver assistance systems and educational simulations. In the end, it espouses a user-oriented AR design paradigm that is focused on cognitive efficiency and clarity of interaction.

2025, FLORESTA

A qualidade de uma paisagem é um atributo intrínseco de um território. A fragilidade depende do tipo de atividade que se desenvolve nesse território. Regiões com baixo valor paisagístico podem apresentar condições que favoreçam a propagação de incêndios, em função das características do material combustível oriundas da cobertura vegetal, relevo e condições meteorológicas. Uma paisagem degradada é um ambiente frágil, podendo permitir a ação de agentes externos, como a erosão, as pragas e o fogo. O objetivo deste trabalho foi buscar uma relação entre a qualidade da paisagem e o risco de incêndios florestais, usando métodos de valoração da qualidade e da fragilidade da paisagem, baseados em mapas descritivos de uma região. A área estudada foi a Fazenda Brejão, propriedade da Empresa Vallourec & Mannesmann, localizada em Brasilândia, Minas Gerais. Os resultados indicam boa correlação entre a qualidade da paisagem e o risco de incêndios florestais, sugerindo que a valoração da qualidade ...

2025, Forest Ecology and Management

Many studies have assumed that plant terpenes favor fire due to their enormous flammability. However, only a few of them, all performed on green leaves, have demonstrated this. In the present work we investigated the question of whether litter terpene content can be used to estimate flammability and temperatures reached during fire. Epiradiator and burn table tests were used to compare flammability of leaf litter of P. pinaster, P. halepensis, P. pinea, C. albidus, C. ladanifer, C. laurifolius and the mixture of litter of P. pinaster with that of the other five species (e.g. P. pinaster + P. halepensis). Tests with burn table showed increasing spread rates and shorter combustion times under higher terpene contents. Flame height was triggered both with higher a terpene content and bed thickness, whereas the percentage of burned biomass was only significantly correlated to bed height. Epiradiator tests indicated that terpene concentration in leaf litter was positively correlated to flame height and negatively correlated to both flame residence time and ignition delay. Flammability was high for P. pinaster, P. halepensis, and hence for P. pinaster + P. halepensis, intermediate for C. albidus, P. pinea and P. pinaster combined with each of these species, and low for C. laurifolius, C. ladanifer and P. pinaster combined with them. Accordingly, their terpene content was high, intermediate and low. We concluded that plants might influence fire intensity, by having stored terpenes in their dead leaves, in addition to having developed traits to survive fire. Thus, a correct management of dead aboveground fuels rich in terpene concentrations, such as those of P. pinaster and P. halepensis, could prove helpful in reducing the hazard of fire.

2025, Applied Geomatics

Traditional fire-risk rating indices are founded on statistical relations between pre-event meteorological conditions and the number of fire outbreaks observed in a forested area. However, traditional weather-based indices cannot render information on the spatial distribution of firesusceptible sites over extensive forested areas because their only inputs are meteorological observations made at sparsely distributed weather stations. Therefore, only an area-averaged value of the risk of fire can be obtained from these indices. This disadvantage can be relieved by using remote sensing data from polar-orbiting satellites scanning the Earth's surface in the visible and thermal spectral regions. This paper presents a synthesis of the Nesterov Fire-rating Index, an index extensively used in Central and Eastern Europe-and how this was merged with the Temperature-Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) derived from multispectral images scanned by Landsat ETM+. This paper demonstrates the methodology of how TVDI was merged with the Nesterov Index to give a map of the spatial patterns of fire-prone sites. The test region is located in a pine-forested (dominated by Pinus sylvestris) area in western Slovakia. Our investigation suggests that coupling TVDI with the Nesterov Index, or any other weather-based fire-rating index, can become an effective tool for delineating areas prone to fire outbreaks even in regions with insufficient coverage of weather stations.

2025, Journal of Forest Research

Peat swamp forests are important in the global carbon (C) budget because of the huge amount of C stored in these ecosystems, particularly in below-ground components. Indonesia has some of the greatest extent of peat swamp forests globally, yet many of them are being disturbed by fires that are becoming increasingly frequent. In Kalampangan, Central Kalimantan, the tree species (≥4.8 cm diameter) composition, aboveground biomass (AGB) and litter standing crop of peat swamp forests were sampled, and the overall ecosystem C stock estimated, within two 1-ha sampling plots, one of which was undisturbed (natural) and the other previously burned. The AGB and litter standing crop found in the natural forest totaled 341 and 6.77 Mg ha-1 , respectively. The AGB declined more than six-fold to 53.2 Mg ha-1 , and the litter standing crop declined by about half to 3.30 Mg ha-1 in the disturbed forest; the total number of tree species declined from 114 to 80 per hectare. The disturbed peat swamp lost just over 200 Mg C ha-1 to the atmosphere due to the combustion of tree biomass and the upper layer of the peat, but C stocks still remained very high overall (c. 1100 Mg ha-1) due to the thick layer of peat (>2 m) making peat swamp forest conservation imperative due to their huge carbon stocks.

2025, Remote Sensing and Modeling of Ecosystems for Sustainability III

Research has shown that remote sensing in both the optical and microwave domain has the capability of estimating vegetation water content (VWC). Though lower in spatial resolution than MODIS optical bands, AMSR-E microwave measurements are typically less affected by clouds, water vapor, aerosol or solar illumination, making them complementary to MODIS real time measurements over regions of clouds and haze. In this study we explored a wavelet based approach for combining vegetation water content observations derived from higher spatial resolution MODIS and lower spatial resolution AMSR-E microwave measurements. Regression analysis between AMSR-E VWC and spatially aggregated MODIS NDII (Normalized Difference Infrared Index) was first used to scale MODIS NDII to MODIS VWC products. Our approach for combining information from the two sensors resorts to multiresolution wavelet decomposition of MODIS VWC into a set of detail images and a single approximation image at AMSR-E resolution. The substitution method of image fusion is then undertaken, in which the approximation image is replaced by AMSR-E VWC image, prior to using inverse wavelet transform to construct a merged VWC product. The merged VWC product thus has information from both MODIS and AMSR-E measurements. The technique is applied over low vegetation regions in Texas grasslands to obtain merged VWC products at intermediate resolutions of ~1.5km. Apart from offering a way to calibrate MODIS VWC content products to AMSR-E observations, the technique has the potential for downscaling AMSR-E VWC to higher spatial resolution over moderately cloudy or hazy regions where MODIS reflective bands become contaminated by the atmosphere. During such situations when contaminated MODIS signals cannot be used to obtain the wavelet detail images, MODIS detail images from a preceding time step is used to downscale the current AMSR-E VWC to higher resolutions. This approach of using detail images from the recent past would be justified if the detail images containing the high frequency components of the image change slowly. Correlation analysis of detail images from consecutive time steps shows that this is approximately true, at-least for the low spatial resolution detail images. Our approach yields accuracy of around 77% on the average over the selected study region and temporal period. This technique thus has the potential for ensuring the data continuity of high spatial resolution VWC products, a requirement essential for fire risk monitoring.

2025, Remote Sensing of Environment

Contemporary research has shown that remote sensing techniques can be used for estimating live fuel moisture content (FMC) from space. These remote sensing based live FMC measurements must conform to some accuracy requirements to be of any practical use in fire behavior predictions. This paper thus investigates the potential errors in live FMC estimations using two simple established techniques and analyzes the implications of such errors in fire behavior predictions using a sensitivity analysis. We study the sensitivity of fire behavior to live fuel moisture content under dry no-wind, no-slope conditions using the FARSITE surface fire behavior model with the objective of evaluating the current satellite based FMC estimation techniques and presenting a basis for accuracy requirements of live FMC retrievals using more sophisticated remote sensing techniques in the future.

2025, Forest Ecology and Management

Antelope bitterbrush is a dominant shrub in many interior ponderosa pine forests in the western United States. How it responds to prescribed fire is not well understood, yet is of considerable concern to wildlife and fire managers alike given its importance as a browse species and as a ladder fuel in these fire-prone forests. We quantified bitterbrush cover, density, and biomass in response to repeated burning in thinned ponderosa pine forests. Low-to moderate-intensity spring burning killed the majority of bitterbrush plants on replicate plots. Moderately rapid recovery of bitterbrush density and cover resulted from seedling recruitment plus limited basal sprouting. Repeated burning after 11 years impeded the recovery of the bitterbrush community. Post-fire seed germination following the repeated burns was 3-14-fold lower compared to the germination rate after the initial burns, while basal sprouting remained fairly minor. After 15 years, bitterbrush cover was 75-92% lower on repeated-burned compared to unburned plots. Only where localized tree mortality resulted in an open stand was bitterbrush recovery robust. By controlling bitterbrush abundance, repeated burning eliminated the potential for wildfire spread when simulated using a customized fire behavior model. The results suggest that repeated burning is a successful method to reduce the long-term fire risk imposed by bitterbrush as an understory ladder fuel in thinned pine stands. Balancing the need to limit fire risk yet provide adequate bitterbrush habitat for wildlife browse will likely require a mosaic pattern of burning at the landscape scale or a burning frequency well beyond 11 years to allow a bitterbrush seed crop to develop.

2025

Even when they account for a large part of damages caused by forest fires on environmental and landscape services they are seldom included in the valuation of damage assessments. Some fires within natural parks have caused significantly larger impacts on these environmental and landscape services (nonmarket) than on market services. The economic valuation of forest fires impacts on environmental and landscape services requires indirect valuation techniques like the travel cost or contingent valuation methods. There are differences on welfare estimates depending on the geographic zone analyzed; In the Natural Park de Aracena y Picos de Arrocho, for example, varying between 25-91 €/visitor. For the same area the recreation and leisure valuation reaches upwards of 21€ million. The methodological process goes beyond a simple economic valuation because it includes the resources net-value-change depending on fire intensity level. Using an inventory of 14 fires and a survey we developed a ...

2025, Ecological Modelling

Forest fires play a critical role in landscape transformation, vegetation succession, soil degradation and air quality. Improvements in fire risk estimation are vital to reduce the negative impacts of fire, either by lessen burn severity or intensity through fuel management, or by aiding the natural vegetation recovery using post-fire treatments. This paper presents the methods to generate the input variables and the risk integration developed within the Firemap project (funded under the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology) to map wildland fire risk for several regions of Spain. After defining the conceptual scheme for fire risk assessment, the paper describes the methods used to generate the risk parameters, and presents proposals for their integration into synthetic risk indices. The generation of the input variables was based on an extensive use of geographic information system and remote sensing technologies, since the project was intended to provide a spatial and temporal assessment of risk conditions. All variables were mapped at 1 km 2 spatial resolution, and were integrated into a web-mapping service system. This service was active in the summer of 2007 for semi-operational testing of end-users. The paper also presents the first validation results of the danger index, by comparing temporal trends of different danger components and fire occurrence in the different study regions.

2025, Journal IJETRM

Wildfires pose a growing global threat, exacerbated by climate change, deforestation, and urban expansion into fire-prone regions. Traditional fire risk assessment methods often rely on static indices that fail to capture the dynamic interactions between climate conditions, fuel availability, and terrain characteristics. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a transformative approach to wildfire prediction and management by integrating multisource environmental data into adaptive fire risk indices. This study explores the development of AI-driven fire risk indices that leverage machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) algorithms to analyze complex patterns in climate variability, vegetation moisture, and topographical features. By integrating remote sensing data, weather forecasts, and historical fire occurrences, AI models can enhance the accuracy of fire risk assessments and enable proactive mitigation strategies. The research highlights the role of geospatial AI and predictive analytics in mapping high-risk zones and optimizing resource allocation for firefighting efforts. Furthermore, the application of explainable AI (XAI) ensures transparency in decision-making, fostering trust among emergency responders and policymakers. Case studies from wildfire-prone regions illustrate the efficacy of AI-based risk indices in early warning systems and real-time fire spread modeling. However, challenges such as data sparsity, model interpretability, and computational constraints must be addressed for broader implementation. This paper underscores the need for interdisciplinary collaboration between AI researchers, climate scientists, and disaster management agencies to enhance wildfire prediction and mitigation strategies. Future research should explore hybrid AI models integrating reinforcement learning and edge computing for real-time risk assessment in rapidly changing wildfire conditions.

2025, Climatic Change

Wildfire risks for California under four climatic change scenarios were statistically modeled as functions of climate, hydrology, and topography. Wildfire risks for the GFDL and PCM global climate models and the A2 and B1 emissions scenarios were compared for 2005-2034, 2035-2064, and 2070-2099 against a modeled 1961-1990 reference period in California and neighboring states. Outcomes for the GFDL model runs, which exhibit higher temperatures than the PCM model runs, diverged sharply for different kinds of fire regimes, with increased temperatures promoting greater large fire frequency in wetter, forested areas, via the effects of warmer temperatures on fuel flammability. At the same time, reduced moisture availability due to lower precipitation and higher temperatures led to reduced fire risks in some locations where fuel flammability may be less important than the availability of fine fuels. Property damages due to wildfires were also modeled using the 2000 U.S. Census to describe the location and density of residential structures. In this analysis the largest changes in property damages under the climate change scenarios occurred in wildland/urban interfaces proximate to major metropolitan areas in coastal southern California, the Bay Area, and in the Sierra foothills northeast of Sacramento.

2025

In 2002. there were 88,458 fires reported on federal lands. These fires burned 6,937,584 acres and 2,381 structures costing taxpayers $1.6 billion for fire suppression. On average, 4,215,089 acres of federal lands burn annually. Forecasting wildland fire risk (occurrence and size) is important to fire managers who desire to know the risks of severe events well in advance of their happening. In this talk, we discuss the estimation of a probability model for forecasting fire risk one month in advance. The model uses 25 years of historic fire data on federal lands in addition to weather and climatological variables.

2025, Science

Western United States forest wildfire activity is widely thought to have increased in recent decades, yet neither the extent of recent changes nor the degree to which climate may be driving regional changes in wildfire has been systematically documented. Much of the public and scientific discussion of changes in western United States wildfire has focused instead on the effects of 19th- and 20th-century land-use history. We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an ea...

2025, Remote Sensing

In 2020, wildfires scarred over 4,000,000 hectares in the western United States, devastating urban populations and ecosystems alike. The significant impact that wildfires have on plants, animals, and human environments makes wildfire adaptation, management, and mitigation strategies a critical task. This study uses satellite imagery from Landsat to calculate burn severity and map the fire progression for the Dolan Fire of central Coastal California which occurred in August 2020. Several environmental factors, such as temperature, humidity, fuel type, topography, surface conditions, and wind velocity, are known to affect wildfire spread and burn severity. The aim of this study is the investigation of the relationship between these environmental factors, estimates of burn severity, and fire spread patterns. Burn severity is calculated and classified using the Difference in Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) before being displayed as a time series of maps. The Dolan Fire had a moderate severity burn with an average dNBR of 0.292. The ignition site location, when paired with the patterns of fire spread, is consistent with wind speed and direction data, suggesting fire movement to the southeast of the fire ignition site. Patterns of increased burn severity are compared with both topography (slope and aspect) and fuel type. Locations that were found to be more susceptible to high burn severity featured Long Needle Timber Litter and Mature Timber fuels, intermediate slope angles between 15 and 35°, and north- and east-facing slopes. This study has implications for the future predictive modeling of wildfires that may serve to develop wildfire mitigation strategies, manage climate change impacts, and protect human lives.

2025, Kastamonu Üniversitesi Orman Fakültesi Dergisi

Aim of study: Forest fuels are very critical for fire behavior models and hazard maps. Relationship among wind speed, fuel moisture content, slope, and fuel type directs us to predict fire behavior of a given region. For this study, we evaluated fire behavior parameters such as fireline intensity and rate of fire spread using the fuel moisture content, slope, fuel load, and wind speed for the Bayam Forest District with the help of remote sensing techniques and FlamMap software.Area of study: The study area is located in Bayam Forest District in the city of Taskopru, Kastamonu, a Western Black Sea region of Turkey.Material and Methods: In order to estimate and map forest fuel load of the study area, fuel models were developed using the parameters of the average vegetation height, 1-hr, 10-hr, and 100-hr fuel load, foliage, total fuel load, litter load and litter depth. Three basic fire descriptors (fireline intensity, rate of fire spread, and flame length) were calculated using FlamM...

2025, Remote Sensing of Environment

California chaparral ecosystems are cxccplionally fire adapted and typically arc subject to wildfire at dccadal to century frequencies. The hot dry Mediterranean climate summers and the chaparral communities of the Santa Monica Mountains make wildfire onc of the most serious economic and lifcthreatcning na[ural disasters faced by the region. Additionally, the steep fire-burned hillsides arc subject to erosion, slurnpagc, and mud slides during the winter rains. The Santa Monica Mountain Zone (SMMZ) is a 104,000 ha east-west trending range with 607 m of vcrlical relief and located in the ccntcr of the greater Los Angeles region. A series of fires in the fall of 1993 bumcd from Simi Valley to Santa Monica within a fcw hours. Developing techniques to monitor fire hazard and predict the spread of fire is of major concern to the region. Onc key factor in the susceptibility to fire is the water content of the vegetation canopy. The development of imaging spectromctry and remote sensing techniques may constitute a tool to provide this information.

2024, Environmental Research Letters

Indonesian peatlands are critical to the global carbon cycle, but they also support a large number of local economies. Intense forest clearing and draining in these peatlands is causing severe ecological and environmental impacts. Most studies highlighted increased carbon emission in the region through drought and large‐scale fires, further accelerating peatland degradation. Yet, little is known about the long-term impacts of human-induced disturbance on peatland hydrology in the tropics. Here we show that converting natural peat forests to plantations can significantly alter the hydrological system far worse than previously recognized, leading to amplified moisture stress and drought severity. This study quantified how human-induced changes to Indonesian peatlands have affected drought severity. Through field observations and modelling, we demonstrate that canalization doubled drought severity; logging and starting plantations even quadrupled drought severity. Recognizing the impor...

2024

Tese apresentada ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sensoriamento Remoto da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), como requisito parcial para a obtenção do título de Doutor em Sensoriamento Remoto.

2024

Characterizing wildfire regimes where wildfires are uncommon is challenged by a lack of empirical information. Moreover, climate change is projected to lead to increasingly frequent wildfires and additional annual area burned in forests historically characterized by long fire return intervals. Western Oregon and Washington, USA (westside) have experienced few large wildfires (fires greater than 100 hectares) the past century and are characterized to infrequent large fires with return intervals greater than 500 years. We evaluated impacts of climate change on wildfire hazard in a major urban watershed outside Portland, OR, USA. We simulated wildfire occurrence and fire regime characteristics under contemporary conditions (1992-2015) and four mid-century (2040-2069) scenarios using Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5. Simulated mid-century fire seasons expanded in most scenarios, in some cases by nearly two months. In all scenarios, average fire size and frequency projections increased significantly. Fire regime characteristics under the hottest and driest mid-century scenarios illustrate novel disturbance regimes which could result in permanent changes to forest structure and composition and the provision of ecosystem services. Managers and planners can use the range of modeled outputs and simulation results to inform robust strategies for climate adaptation and risk mitigation.

2024, Landscape Ecology

We used the LANDIS disturbance and succession model to study the effects of six alternative vegetation management scenarios on forest succession and the subsequent risk of canopy fire on a 2791 km 2 landscape in northern Wisconsin, USA. The study area is a mix of fire-prone and fire-resistant land types. The alternatives vary the spatial distribution of vegetation management activities to meet objectives primarily related to forest composition and recreation. The model simulates the spatial dynamics of differential reproduction, dispersal, and succession patterns using the vital attributes of species as they are influenced by the abiotic environment and disturbance. We simulated 50 replicates of each management alternative and recorded the presence of species age cohorts capable of sustaining canopy fire and the occurrence of fire over 250 years. We combined these maps of fuel and fire to map the probability of canopy fires across replicates for each alternative. Canopy fire probability varied considerably by land type. There was also a subtle, but significant effect of management alternative, and there was a significant interaction between land type and management alternative. The species associated with high-risk fuels ͑conifers͒ tend to be favored by management alternatives with more disturbances, whereas low disturbance levels favor low-risk northern hardwood systems dominated by sugar maple. The effect of management alternative on fire risk to individual human communities was not consistent across the landscape. Our results highlight the value of the LANDIS model for identifying specific locations where interacting factors of land type and management strategy increase fire risk.

2024

Since it was recognized that the fire hazard was a major challenge to safe operation of NPPs, many researches for a fire risk quantification in nuclear power plants (NPPs) have been performed. As part of such research efforts, NUREG/CR-6850 was developed to conduct of a fire probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) under a joint research between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) [1]. For a fire human reliability analysis (HRA) to support a fire PSA proposed by NUREG/CR-6850, NUREG-1921 was developed [2]. Reflecting the fire PSA trend, several researches have been carried out in KAERI based on NUREG-6850 [3-4]. And also a fire HRA guideline for a fire PSA of full power operation of domestic NPPs was developed in 2018 by the (KAERI) based on the NUREG-1921 [5] and performed case study for quantification with the K-HRA method [6]. K-HRA method is a standard method for HRA of a domestic level 1 PSA developed by KAERI [7]. For the ...

2024, Remote Sensing of Environment

Spatial assessment of fire risk is very important for reducing the impacts of wildland fires. Several variables related to fire ignition, propagation and its effects are included in fire risk analysis. Life Fuel Moisture Content (LFMC) is one such variable, which is highly related to fire ignition, and propagation. A wide variety of methods have been applied to estimate LFMC, including field sampling and meteorological indices. Given the limitations of these methods, satellite images are a sound alternative for estimating LFMC because of their capability to spatially and temporally monitor the vegetation status. This paper aims to improve previous empirical models to estimate LFMC from satellite images, by considering meteorological information. The original models proposed by Chuvieco et al.

2024, Fire Ecology

Background Rural and semi-rural areas are complex and dynamic social-ecological systems, many of which have experienced profound impacts from wildland fires, particularly this decade. Under uncertain climate change conditions, these areas require new adaptive strategies to support landscape and community resilience. While these areas vary widely, some patterns of local social context have become apparent through wildland fire research. These patterns can help decision-makers better understand what influences communities’ abilities to adapt to fire. We focused our study on a northwestern European Mediterranean context, where communities are adapting to wildland fire and other climate change impacts through varied programs and policies. This area is composed of diverse landscapes, cultures, histories, languages and governance structures, but it also shares fire-based learning networks and collaborations, providing a sound indicator of shared elements of social context. Our study analy...