Carol Miller, Anne Black, and Peter Landres - Leopold Institute Investigators

The objectives of this project was to develop a GIS-based model that will provide information on both risks and benefits of wildland fire and help managers design long-term, landscape scale management plans. Fire managers strive to allow the natural role of fire in wilderness while protecting human life and property in the adjacent wildland-urban interface. Real and perceived risks lead to decisions to suppress wilderness fires, leading to fuel accumulations, increased risk, and more suppression. Managers need a tool to help them decide were and when wilderness fires can be allowed to burn so that the benefits of fire are realized at the same time that risks are minimized. They also need to design landscape scale management plans for reducing fuels through the use of wildland fire, prescribed fire, and mechanical manipulations. Providing information on the benefits of fire may result in more decisions to use wildland fire to reduce fuels, creating a more sustainable cycle.

Figure 1. The conceptual model links knowledge of the biophysical process of fire with ecological and social variables, such that it is possible to identify risks and benefits of fire. The key is to be able to do this under a variety of fire weather conditions.

With this model, we can predict risk and benefit with estimates of where fire is likely to occur, what values stand to lose or gain from fire, and how severely that fire will burn. The biophysical and social environments of fire are integrated to quantify the risks and benefits of wildland fire. The model requires basic data that are generally available for most areas (e.g., vegetation type, topography, and average weather). Wilderness fires might be allowed to burn where benefits are high and risks are low. Prescribed fires may be suitable where both benefits and risks are high. Full suppression and mechanical fuel treatments may be warranted where risks are high and benefits are low.