BACKGROUND

The Institute's 2005 Program Charter provides the most recent guidance for our Fire Research Problem Selection and Justification.

In April of 1998 and following the development of our 1996 strategic plan, researchers at the Leopold Institute engaged in a scoping effort to identify priority research questions for Wildland Fire and Natural Disturbance Regimes.

For current emphases and specific research questions, see Wilderness Fire Research Program description.

Fire Research Problem Selection and Justification - extracted from the Leopold Institute's 2005 Program Charter

Problem 3. There is a need for improved information to guide the stewardship of fire as a natural process in wilderness while protecting social and ecological values inside and outside wilderness. [printable version]

• Element 3a. An understanding of natural fire regimes and the extent and degree to which they have been altered is required for developing effective strategies for the stewardship of fire as a natural process.
• Element 3b. Fire managers and planners need to understand the options for restoring fire and the consequences of these actions on the wilderness environment.
• Element 3c. An understanding of how social and institutional factors influence the evaluation of tradeoffs by fire managers and members of the public is necessary to support the stewardship of fire as a natural process in wilderness.

Two fundamental goals of wilderness stewardship are to allow natural ecological processes to function without human interference and to preserve natural conditions. Natural disturbances are important ecological processes for perpetuating a wide variety of native species and the structure and function of wilderness ecosystems. To develop effective strategies for allowing natural disturbances to more freely function in wilderness, wilderness managers need to understand natural disturbance regimes, how human actions have altered these regimes, the effects of that alteration, and the consequences of management options for reversing or mitigating these effects. Development of the Leopold Institute research program in this area has identified fire as the most important natural disturbance that wilderness managers need to understand in order to protect and preserve wilderness. Research in this problem area is primarily supported by funding from the National Fire Plan, but is supplemented by other project funding (e.g., Joint Fire Science Program, Bitterroot Ecosystem Management Research Project, etc.). Development and direction of this problem will depend, at least in part, on continued availability of funding and compatibility with the needs of these funding sources.

Wilderness fire managers and planners are faced with the challenge of restoring or maintaining the natural process of fire in wilderness while protecting a wide variety of other social and ecological values inside and outside of wilderness. Additional research in the ecological and social sciences is needed to understand when, how, and where the process of fire can best be maintained or restored. Fire suppression has been, and continues to be, the dominant fire management strategy in wilderness, as it is outside wilderness. In many areas, fire suppression has contributed to increasing hazardous fuel accumulations, increasing probability of extreme wildfire occurrence, and altered ecosystem structure and function; all results that run counter to wilderness management goals. In addition, fire suppression has helped to distort human perceptions of natural systems. The orientations toward wilderness fire management that are held by the public and government agencies need to shift away from fire suppression as the dominant fire management strategy and toward a stewardship of the process of fire that includes natural (i.e., wildland fire use) and prescribed fire. To support this shift, we need to understand 1) the natural role of fire in wilderness and how this role has been altered; 2) the options available for restoring fire as a natural process and the consequences of these actions on the wilderness environment; and 3) how social and institutional factors create and maintain a particular orientation toward wilderness fire management. This research will help managers and planners devise effective strategies for restoring and managing fire in wilderness. The need for a shift away from fire suppression as a dominant strategy and toward the use of wildland fire is increasingly being recognized outside wilderness and the knowledge gained will apply across the full spectrum of lands extending from wilderness outward to the wildland urban interface.

Element 3a. An understanding of natural fire regimes and the extent and degree to which they have been altered is required for developing effective strategies for the stewardship of fire as a natural process.

To establish realistic, sustainable, and scientifically defensible targets for management, we need a better understanding of the extent and degree to which natural fire regimes have been altered by human activities. Wilderness is the best laboratory we have for understanding the range of natural variability in fire frequency, size, severity and seasonality. Although scientists agree that the temporal and spatial variability of fires and fire effects are very important for ecosystem diversity and stability, methods have not yet emerged to effectively describe that heterogeneity. For example, descriptions of fire regimes typically only consider historical averages or mean conditions and therefore fail to capture ecologically important aspects of natural fire regimes. We need a better understanding of how characteristics of natural fire regimes vary in time and space because managers use these descriptions to develop prescriptions and targets for management and they need to be able to plan for and incorporate this variability. An understanding of the inherent variability of natural fire regimes is also important for identifying the appropriate scales for the study and management of fire. Research has shown that different environmental factors influence fire regimes at different scales and we need an understanding of these factors and their related scales of influence. To identify where and what type of intervention may be necessary to achieve management goals, we need a better understanding of how fire regimes have been altered by a variety of agents of change, including: land management, fire suppression, land use change, other disturbances, and climate change. Primary beneficiaries of this research are fire and wilderness managers who seek to restore the natural process of fire to dynamic wildland ecosystems in the face of changing climate and vegetation conditions. The information on the degree and extent of alteration is important for policy-makers and agency leaders. Knowledge gained from wilderness about reference conditions and the natural range of variability will also help set management objectives for non-wilderness environments.

We propose to:

• Quantify and describe the variability in fire regimes at multiple spatial scales in the past and present.
  Outcome: identification of the appropriate scales for the study and management of natural fire regimes; sampling strategies and methods for describing and quantifying fire regimes at the spatial and temporal scales most relevant to management; identification of critical variables needed to model fire regimes at multiple scales.

• Determine how land management, fire suppression, land use change and climate have affected wildland ecosystems and their fire regimes.
  Outcome: evaluation of the relative influence of climate and fire suppression on past and present fire regimes; quantification of the effect of fire suppression on ecosystem conditions.

Element 3b. Fire managers and planners need to understand the options for restoring fire and the consequences of these actions on the wilderness environment.

Options for restoring the natural role of fire in wilderness vary among wildernesses. In some wildernesses, fire is already playing its natural role and maintenance of this role is best achieved through allowing lightning caused ignitions to burn. In other cases, systems have been altered to such a degree that allowing natural fire to burn would compromise wilderness values and therefore, prescribed fire may be a preferred option prior to allowing natural fire. And in still other cases, such as small wilderness areas, allowing natural ignitions to burn may never be feasible because of the potential for escaped fires and unacceptable risks to values. Before investing limited time and resources in developing and implementing strategies to restore and maintain the natural process of fire to wilderness, managers need to understand the likelihood of meeting their objectives through management actions and the consequences of these actions. The cumulative effects of fire and fuels management activities may not be readily apparent and can depend on how surrounding lands are managed.

Although the first order, immediate effects of fire on vegetation are well studied, other effects from fire are less well known. For example, fire management staff and wilderness managers need to know the extent to which fire management activities increase the likelihood of non-native plants becoming established in remote wilderness areas, and whether attempts to reduce suppression-accumulated fuels will exacerbate the spread of non-native plants. The current lack of information on the effects of fire on fish and aquatic wildlife is also a major impediment to developing and evaluating fire management strategies. This knowledge gap is particularly important as populations of several amphibian and salmonid species in the mountainous regions of the western U.S. are declining. Finally, to anticipate the long-term consequences of a particular management strategy, we need to better understand the cumulative effects of fire and fuels management activities, including the reciprocal interactions between fire regimes and patterns of vegetation and fuels across large landscapes. Through this research, we will evaluate the consequences of various options for managing and restoring fire in wilderness and adjacent lands. Beneficiaries of this research are fire managers, who need to anticipate the short- and long-term implications of their decisions, and planners, who need to develop strategies and set realistic objectives for managing fire.

We propose to:

• Investigate the long-term consequences of fire and fuels management strategies. We will use computer models to simulate the reciprocal interactions between fire and landscape pattern, project the long-term cumulative effects of fire and fire management, and assess the likelihood of meeting restoration objectives with wildland fire use.
  Outcome: quantification of the effect of altered fire regimes on landscape patterns of vegetation; recommended strategies for accomplishing fire management objectives; methods for tracking the cumulative effects of suppression.

• Improve understanding of the consequences of fire and fuels management activities on the establishment and spread of non-native, invasive plants in wilderness. Measure the effects of fire and fire management activities on the influx and spread of non-native invasive plants in wilderness, taking into account variables of physiography, extant vegetation, recent fire history and severity, and proximity to source pools of invasive plants.
  Outcome: guidelines for minimizing the effects of fire management activities on the establishment and spread of non-native invasive plants in wilderness

• Improve understanding of the ecological consequences of fire in upland and riparian forests on stream communities and habitat conditions at multiple scales. We will document the range of biotic and abiotic responses to fires of varying intensities and attempt to determine if prescribed burning mimics the ecological function of fire in a watershed.
  Outcome: evaluation of the immediate and long-term effects of fire management activities on stream ecosystems; identification of opportunities to protect threatened and endangered species; quantification of the effects of prescription burning on stream communities and habitat conditions.

Element 3c. An understanding of how social and institutional factors influence the evaluation of tradeoffs by fire managers and members of the public is necessary to support the stewardship of fire as a natural process in wilderness.

Allowing lightning-caused fires to burn freely in wilderness is consistent with wilderness objectives and can impart many ecological benefits, but the potential for the fire to escape the wilderness boundary and threaten values outside of the wilderness often results in the decision to suppress. Because decisions about how to manage a wilderness fire are made within just a few hours following first report of a fire start, a full evaluation of the tradeoffs among these risks and benefits is difficult. Moreover, most existing decision-support tools focus attention on the short-term, negative consequences of fire. This concentration on the wilderness boundary, the time constraints on the decision process, and the focus on negative impacts of fire all combine to inhibit a comprehensive discussion of the trade-offs involved and ultimately reinforce an orientation towards suppression. To support wildland fire use, decision-support tools are needed to enable managers to weigh the benefits of fire against its risks, and these tools need to be used at multiple scales.

Achieving fire stewardship requires a restructuring of the decision process and a deeper understanding of the context within which decisions are made. We need to understand the individual, social, and organizational factors that support and maintain the existing orientation toward suppression and we need to determine what changes are necessary to accomplish a shift toward fire stewardship. This requires understanding the institutional factors that create barriers to fire use, developing methods to evaluate tradeoffs among risks and benefits, and developing methods to translate this understanding into changes in organizational behavior. In addition, this requires an understanding of how public attitudes, value orientations, anticipated outcomes, community norms, and knowledge influence the development of public views and trust in the agencies and fire and fuels management activities, and how individuals make personal tradeoffs when considering alternatives to fire suppression.

This research seeks to improve our capacity to help managers restore and maintain natural fire regimes in wilderness by providing: increased understanding of the barriers to fire use and methods for dismantling them, improved quality and consistency of decisions, and improved understanding of how to gauge and engage the public in wilderness fire management. Wilderness and fire planners and managers will benefit through an improved ability to engage themselves and the public in an evaluation of the short and long-term consequences of fire management, to anticipate public and organizational response to proposed management actions, and to protect both the ecological and human values affected by fire and fuels management.

We propose to:

• Determine the institutional, political, cultural, historical, and legal factors that influence fire management decisions when opportunities for restoring and maintaining the natural role of fire in wildland ecosystems become available. We will determine and compare the factors leading to success (or lack of success) of wilderness fire programs. We will directly observe and collect data about the decision-making process for wildland fire use and suppression incidents.
  Outcome: identification and understanding of the primary barriers to wildland fire use.

• Increase understanding of the influence of public knowledge, value orientations, attitudes, community norms, and anticipated social and ecological outcomes on public decisions regarding fire and fuels management. We will identify and understand how specific influences such as trust in the agency, past experiences with fire, and attachment to place also affect the way the public views and responds to fire and fuels management activities. In particular, we will attempt to understand these influences in relation to public support or opposition towards wildland fire use.
  Outcome: improved understanding of human orientations towards wilderness fire management and how they vary; methods for monitoring public support of fire and fuels management.

• Develop and test methods for assessing tradeoffs among social and ecological values associated with fire and fuels management decisions. These methods will allow the positive outcomes of fire to be weighed against the risks from fire so that the effects of fire and fuels management on social and ecological values can be integrated into landscape planning tools.
  Outcome: procedures for integrating social and ecological outcomes of fire and fuels management into landscape planning activities; improved understanding of how social and ecological value tradeoffs affect management and public decisions regarding fire and fuels; improved ability to communicate about the social and ecological outcomes and tradeoffs related to fire and fuels management.

Natural Disturbance Regimes RESEARCH SCOPING EFFORT   -  April 1998

The Leopold Institute's 1996 Strategic Plan identifies three Priority Issues upon which the Institute will place its initial research emphasis. One of these Priority Issues is to understand natural disturbance regimes and the effects of their alteration by human action and to develop strategies to manage and restore natural disturbances in wilderness ecosystems.

During 1996-97 the Leopold Institute conducted an extensive scoping effort to identify high priority research topics related to the understanding and management of natural disturbance processes in wilderness ecosystems. Input from a wide cross-section of federal agency managers and scientists, university scientists, and non-governmental organizations identified a large number of high priority research needs, ranging from site-specific projects to cross-cutting issues applicable to natural areas across the country. Responses to the initial scoping request were collated and combined into topical areas which were then reviewed by an interagency group of scientists and managers. This group was asked to use its personal and collective experience and expertise to validate, expand, and further refine a list of key topics around which the Leopold Institute research program could be organized. This list was then reviewed, refined, and narrowed by the Leopold Institute staff to focus on those topics that we felt the Leopold Institute would be able to make the most significant contribution.

From these initial responses, we decided to focus initially on topics related to the management and restoration of wilderness fire. A revised list of fire related research needs was then circulated to those who had previously provided input as well as other selected agency and university managers and scientists. We asked for a final review of the topics, including assessment of priorities and opportunities.

Based on this final review, the Leopold Institute staff developed a conceptual framework to assist in identifying and prioritizing research topics that address issues regarding the understanding, management, and restoration of wilderness fire. Using this framework, we have identified three areas of research towards which we would like to make a significant contribution over the next 5 to 10 years. Specific research topics within each of these areas are identified below.

The topics identified are not all-inclusive of the myriad fire or disturbance related wilderness research needs. Rather, they represent the highest priority topics for which the Leopold Institute has the potential to make a meaningful contribution. Identification of these priorities has considered available staff expertise and interest as well as our understanding of what programs and capabilities are available at other research units. Development of project descriptions and study plans will focus on aspects particularly relevant to wilderness and other protected area values and resources. We will strive to make our efforts complementary to, or collaborative with, other ongoing studies.

Our intent is to develop the Leopold Institute's wilderness fire research program around these identified topics. These topics provide an umbrella under which we hope to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration to address the management and restoration of fire in wilderness. We intend to use this framework as a basis for allocating our limited research funds, soliciting additional funds, and providing guidance for others to develop research proposals and programs.

WILDERNESS FIRE: PRIORITY RESEARCH QUESTIONS            April 1998

Despite a clear understanding of the need to restore and maintain fire as a natural process in wilderness ecosystems, the success with which this has been accomplished generally falls well below that needed to approximate the fire regimes expected in the absence of modern human influences. Causes of this failure are varied and include a lack of public understanding, a lack of information, a lack of funds and trained personnel, legal and policy constraints, concerns about fire escape and the resulting loss of property and human life on adjacent lands, smoke production, and concern over aesthetics and other cultural values. Consequences of not restoring and maintaining fire as a natural process include declining forest health, increasing hazardous fuel accumulations, increasing probability of extreme wildfire occurrence, and altered ecosystem structure and function; all factors that run counter to the goal of preserving natural conditions. Further research is needed to better understand the social, ecological, and institutional factors limiting the management and restoration of wilderness fire at landscape scales.

The range of potential research topics related to managing and restoring fire in wilderness is extremely diverse and includes ecological, social, and policy topics. A conceptual framework of potential fire research topics provides a context for identifying how particular research topics relate to each other and to the overall goal of managing and restoring fire to wilderness. Such a framework is also useful in discerning where the Leopold Institute might most effectively concentrate its research efforts. Our proposed conceptual framework for wilderness fire research (see Figure) illustrates the overall goals of a wilderness fire program, the role that assessing risk has on achieving these goals, and specific research topics that directly provide the knowledge and understanding to evaluate, understand, and reduce risk.. In this conceptual framework, assessing risk plays a pivotal role in the decision-making process to accomplish wilderness fire goals, and research provides the foundation of information to improve the quality and consistency of evaluating these risks and the resulting management decisions.

Overall goals of wilderness fire programs generally focus on permitting natural ignitions to burn, and, where necessary, restoring or replacing these fires with management ignitions. The ability to allow natural fires hinges on the decision of whether to allow natural ignitions to burn unimpeded, to control these fires, or to suppress them. Decisions to use management ignitions depend on the identification of areas where natural ignitions alone will not accomplish the desired objectives. These two goals clearly interact. For example, management-ignited fires might be needed in an area of suppression-caused fuel accumulation before natural fires can be allowed to burn in that area. Likewise, a management decision could include allowing a natural ignition to burn in order to meet the goal of restoring a more natural fire regime.

Decisions regarding both natural and restoration fires in wilderness must balance the ecological benefits of fire against the threat fire poses to the ecological and socio-economic values both within and outside wilderness. Ecological values at risk from fire include the unique habitats and species that occur inside and adjacent to wilderness. In contrast, fire suppression causes the disruption of natural functioning, fire-dependent ecosystems which are common in wilderness. With increasing development surrounding wilderness, these unique habitats, species, and naturally functioning ecosystems are increasingly rare and valued by society. Socio-economic values at risk include recreation opportunities, aesthetic and cultural values, health and visibility impacts from smoke, and private and commercial property values adjacent to wilderness.

Fire risk is the probability of loss due to fire and is a function of the probability that a fire will occur in a specific area, the severity and effects of that fire, and the ecological and socio-economic values of that specific area. A simple two-way matrix, with low and high probability of severe fire on one axis, and low and high value on the other axis, illustrates these basic functions of risk. For example, if there is a high probability that a severe fire will occur in an area and that area has high value, then that area is at high risk. Even if the probability of a severe fire in an area is high, if the value of that area is low, then the risk is also low. Conversely, if the probability of severe fire in an area is low, then the risk is low regardless of either low or high value of that area. Ironically, and sometimes tragically, excluding fire in a fire-adapted ecosystem often increases fire risk because the accumulation of fuels leads to increased fire severity.

This simplistic evaluation of risk highlights the need for research on methods of assessing fire risks, the identification of specific areas at risk, the times when these areas are at greatest risk, and development of techniques and strategies to reduce this risk. These risks to socio-economic and ecological values must in turn be balanced against the risks to natural conditions and processes from the exclusion and suppression of fire. Understanding these factors of risk and balancing the positive against the negative effects of fire form the core of a decision-making framework related to wilderness fire.

Specific research topics we have identified within the area of assessing wilderness fire risk include:

• Improved understanding of the factors affecting risk.
• Improved methods for evaluating risk and identifying specific areas and times of risk, especially along wilderness boundaries and in the wildland-intermix zone adjacent to wilderness.
• Improved methods for prioritizing areas for restoration fires and other fuel treatments.
• Improved understanding of what treatments would be most effective to reduce risk.

This discussion of risk highlights that both ecological research and social research are needed to develop better knowledge and understanding about risk.

Ecological research is needed to improve our knowledge about fire regimes and the natural spread of fire over entire wilderness landscapes. In addition, ecological research is needed to improve understanding about the effects of alternative management and restoration goals and the tools used to accomplish these goals. Specific ecological research topics we have identified include:

• Improved methods for sampling and describing spatial and temporal attributes of natural fire regimes at landscape scales.
• Improved understanding of the natural spread of fire across landscapes and the factors affecting this spread.
• Improved understanding of the short- and long-term ecological effects of alternative management options for managing and restoring fire, including fire exclusion, management-ignited fire, and the use of fire surrogates such as mechanical fuel treatments.
• Improved predictive capabilities of fire spread and fire effects models to better inform fire managers about the effects of their decisions and to better understand the effects of alternative management goals, such as restoring the either the process of fire or the forest structure resulting from fire.

Social factors are one of the primary driving forces influencing management decisions and actions regarding wilderness fire, yet there is little understanding about what these social factors are and how they develop and affect management decisions, especially for powerful natural processes such as fire. Visibility and health concerns about smoke, for example, could threaten to curtail the use of natural ignitions or prevent the use of management-ignited fires to restore wilderness fire regimes. Specific social research topics we have identified include:

• Improved understanding about the fiscal, regulatory, institutional, and behavioral constraints within agencies to managing and restoring wilderness fire.
• Improved understanding of the perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes of the public regarding fire and the options for managing and restoring wilderness fire.
• Improved strategies and methods for communicating with the public about fire and the ecological and social consequences of different fire management and policy choices.

Actual prioritization and selection of individual topics and projects to receive the Leopold Institute support in any given year will be determined based on the needs and priorities of the wilderness agencies, the status of existing knowledge, the potential for making significant contributions to existing knowledge, and the availability of funds and expertise.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Carol Miller - Research Ecologist Wilderness Fire - 406-542-4198 - cmiller04 [at] fs.fed.us

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