Fuels Planning: Science Synthesis and

Integration

Social Issues Fact Sheet: 13

Strategies for Managing Fuels and

Visual Quality

United States

Department

of Agriculture

Forest Service

Rocky Mountain

Research Station

Research Note

RMRS-RN-21-13-WWW

September 2006

Synthesizing

Scientific

Information

for Fire and Fuels

Project Managers

Pacific Northwest

Research Station

Rocky Mountain

Research Station

Considering Aesthetics

Fuels management, like many other aspects of forest management on public

land, can be highly controversial. The public’s concern that forest management

projects will significantly impact the scenic beauty of forested areas where people

live and recreate often spurs this controversy.

Given that the public’s acceptance of forest management practices, including

fuels reduction, is heavily based on how forests look, fuels managers can improve their chances of success by considering aesthetics when making management decisions.

An extensive body of research into how management outcomes impact people’s

sense of forest aesthetics can guide how to plan and manage wildland fire and

fuels reduction in ways that are more responsive to visual quality concerns.

Prime among the research findings is the importance of involving the public in

management decisions, since managers’ opinions about aesthetic beauty often differ from those of the general public. Also, members of the general public who lack

trust in managers’ decisions may want to be more involved in forest planning.

Studies suggest a three-part general strategy for managing fuels and visual quality: planning, implementation, and monitoring.

Planning

• Involve the public in the planning process.

• Use a multidisciplinary team for fuels management, including landscape architects, to help evaluate the visual impacts of management proposals.

• Use visual assessment tools to determine how sensitive an area is to visual

change and assess management proposals.

• Plan locations of fuels treatments to avoid impacting visually sensitive areas, such as near existing homes, or along scenic roads and ridgelines.

• Establish natural boundaries for management areas.

Implementation

• Protect and retain large trees by removing only enough of them to open the

canopy and reduce the potential for crown fire to spread.

• Use tree thinning to improve visibility through the understory and reduce

ladder fuels by removing between 25 percent and 50 percent of the smaller

diameter trees, depending on location and forest type.

• Mitigate the visual impacts of prescribed fire in sensitive areas by clearing

around the bases of large trees prior to a burn and timing burns for fastest

revegetation.

Social Science Team Lead:

Pamela Jakes

USDA Forest Service

North Central Research Station

1992 Folwell Avenue

St. Paul, MN 55108

pjakes@fs.fed.us
• Use “cues to care” to show that the forest is actively being managed, such as cleaning the edges

of a prescribed burn adjacent to roads or making

other improvements.

• Whenever possible, involve volunteers in planning

and implementing fuels management projects.

Maintenance

• Minimize woody debris and slash from tree thinning by mulching, and removing or burning debris.

• Enhance revegetation of disturbed areas, such as

along access roads and staging areas, by seeding and

fertilizing responsibly.

• Provide information about fuels management

through interpretive signs and brochures that show

the target landscape and give a timeframe for its

regeneration after treatment.

• Practice adaptive management; after fuels treatments, assess the impacts of management decisions

on visual quality, and incorporate this information

into your next fuels management project.

Source

Ryan, Robert L. 2005. Social science to improve fuels

management: a synthesis of research on aesthetics and

fuels management. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-261. St. Paul,

MN: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

North Central Research Station. 58 p. Available online

at http://ncrs.fs.fed.us/pubs/viewpub.asp?key=3514

[2006, August 25]. For a hard copy, contact Pamela Jakes

at pjakes@fs.fed.us.

Additional Aesthetics Fact Sheets

Strategies for Managing Fuels and Visual Quality is one of a

series of four fact sheets on the topic of aesthetics and

fuels management. See also Landscape Preference in Forested Ecosystems, Social Issues Fact Sheet 14 (RMRS RN21-14-WWW); Landscape Change and Aesthetics, Social

Issues Fact Sheet 15 (RMRS RN-21-15-WWW); and

Prescribed Fire and Visual Quality, Social Issues Fact Sheet

16 (RMRS RN-21-16-WWW).

Social Science Team Fact Sheets

Look for fact sheet topics from the Social Science Team including information on developing personal responsibility for fuels

reduction, communicating fire hazard, topics for community

fire plans, guidelines for community education, collaboration,

and the “golden rule” for communicating fire hazard to people.

Fuels Planning: Synthesis and Integration

This fact sheet is one in a series being produced as part of a

larger project supported by the USDA Forest Service to synthesize new knowledge and information relevant to fire and fuels

management. Fact sheets address topics related to stand structure, environmental impacts, economics, and human responses

to these factors. Information in the fact sheets is targeted for the

dry forests of the Inland West, but is often applicable across

broad regions of the country. For more information, please visit

our Web site at:

www.fs.fed.us/fire/tech_transfer/synthesis/synthesis_index

Fuels Planning: Science Synthesis and Integration is an interagency research/management partnership to support the TenYear Fire Plan, led by Russell T. Graham, RMRS, and Sarah M.

McCaffrey, NCRS.

Piling and burning material from forest thinning can lessen the visual

impacts of fuels hazard reduction in more heavily used parts of the

forest. Photo: L. Kruger