United States

Department of

Agriculture

Forest Service

Pacific Northwest

Research Station

General Technical

Report

PNW-GTR-736

December 2007

Fire Social Science Research–

Selected Highlights
The Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is dedicated to the

principle of multiple use management of the Nation’s forest resources for sustained yields of wood, water, forage, wildlife, and recreation. Through forestry

research, cooperation with the States and private forest owners, and management of the national forests and national grasslands, it strives—as directed by

Congress—to provide increasingly greater service to a growing Nation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its

programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability,

and where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion,

sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or

part of an individual’s income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not

all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require

alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print,

audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice

and TDD).

To file a complaint of discrimination write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights,

1400 Independence Avenue, S.W. Washington, DC 20250-9410, or call (800) 795-

3272 (voice) or (202) 720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity provider and

employer.

Technical Editors

Armando González-Cabán is a research economist, Pacific Southwest Research

Station, Forest Fire Laboratory, 4955 Canyon Crest Drive, Riverside, CA 92507;

Richard W. Haynes is a research forester, Pacific Northwest Research Station,

Forestry Sciences Laboratory, P.O. Box 3890, Portland, OR 97208; Sarah

McCaffrey is a research social scientist, Northern Research Station, 1033 University Place, Suite 360, Evanston, IL 60201; Evan Mercer is a research economist,

Southern Research Station, P.O. Box 12254, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709;

and Alan Watson is a supervisory research social scientist, Rocky Mountain

Research Station, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, 790 E Beckwith

Avenue, Missoula, MT 59801.
Abstract

González-Cabán, Armando; Haynes, Richard W.; McCaffrey, Sarah; Mercer,

Evan; Watson, Alan, tech. eds. 2007. Fire social science research–selected

highlights. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-736. Portland, OR: U.S. Department

of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 65 p.

Forest Service Research and Development has a long-standing component of social

fire science that since 2000 has expanded significantly. Much of this new work

focuses on research that will increase understanding of the social and economic

issues connected with wildland fire and fuels management. This information can

enhance the ability of agencies and communities to meet land management objectives in an effective and efficient manner that is well informed by public needs and

preferences. This research will improve fire and fuels management decisions by

contributing to a broader understanding of key public values and concerns about fire

and fuels management—before, during, and after fire and fuels treatments; social

and economic effects of different fire and fuels management decisions; external and

internal barriers to effective fire management; and effect of different existing and

proposed policies on management options and decision space. The research will also

provide guidelines and tools for effective and efficient communication, both external and internal; improving safety, reliability, and ability to meet management

objectives; working with communities and other partners to achieve fire and fuels

management goals; and assessing tradeoffs in economic, ecological, and quality-oflife values of different decision options.

Keywords: Values, perceptions, suppression, communities, trust, economics,

sociology, anthropology, psychology.
Fire Social Science Research–

Selected Highlights

Armando González-Cabán, Richard W. Haynes, Sarah McCaffrey,

Evan Mercer, and Alan Watson

Technical Editors

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service

Pacific Northwest Research Station

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-736

December 2007
Contents

1 Social and Economic Highlights in Response to Wildland Fire and Fuels

Research and Development Plan

Richard W. Haynes, Sarah McCaffrey, and Jeff Prestemon

5 Assess and Enhance Public Trust

Patricia Winter, James Absher, and Alan Watson

11 Assess and Understand the Interaction of Fire and Recreation

Patricia Winter

17 Assess Economic and Social Costs of Wildland Fire

Jeff Prestemon

25 Community Wildland Fire Preparedness

Pam Jakes

31 Evaluate Opportunities for Biomass Processing Facility Siting and

Economic Feasibility of Landscape-Scale Fuel Treatment

Jeremy Fried and Jamie Barbour

35 Human Factors in Fire Management

Armando González-Cabán

41 Optimal Fire and Fuels Management

Evan Mercer and Greg Jones

47 Public Perceptions

Sarah McCaffrey and Patricia Winter

53 Strategic and Tactical Fuel Treatment Evaluation Tools

Ken Skog

57 Understand the Wildland-Urban Interface

Susan Stewart

61 Fire Social Science Research–Next Steps

Richard W. Haynes, Sarah McCaffrey, and Jeff Prestemon

65 Metric Equivalents
1

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Social and Economic Highlights in Response

to Wildland Fire and Fuels Research and

Development Plan

Richard W. Haynes, Sarah McCaffrey, and Jeff Prestemon

Social science fire research including economics, sociology, geography, and anthropology has always been a part of Forest Service Research and Development but

has received increased attention since the advent of the National Fire Plan in 2000.

To guide fire research, the Forest Service developed the Wildland Fire and Fuels

Research and Development Strategic Plan (see USDA FS 2006). The strategic plan

provides broad direction to “conduct research on social and economic dimensions

of fire and fuels management” and identifies three broad social science research

needs (see table 1 for details). The first deals with “public interactions with fire

and fuels management” and includes issues such as public trust, public perceptions,

incentives, cooperation and planning, and communication. The second deals with

“socioeconomic aspects of fire and fuels management” and includes issues such as

assessing values at risk and the social and economic impacts of wildland fire and

smoke. The third deals with “organizational effectiveness,” which includes issues

of decisionmaking, optimal fire management programs, and human factors in fire

management.

This document is a progress report on the significant findings from the research

conducted by Forest Service Research and Development under the auspices of the

National Fire Plan. This is not a catalogue of all work. Instead, it highlights elements of the social science research conducted to date that meets the needs of the

National Fire Plan. Additional social science work, not discussed here, is being

conducted in other elements of the strategic plan, notably on questions relating

to biomass utilization. In some of the highlighted work, partial funding has been

provided by the Joint Fire Science Program or from regular appropriations.1

Coincidental to the development of the strategic plan, Forest Service Research

and Development initiated national peer reviews for eight strategic program areas,

one of which is Wildland Fire and Fuels Research. Strategic plan development

involves cross-station discussions among the scientists conducting related research.

1

 Forest Service Research is typically funded from a single appropriation code. The

allocation of funds to specific projects is shifting from local/station control (with

Washington office oversight) to local/station/national control as part of the Performance

Accountability Reporting Process that is being adopted throughout the Forest Service.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

In the social sciences, discussions started first among the scientists working on the

economic projects and then expanded, in early 2006, to include scientists working

on social science projects.

The highlights presented here encapsulate efforts by a cross-station team

charged with preparing a summary of social science research for the first National

Wildland Fire and Fuels Research peer review. This team was asked to assess and

summarize Wildland Fire and Fuels Research accomplishments reported by Forest

Service research stations. Central objectives of the team’s work were to identify

opportunities for cross-station collaboration and to evaluate whether completed

research amounted to “integrated systems.” A primary product of the team’s effort

is a synthesis of social science research around 10 central research themes, which

we label “highlights.” These are described in the next section.

Selected Significant Highlights

Social science research conducted under the 10 central themes consolidates scientific advances by scientists from different disciplines, multiple research stations,

and several universities. Three of these themes focus on assessment methods and

understanding of public trust, fire and recreation interactions, and economic and

social cost of fire. Two highlights address public perceptions, both those held by

individuals and those held by communities. Three highlights characterize advance

Table 1—National Fire Plan, Portfolio C-Social Fire Science

Element Description

Element C1 Public interactions with fire and fuels management

a. Public trust

b. Public perception

c. Incentives

d. Cooperation and planning

e. Education

Element C2 Socioeconomic aspects of fire and fuels management

a. Impacts of wildland fire

b. Values at risk

c. Social and economic impacts of smoke

Element C3 Organizational effectiveness

a. Optimal fire management programs

b. Human factors in fire management

c. Fire management decisionmaking
3

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

in our understanding of particular management issues: the feasibility of broad-scale

biomass treatments, optimal fire and fuels management, and planning tools for fuel

management. One highlight focuses on long-standing work examining the human

factors involved in fire management. The last highlight describes research and tool

development to produce maps of the wildland-urban interface.

Literature Cited

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service [USDA FS]. 2006. Wildland

fire and fuels research and development strategic plan: meeting the needs of

the present, anticipating the needs of the future. Washington, DC. 50 p.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736
5

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Assess and Enhance Public Trust

Highlight Contacts

Patricia Winter, Pacific Southwest Research Station: pwinter@fs.fed.us; James

Absher, Pacific Southwest Research Station: jabsher@fs.fed.us; Alan Watson,

Rocky Mountain Research Station: awatson@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

This work supports the objectives in Portfolio C, Element C1: Public interactions

with fire and fuels management.

Background

Trust is a form of social capital, facilitating effective land management, communication and collaboration. Although trust in the Forest Service is at least moderately

high for most publics, evidence of a lack of trust and outright distrust has been

found in some communities. However, the amount, types, and conditions of trust

necessary for effective management to occur remain poorly understood.

Approach

Researchers initiated studies to assess the degree of trust or distrust various publics

hold in the Forest Service’s ability to manage fire and fire risk. Studies have

focused on describing the level of trust the public has in agency decisionmaking,

understanding the constituent elements and contributors to trust, and developing

tools to monitor and enhance trust while accomplishing resource management

objectives. These studies range from the community level to multistate level, and

involve rural, wildland-urban interface (WUI), and urban residents. Combining

quantitative and qualitative approaches have been a hallmark of this work.

Products and Tools

Methods to measure trust and attitudes toward the agency across broad urban public

and WUI sectors are being developed. Tools are being developed to model trust

issues; quantitatively differentiate segments of rural and WUI communities with

high, medium and low trust; understand the contributors to trust; and monitor the

effects of public involvement, community-based agency efforts, and collaborative

planning activities on trust.

We have developed

tools to enhance

trust.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Results and Applications

Trust has been found to be centered in perceived values that are similar or dissimilar between agency and publics, as well as perceived consistency or inconsistency

of action with those values and validity of reasons underlying inconsistencies

(Cvetkovich and Winter 2007). It has been shown to mediate and reinforce the

relationship between values and public support for wildland fire management

actions such as thinning and prescribed burning (Liljeblad and Borrie 2006;

Liljeblad et al., in press; Vaske et al. 2007). However, more work is needed to

understand the role trust plays in natural resource decisions, and how trust is lost

and gained. Some of the basic tenets of trustworthiness (credibility, honesty,

similarity) may or may not be the best foci of agency members seeking to build

trust. The importance of trust has been demonstrated concerning reliance on, and

likelihood of taking action on, information provided by National Predictive Services. Findings from this will be used to make strategic decisions about communication with various segments of the fire management community in the federal and

nonfederal sectors.

The Bitterroot Ecosystem Management Project has assessed trust across communities to understand baseline levels of trust, engaged the public in geographic

Effective fire management rests in part on trust between publics and managing agencies.

California Department of Forestry
7

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

information system-based values mapping activities to understand the relationship between the public and the Bitterroot National Forest, and will perform

postdecision and postimplementation trust monitoring measurements. On the

Lewis and Clark National Forest, scientists provided an analysis of the relationship

between trust and the principles of high-reliability organizing during public collaboration on a plan for prescribed fire. In Colorado and southern California,

results have helped local agencies understand trust issues for WUI residents and

assisted community-based fire preparedness communications (e.g., FireWise and

Fire Safe Council work, Absher et al. 2006, Cvetkovich and Winter 2007).

Principal Investigators

James Absher, jabsher@fs.fed.us: Pacific Southwest Research Station; Sarah

McCaffrey, smcaffrey@fs.fed.us: Northern Research Station; Alan Watson,

awatson@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station; Patricia Winter,

pwinter@fs.fed.us: Pacific Southwest Research Station

Key Partners

Colorado State University, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana,

Forest Service Northern Region: Bitterroot National Forest and Lewis and Clark

National Forest, Fort Lewis College, Michigan State University, National Predictive

Services, University of Florida, University of Minnesota, University of Montana,

Western Washington University

Funding

This research was supported by the National Fire Plan, Joint Fire Science Program,

National Predictive Services Group, and the Bitterroot Ecosystem Management

Research Project.

Literature Cited

Absher, J.D.; Vaske, J.J.; Bright, A.D.; Don Carlos, A. 2006. Effective communication about wildfire management along the Colorado Front Range. In:

Decker, D.; Lardner, M., comps. Proceedings of the third international fire

ecology and management congress. Pullman, WA: Washington State University.

[DVD, track 2, community wildfire management]. www.emmps.wsu.edu/

2006firecongressproceedings. (May 29, 2007).
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Cvetkovich, G.T.; Winter, P.L. 2007. The what, how, and when of social reliance

and cooperative risk management. In: Siegrist, M.; Earle, T.C.; Gutscher, H.,

eds. Trust in cooperative risk management: uncertainty and skepticism in the

public mind. London: Earthscan: 187–209.

Liljeblad, A.; Borrie, W.T. 2006. Trust in wildland fire and fuel management

decisions. International Journal of Wilderness. 12(1): 39–43.

Liljeblad, A.; Watson, A.E.; Borrie, W.T. [In press]. A look inside the dynamics

of trust: a guide for managers. In: Watson, A.; Sproull, J.; Dean, L., comps.

Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: 8th world

wilderness congress symposium; 2005. Proceedings. Fort Collins, CO: U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station.

Vaske, J.J.; Absher, J.D.; Bright, A.D. 2007. Salient value similarity, social trust

and attitudes toward wildland fire management strategies. Human Ecology

Review. 14(2): 217–226.

Additional Readings

Cvetkovich, G.T.; Winter, P.L. 2004. Seeing eye-to-eye on natural resource

management: trust, value similarity, and action consistency/justification. In:

Tierney, P.T.; Chavez, D.J., tech. coords. Proceedings of the 4th social aspects

and recreation research symposium. San Francisco: San Francisco State University: 46–50.

Knotek, K. 2005. Human aspects of fire and fuels management in the Northern

Rockies. Eco-Report (Fall 2005). Missoula, MT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Bitterroot Ecosystem

Management Research Project, Leopold Institute. 573: 9.

Liljeblad, A. 2005. Towards a comprehensive definition of trust: understanding the

public’s trust in natural resource management. Missoula, MT: The University of

Montana. 112 p. M.S. thesis.

Winter, G.; Vogt, C.; McCaffrey, S. 2004. Examining social trust in fuels management strategies. Journal of Forestry. 120(6): 8–15.
9

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Winter, P.L. 2003. Californians’ opinions on wildland and wilderness fire management. In: Jakes, P.J., comp. Homeowners, communities, and wildfire: science

findings from the National Fire Plan. Proceedings of the 9th international

symposium on society and resource management. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-231. St.

Paul, MN: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central

Research Station: 84–92.

Winter, P.L. 2006. Urban proximate wilderness visitors’ preferences for fire management. In: Decker, D.; Lardner, M., comps. Proceedings of the 3rd international fire ecology and management congress. Pullman, WA: Washington

State University. www.emmps.wsu.edu/2006firecongressproceedings/Changes/

PatWinter.pdf. (May 29, 2007).

Winter, P.L.; Bigler-Cole, H. 2006. Improving a national fire information program: a needs assessment approach. Proceedings of the 3rd international fire

ecology and management congress. [DVD, track 2, public perception].

www.emmps.wsu.edu/2006firecongressproceedings. (May 9, 2007).

Winter, P.L.; Bigler-Cole, H. [In press]. Information needs, tolerance for risk,

and protection from risk: the case of national predictive services customers. In:

Beatty, J.J.; Lee, D.C.; Pye, J.M.; Sands, Y., eds. Proceedings on advances in

threat assessment and their application to forest and rangeland management

conference. Gen. Tech. Rep. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Southern Research Station. http://forestencyclopedia.net.

(May 9, 2007).

Winter, P.L.; Cvetkovich, G.T. [In press a]. Diversity in southwesterners’ views

of Forest Service fire management. In: Martin, W.E.; Raish, C.; Kent, B., eds.

Wildfire and fuels management: risk and human reaction. Washington, DC:

Resources for the Future.

Winter, P.L.; Cvetkovich, G.T. [In press b]. Perceptions, impacts, actions,

shared values, and trust: the experience of community residents in a fireprone ecosystem. In: Beatty, J.J.; Lee, D.C.; Pye, J.M.; Sands, Y., eds. Proceedings on advances in threat assessment and their application to forest and rangeland management conference. Gen. Tech. Rep. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department

of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Research Station.

http://forestencyclopedia.net. (May 9, 2007).
10

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736
11

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Assess and Understand the Interaction of Fire and

Recreation

Highlight Contacts

Patricia Winter, Pacific Southwest Research Station: pwinter@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

This work supports the objectives in Portfolio C, Element C1: Public interactions

with fire and fuels management.

Background

Recreation and tourism connected to our national forests have significant interactions with fire and fuels management. Substantial research has been conducted in

recent years within this topical area. Among the specific study topics examined is

the impact of fire and fuels management upon visitor experiences. These studies

help inform management, communication, and education efforts.

Approach

Varied approaches are characteristic of the inquiry into the relationship between fire

and fuels management and recreation. Ranging from a specific recreation area or

forest to a multistate level, these studies have involved recreationists and tourists

visiting semideveloped sites, trails, and wilderness. Perspectives of the general

public have been gathered through onsite, mailed, and telephone surveys and

analyses of preexisting records.

Products and Tools

Findings from a travel cost analysis of 182,987 wilderness recreation permits that

span more than a decade are now available. Specific management actions were

examined for public acceptability, both from the recreationist and broader public

perspectives, and these findings have been repeatedly shared with fire and recreation managers. Multiple scales and measurement approaches have been developed

and refined, helping to advance inquiries in this topical area.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Results and Applications

Investigations into the way that recreationists think about and act in relation to

wildland and wilderness fires have been examined. Studies conducted with visitors

to wilderness areas in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, and Montana indicate that visitor attitudes toward the use of wildland fire in wilderness have changed

over the past 40 years. In all cases, visitor attitudes have become more positive and

supportive. This trend was consistent across wilderness areas, methods of visitor

sampling, and attitude metrics (Knotek 2006).

Inquiries about recreation-related fire management actions have shown lesser

support for exclusion of specific recreational uses than for closures of sites and

larger forest areas (Winter 2006; Winter and Cvetkovich 2003, in press). Broader

fire management actions and policies (e.g., forest health/thinning and prescribed

burns) have also been examined in combination with various elements (such as

beliefs, trust, and ignition source) Absher and Vaske 2006; Bright et al. 2005;

Kneeshaw et al. 2004a, 2004b). A cognitive hierarchy framework has been applied

to this work, and new scales have been developed to assess value-based beliefs and

social norms. Openness to change regarding opinions or behaviors and degree of

persuasiveness of messages has been illuminated through studies on ipsativity in

wildland fire attitudes (Absher et al. 2006).

Perceived impacts of fire are also of interest. Tourists have reported that the

presence of high fire danger conditions, reported health problems from smoke and

ash, and the spread of fire to a nearby vacation region might result in substantial

trip alterations, yet most reported that wildland fires would not keep them from

traveling (Thapa et al. 2004). Recreationists with greater place attachment were

found to have observed more fire-related impacts, and were more likely to anticipate an influence on the quality of their recreational experience (Hendricks et al.

2003).

Actual impacts of fire have been studied. During a high-fire year on the Bob

Marshall Wilderness, visitors adapted to the presence of fires by staying fewer

nights in the wilderness, were more likely to hike than to travel by stock, and were

less likely to fish and/or use outfitters than visitors in a lower fire year (Borrie et al.

2006). Visitation and annual recreation benefits decreased for hikers and mountain

bikers as areas recovered from prescribed burns (Hesseln et al. 2003). However,

wildland fires had a different impact depending on use, where value per trip

increased for hikers but decreased for mountain bikers when crown fires were

considered (Loomis et al. 2001). Recreation users should not be expected to react

Place-specific recreation has more firerelated impacts than

other types of recreation activities.
13

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

similarly to fire across activities. Size and extent of burns also affect visitation

where increases in the amount of area burned and amount of burn that could be

seen from trails are associated with greater declines in recreation demand (Hesseln

et al. 2004).

Analyses of burned area emergency reports revealed numerous direct impacts

to hiking trails and campgrounds from fires (from fire damage), and many potential impacts to roads and hiking trails (tend to be linked to flooding after the fire

event). Most impacts represented a loss of recreational opportunities (Chavez and

McCollum 2004). Impacts of fire on recreational values follows a path demonstrating a short-term increase in visitation following a fire, then a decrease in use for

several years following a fire, with this downward slope shifting to an increase as

the forest canopy closes and the area begins to look like a mature forest again

(Englin et al. 2001, in press). Other work showed that the costs of fire can be

reduced through prescribed burning, which lessens the impact of lost recreation

visitor days due to closures.2

On the Bitterroot National Forest, where the majority of recreation visitors are

local residents, studies are helping managers and planners interact with the public

in a meaningful way in analyzing alternative fuel treatment locations and strategies;

and in understanding cultural differences in relationships with wilderness in order

to anticipate differences in response to proposed fuel treatments (Gunderson and

Watson 2006). Findings from the work in the Southwest were incorporated into

forest plan revision for the four southern California national forests and informed

a public fire education program developed by the San Bernardino National Forest

Association (Winter and Cvetkovich 2003).

Principal Investigators

James Absher, jabsher@fs.fed.us; Deborah Chavez, dchavez@fs.fed.us; Armando

González-Cabán, agonzalezcaban@fs.fed.us; Patricia Winter, pwinter@fs.fed.us:

Pacific Southwest Research Station; Tom Holmes, tholmes@fs.fed.us: Southern

Research Station; Alan Watson, awatson@fs.fed.us: Aldo Leopold Wilderness

Research Institute and the Bitterroot Ecosystem Management Research Project

2

 González-Cabán, A.; Wohlgemuth, P.; Loomis, J.B.; Weise, D.R. 2004. Costs and

benefits of reducing sediment production from wildfires through prescribed burning:

the Kinneloa fire case study. Proceedings, the 2nd international symposium on fire and

economics, planning and policy: a global vision. Unpublished document. On file with:

USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, 4955 Canyon Crest Drive,

Riverside, CA 92507.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Key Partners

Bitterroot Ecosystem Management Research Project; California Polytechnic State

University, San Luis Obispo; Colorado State University; Confederated Salish and

Kootenai Tribes of Montana; The University of Leeds, United Kingdom; University

of Florida; University of Montana Wilderness Institute; University of Nevada,

Reno; Western Washington University

Funding

This research was supported by the National Fire Plan, the Joint Fire Sciences

Program, and the Bitterroot Ecosystem Management Research Project.

Literature Cited

Absher, J.D.; Vaske, J.J. 2006. Predicting wildland fire policy support. In:

Reynolds, K.M., ed. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-688. [CD-ROM]. Portland,

OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station.

Absher, J.D.; Vaske, J.J.; Bright, A.D.; Donnelley, M.P. 2006. Ipsative crystallization effects on wildland fire attitude—policy support models. Society and

Natural Resources. 19: 381–392.

Borrie, W.T.; McCool, S.F.; Whitmore, J.G. 2006. Wildland fire effects on visits

and visitors to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. International Journal of

Wilderness. 12: 1.

Bright, A.D.; Vaske, J.J.; Kneeshaw, K.; Absher, J.D. 2005. Scale development of wildfire management basic beliefs. Australasian Parks and Leisure.

8(2): 44–48.

Chavez, D.J.; McCollum, D. 2004. Using BAER reports to investigate recreation

impacts of fire events. In: Tierney, P.T.; Chavez, D.J., tech. coords. Proceedings

of the 4th social aspects and recreation research symposium. San Francisco: San

Francisco State University: 120–125.

Englin, J.; Holmes, T.; Lutz, J. [In press]. Wildfires and the economic value of

wilderness recreation. In: Holmes, T.; Prestemon, J.; Abt, K., eds. The economics of forest disturbances: wildfires, storms, and pests. Forestry Sciences.

Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Vol. 79.
15

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Englin, J.; Loomis, J.; González-Cabán, A. 2001. The dynamic path of recreational values following a forest fire: a comparative analysis of states in the

intermountain West. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 31(10): 1837–1844.

Gunderson, K.; Watson, A. 2006. Understanding place meanings on the Bitterroot

National Forest–a landscape-level assessment of personal and community

values. International Journal of Wilderness. 12(1): 27–31.

http://leopold.wilderness.net/pubs/593.pdf. (May 2007).

Hendricks, W.; Chavez, D.; Phippen, K. 2003. Observance-influence of fire

management and place attachment at Big Sur. In: Jakes, P., comp. Homeowners, communities, and wildfire: science findings from the National Fire

Plan: proceedings of the 9th international symposium on society and resource

management. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-231. St. Paul, MN: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central Research Station: 45–54.

Hesseln, H.; Loomis, J.B.; González-Cabán, A. 2004. The effects of fire

on recreation demand in Montana. Western Journal of Applied Forestry.

19(1): 47–53.

Hesseln, H.; Loomis, J.B.; González-Cabán, A.; Alexander, S. 2003. Wildfire

effects on hiking and biking demand in New Mexico: a travel cost study.

Journal of Environmental Management. 69: 359–368.

Kneeshaw, K.; Vaske, J.J.; Bright, A.D.; Absher, J.D. 2004a. Acceptability

norms toward fire management in three national forests. Environment and

Behavior. 36(4): 592–612.

Kneeshaw, K.; Vaske, J.J.; Bright, A.D.; Absher, J.D. 2004b. Situational influences of acceptable wildfire management actions. Society and Natural Resources. 17(6): 477–489.

Knotek, K. 2006. Trends in public attitudes towards the use of wildland fire. In:

Decker, D.; Lardner, M., comps. Proceedings of the 3rd international fire

ecology and management congress. Pullman, WA: Washington State University.

http://leopold.wilderness.net/pubs/591.pdf. (May 2007).

Loomis, J.; González-Cabán, A.; Englin, J. 2001. Testing for differential effects

of forest fires on hiking and mountain biking demand and benefits. Journal of

Agricultural and Resource Economics. 26(2): 508–522.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Thapa, B.; Holland, S.; Absher, J. 2004. The relationship between wildfires and

tourist behaviors in Florida: an exploratory study. In: Tierney, P.T.; Chavez,

D.J., tech. coord. Proceedings of the 4th social aspects and recreation research

symposium. San Francisco: San Francisco State University: 154–161.

Winter, P.L. 2006. Urban proximate wilderness visitors’ preferences for fire

management. In: Decker, D.; Lardner, M., comps. Proceedings of the 3rd

international fire ecology and management congress. Pullman, WA: Washington

State University. www.emmps.wsu.edu/2006firecongressproceedings/Changes/

PatWinter.pdf. (May 25, 2007).

Winter, P.L.; Cvetkovich, G.T. 2003. A study of southwesterners’ opinions on

the management of wildland and wilderness fires: fire management version.

http://www.wildfirelessons.net/documents/SDSU_tech_02_FMO eversion.pdf.

(May 25, 2007).

Winter, P.L.; Cvetkovich, G.T. [In press]. An exploration of diversity in southwesterners’ views of Forest Service fire management. In: Martin, W.E.; Raish,

C.; Kent, B., eds. Wildfire risk: human perceptions and management implications. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future. Chapter 10.
17

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Assess Economic and Social Costs of Wildland Fire

Highlight Contact

Jeff Prestemon, Southern Research Station: jprestemon@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

This work supports the objectives in Portfolio C, Element C2: Socioeconomic

aspects of fire and fuels management.

Background

Wildland fires and society are intricately intertwined. Wildland fires affect goods

and services that people value, humans are attracted to features of landscapes that

are correlated with wildland fire activity, and humans actively and inadvertently

ignite fires and create conditions that exacerbate the impacts of fires. Wildland

fires also produce impacts that go far beyond their immediate locations or sectors

associated with wildland. Most studies quantifying wildland fire impacts have been

limited to timber and property. But the smoke and flames from large wildland fires

create immediate human health and safety risks that compel evacuations of entire

communities, leading to effects on productive activities in many economic sectors.

Such fires can damage such large quantities of timber that their impacts are felt

great distances from the impact zone and over many years subsequent to the fire.

Fires may not only cause extensive damage to private property but also lead to

structural shifts in housing markets to account for altered risk perceptions. Humans

play active roles in affecting the risks of wildland fire. First, because people are

attracted to wildlands and forests, they build their houses in areas prone to wildland fires, making fires on nearby wildlands potentially more damaging and costly

to suppress. Second, people start fires intentionally or accidentally in the course

of regular economic activity and pursuing recreational opportunities. Third, people

and wildland managers take actions to alter societal risks from wildland fire.

Making the best investments in efforts to reduce the overall costs and losses associated with wildland fires requires understanding the full picture of human involvement. Research conducted by Forest Service Research and Development scientists

has led to greater understanding of how wildland fires affect society, how society

affects wildland fire, and how managerial and other actions can lead to reductions

in wildland fire’s negative impacts.

The economic costs

of human health and

safety risks are

often understated.
18

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Approach

Research has focused on quantifying the economic effects of wildland fire and

understanding the factors influencing the rates of human-caused wildland fires,

nationwide. Two large-scale studies have quantified wildland fire impacts in longrun and multisectoral dimensions. (1) A study of the catastrophic wildland fires

that occurred in 1998 in Florida (Butry et al. 2001, Mercer et al. 2000) quantified

effects on (a) timber damages in terms of economic welfare, including the effects

on owners of damaged timber and on consumers and owners of undamaged timber

in the region; (b) housing; (c) the health of surrounding populations related to

smoke-induced respiratory problems; (d) the hotel and tourism sector owing to

required evacuations and other disruptions to economic activity; and (e) suppression

expenditures. Although the analysis did not attempt to measure nonmarket or other

nontimber damages, it was the first study of its kind to more fully catalogue the

spatial and temporal scope of impacts of a large, catastrophic wildland fire on

society and the economy. (2) A study of the 2002 Hayman Fire, near Denver,

quantified the impacts of the wildland fire on (a) wildland fire suppression, (b) site

rehabilitation and restoration, (c) housing, (d) loss of power transmission lines, (e)

water storage capacity in an affected reservoir, (f) timber, (g) tourism and recreation, and (h) incidental costs associated with evacuations and public safety. Other

costs recognized but not directly quantified included those associated with the

regional economy owing to evacuations. Additional analyses evaluated homeowner

risk perceptions, protection options, and constraints to self-protection in the event

of a wildland fire. Other studies in the area of wildland fire impact assessment

include those by Loomis and González-Cabán (1997), which assessed the impact

of wildland fire on spotted owl habitat in California and Oregon; Loomis et al.

(2002), which assessed impacts in the context of big game habitat; and Loomis et

al. (2005), which quantified wildland fire impacts in California, Montana, and

Florida in terms of property owner willingness to pay for wildland fire protection.

The impacts of wildland fire have also been quantified in terms of housing value

and the risk of wildland fire. Notable among these is a study by Stockmann (2006),

which evaluated how landscape vegetation and housing features affect the loss

probability in the event of wildland fires.

A second pair of studies was more narrowly focused on the timber-sector

impacts of wildland fire. Different from previous analyses except for Butry et al.

(2001), these studies were able to quantify the short- and long-run welfare effects

of two catastrophic western wildland fires: the Bitterroot Fire in Montana in 2001
19

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

and the Biscuit Fire in Oregon in 2002. The Bitterroot study evaluated the timberrelated welfare losses experienced by producers and consumers. A major contribution of that analysis was in quantifying, in timber welfare terms, the economic

impacts of the planning and litigation-related delays in the initiation of timber

salvage in the aftermath of the event (Prestemon et al. 2006.) The Biscuit Fire

analysis also quantified the effects of hypothetical delays. The contribution of that

analysis was that it applied a spatial equilibrium modeling technique to quantify the

decline with distance in the price and welfare impacts of the wildland fire and the

salvage (Prestemon and Holmes, in press).

Two studies compose a third area of analysis, focusing on quantifying the

effects of fire risk on property values. The first study evaluated the effects of a

catastrophic wildland fire on housing values in Washington state (Huggett 2003;

Huggett et al., in press). An important contribution of this work was that it captured the short- and long-run housing price effects of the wildland fire, the first

known study of its kind. The second (Donovan et al. 2007) evaluated how a newly

implemented community fire-risk rating system for individual properties implemented in Colorado Springs, Colorado, resulted in changes in housing values. A

primary finding was that house construction materials have a large, significant

effect on housing values that have information.

The fourth area of research focused on human-caused fire. There are two main

lines of analysis. One evaluates the underlying drivers of wildland arson and its

spatiotemporal patterns. The other evaluates the factors most important to all kinds

of human-caused fires. Models of wildland arson have, for the first time, quantified

the daily clustering patterns of arson wildland fires at the scale of small counties,

identified the linkage between wildland arson and economic conditions, demonstrated the role of law enforcement in reducing the number of arson ignitions,

characterized the role of fuels management in reducing the damages from wildland arson, and placed the arson ignition process in the context of an economic

model of crime (Prestemon and Butry 2005; Prestemon and Butry, in press a, in

press b3

). These findings largely have been confirmed for arson on California

national forests, as well (Prestemon and Butry, in press b). Other Florida-focused

research has measured the differences in the rates of spatiotemporal clustering of

fires among lightning and several categories of individual anthropogenic fire causes

3

 Butry, D.T.; Prestemon, J.P. 2005. Spatio-temporal wildland arson crime functions. Paper

presented at the annual meeting of the American Agricultural Economics Association. 18 p.

Unpublished paper. On file with: Jeffrey P. Prestemon, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, P.O.

Box 12254, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709.
20

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

(Genton et al. 2006), quantified the role of climate and weather on human-caused

wildland fires of different categories, identified the annual autoregressive nature of

human-caused wildland fires, measured the effects of various fuels management

efforts on the rates of human-caused wildland fires across broad landscapes (Butry

2006, Mercer and Prestemon 2005, Prestemon et al. 2002), and quantified how

human-caused fires are set closer to valuable property than lightning fires (Butry et

al. 2002), and measured how human-caused wildland fires may be related to

managerial activities (Prestemon et al. 2002, Pye et al. 2003). Ongoing research

seeks to connect large-scale and long-term crime patterns to wildland arson,

develop crime hotspotting models for use by law enforcement, and understand how

education and public awareness campaigns may affect the rates of human-caused

wildland fires. The latter study is underway and is focused on the efficacy of

prevention programs in Florida and on national forests of the United States.

Products and Tools

Many of the most recent advances in our understanding of the economic impacts

of wildland fire, human-caused fires, and the efficacy of wildland fire interventions are captured in a soon-to-be-released book. This volume The Economics of

Forest Disturbances: Wildfires, Storms, and Invasive Species (Holmes et al., in

press) has 19 chapters covering topics ranging from describing the production

of all types of wildland fires and other forest disturbances; quantifying the impacts

of these disturbances on timber, private property, and government expenditures;

characterizing how interventions into wildland fire and other disturbance processes

can lead to net societal gains; and characterizing the economics of societal and

managerial incentives to manage landscapes and suppress disturbances.

Results and Application

Results of the studies examining the impacts of the Bitterroot and Biscuit Fires

made up part of the salvage environmental impact statements for these in the

Northern Region (Region 1) and Pacific Southwest Region (Region 5), respectively.

Awards and Recognitions

The Biscuit Fire analysis applied research approaches and contributed to a timber

salvage environmental impact statement (Prestemon et al. 2003) and continues to

inform debate about government timber salvage decisions following the wildland
21

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

fire. The technical advances in salvage economics research provided a foundation

for a policy analysis recently requested by the Congressional Budget Office.

Principal Investigators

David T. Butry, david.butry@nist.gov: National Institute of Standards

and Technology; Thomas P. Holmes, tholmes@fs.fed.us; Robert Huggett, Jr.,

rhuggett@fs.fed.us: Southern Research Station; Krista Gebert, kgebert@fs.fed.us:

Rocky Mountain Research Station; Armando González-Cabán,

agonzalezcaban@fs.fed.us: Pacific Southwest Research Station; Gregory Jones

gjones@fs.fed.us; Brian Kent, bkent@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station;

Evan Mercer, emercer@fs.fed.us; Jeffrey P. Prestemon, jprestemon@fs.fed.us;

John M. Pye, jpye@fs.fed.us: Southern Research Station

Key Partners

National Institute of Standards and Technology; University of Montana; Forest

Service, National Forest System, State and Private Forestry; Colorado State University; North Carolina State University; Texas Tech University

Funding

This research was supported by the Joint Fire Science Program and the National

Fire Plan; Forest Service Research and Development, and State and Private

Forestry.

Literature Cited

Butry, D.T. 2006. Estimating the efficacy of wildfire management using propensity

scores. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State University. 110 p. Ph.D. dissertation.

Butry, D.T.; Mercer, D.E.; Prestemon, J.P.; Pye, J.M.; Holmes, T.P. 2001. What

is the price of catastrophic wildfire? Journal of Forestry. 99(11): 9–17.

Butry, D.T.; Pye, J.M.; Prestemon, J.P. 2002. Prescribed fire in the interface:

separating the people from the trees. In: Outcalt, K.W., ed. Proceedings of the

11th biennial Southern silvicultural research conference. Gen. Tech. Rep. SRS–

48. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern

Research Station: 132–136.
22

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Donovan, G.H.; Champ, P.A.; Butry, D.T. 2007. The impact of wildfire risk on

housing price: a case study from Colorado Springs. Land Economics. 83(2):

217–233.

Genton, M.G.; Butry, D.T.; Gumpertz, M.; Prestemon, J.P. 2006. Spatiotemporal analysis of wildfire ignitions in the St. Johns River water management district. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 15: 87–97.

Holmes, T.P.; Prestemon, J.P.; Abt, K.L., eds. [In press]. The economics of

forest disturbances: wildfires, storms, and invasive species. Forestry Sciences.

Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Vol 79.

Huggett, R.J. 2003. Fire in the wildland-urban interface: an examination of the

effects of wildfire on residential property markets. Raleigh, NC: North Carolina

State University. 136 p. Ph.D. dissertation. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/

available/etd-07302003-165922/unrestricted/etd.pdf. (May 2007).

Huggett, R.J., Jr.; Murphy, E.A.; Holmes, T.P. [In press]. Forest disturbance

impacts on residential property values. In: Holmes, T.P.; Prestemon, J.P.; Abt,

K.L., eds. The economics of forest disturbances: wildfires, storms, and invasive

species. Forestry Sciences. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Vol 79.

Loomis, J.B.; González-Cabán, A. 1997. Comparing the economic value of

reducing fire risk to spotted owl habitat in California and Oregon. Forest

Science. 43(4): 473–482.

Loomis, J.B.; Griffith, D.; Wu, E.; González-Cabán, A. 2002. Estimating the

economic value of big game habitat production from prescribed fire using a

time series approach. Journal of Forest Economics. 8(2): 119–129.

Loomis, J.B.; Le, H.T.; González-Cabán, A. 2005. Testing transferability of

willingness to pay for forest fire prevention among three states of California,

Florida, and Montana. Journal of Forest Economics. 11(3): 125–140.

Mercer, D.E.; Prestemon, J.P. 2005. Comparing production function models for

wildfire risk analysis in the wildland-urban interface. Forest Policy and Economics. 7(5): 782–795.
23

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Mercer, D.E.; Pye, J.M.; Prestemon, J.P.; Butry, D.T.; Holmes, T.P. 2000.

Economic effects of catastrophic wildfires: assessing the effectiveness of

fuel reduction programs for reducing the economic impacts of catastrophic

forest fire events. Final report. Topic 8 of the Research Grant Economic

and Ecological Consequences of the 1998 Florida Wildfires.

http://www.fl-dof.com/publications/joint_fire_sciences/jfs_pdf/

economic_effects.pdf). On file with: D. Evan Mercer, Forestry Sciences

Laboratory, P.O. Box 12254, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709.

Prestemon, J.P.; Butry, D.T. 2005. Time to burn: modeling wildland arson as an

autoregressive crime function. American Journal of Agricultural Economics.

87(3): 756–770.

Prestemon, J.P.; Butry, D.T. [In press a]. Wildland arson: a research assessment.

In: Beatty, J.J.; Lee, D.C.; Pye, J.M.; Sands, Y., eds. Proceedings on advances

in threat assessment and their application to forest and rangeland management

conference. Gen. Tech. Rep. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Southern Research Station. http://forestencyclopedia.net.

(May 9, 2007).

Prestemon, J.P.; Butry, D.T. [In press b]. Wildland arson management. In:

Holmes, T.P.; Prestemon, J.P.; Abt, K.L., eds. The economics of forest disturbances: wildfires, storms, and invasive species. Forestry Sciences. Dordrecht,

The Netherlands: Springer. Vol 79.

Prestemon, J.P.; Holmes, T.P. [In press]. Timber salvage economics. In: Holmes,

T.P.; Prestemon, J.P.; Abt, K.L., eds. The economics of forest disturbances:

wildfires, storms, and invasive species. Forestry Sciences. Dordrecht, The

Netherlands: Springer. Vol 79.

Prestemon, J.P.; Pye, J.M.; Butry, D.T.; Holmes, T.P.; Mercer, D.E. 2002.

Understanding broad scale wildfire risks in a human-dominated landscape.

Forest Science. 48(4): 685–693.

Prestemon, J.P.; Wear, D.N.; Holmes, T.P. 2003. Biscuit Fire salvage impacts

analysis. Report prepared for the Pacific Northwest Region (Region 6). On

file with: Jeffrey P. Prestemon, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, P.O. Box 12254,

Research Triangle Park, NC 27709.

Prestemon, J.P.; Wear, D.N.; Holmes, T.P.; Stewart, F. 2006. Wildfire, timber

salvage, and the economics of expediency. Forest Policy and Economics. 8(3):

312–322.
24

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Pye, J.M.; Prestemon, J.P.; Butry, D.T.; Abt, K.L. 2003. Prescribed burning and

wildfire risk in the 1998 fire season in Florida. In: Omi, P., ed. Conference on

fire, fuel treatments and ecological restoration. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-P-29.

Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky

Mountain Research Station: 15–26.

Stockmann, K. 2006. A cost effectiveness analysis of preventative mitigation

options for wildland urban interface homes threatened by wildfire. Missoula,

MT: University of Montana. 185 p. Ph.D. dissertation.

Additional Reading

Kent, B.; Gebert, K.; McCaffrey, S.; Martin, W.; Calkin, D.; Schuster, E.;

Martin, I.; Bender, H.W.; Alward, G.; Kumagai, Y.; Cohn, P.J.; Carroll,

M.; Williams, D.; Ekarius, C. 2003. Social and economic issues of the

Hayman Fire. In: Graham, R.T., ed. Hayman Fire case study. Gen. Tech. Rep.

RMRS-GTR-114 (Revision). Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station: 315–396.
25

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Community Wildland Fire Preparedness

Highlight Contact

Pamela Jakes, Northern Research Station: pjakes@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

The work reported here is primarily related to Portfolio C, Element C1: Public

interactions with fire and fuels management.

Background

In recent years, a number of programs and initiatives have been implemented to

help communities prepare for wildland fires and manage hazardous fuels. The

National Fire Plan [NFP] has provided financial support for community-level

wildland fire preparedness, and a number of programs provide technical assistance.

This research identifies lessons learned from a number of communities that provide

direction to other communities seeking to improve wildland fire preparedness.

Approach

Case studies were conducted in states representing a range of biological, physical,

and social contexts. Researchers employed key informant interviews, focus groups,

Widening driveways to improve access for emergency vehicles and

numbering properties to speed up identification are just two ways property

owners and communities can improve their wildland fire preparedness.

P.J. Jakes
26

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

surveys, and attendance at community gatherings to collect qualitative and quantitative data that document community actions and programs to improve wildland fire

preparedness, build community capacity, and sustain these efforts long term.

Products and Tools

A set of case study summaries on community wildland fire preparedness highlights

what communities can accomplish in reducing wildland fire risk. View the Community Responses to Wildland Fire Threats Web site (http://www.ncsu.edu/ project/

wildfire) and the Northern Research Station’s Wildland Fire-Community Fire

Preparedness Case Studies Web site (http://www.ncrs.fs.fed.us/4803/focus/fire/

community_preparedness/cp_case_studies/). A Web-based tool was developed that

serves as a learning community for those engaged with the public in collaboratively

developing community wildland fire protection plans (http://jfsp.fortlewis.edu/).

The user-friendly, searchable National Database of State and Local Wildfire Hazard

Mitigation Programs Web site (http://www.wildfireprograms.usda.gov) describes

232 states and local wildland fire mitigation programs across 37 states, including

community actions such as wildland fire protection planning, educational programs,

defensible space regulations, and fuel reduction incentives for property owners.

This site serves as a clearinghouse of ideas for fire protection officials, natural

resource professionals, and community leaders. As part of the Living With Fire in

Chaparral Ecosystems Working Group on people and ecosystem interface, a summit

for managers, community leaders, and researchers served as a forum for sharing the

Case studies help researchers to answer the “how” and

“why” questions. P.J. Jakes

There are practical

ways communities

can increase preparedness.
27

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

latest approaches to fire management for communities, and key findings on communication with communities before, during, and after a fire event.

Results and Applications

As a result of this research, communities across the country are taking action to

improve physical preparedness (for example, vegetation management, new or improved communication systems, and public education programs) and social preparedness (for example, planning and training; Fege and Absher, in press; Jakes

et al. 2007; Steelman and Kunkel 2004; Steelman et al. 2004). A number of

partners have played varied roles in community preparedness, working collaboratively to achieve local and national goals (Jakes et al. 2004). Additionally, residents

in fire-prone communities recognize the responsibility they and fellow community

members have in reducing risk (Winter and Cvetkovich, in press). Communities

that succeed in building preparedness need a strong foundation, often referred to

as community capacity (Jakes et al. 2007).

Research findings have also helped direct and generate support for wildlandfire preparedness activities in communities across the country. Community fire

organizations such as Firewise Communities committees and Fire Safe Councils are

using findings in their communication, education, and preparedness efforts. Professional organizations, such as the National Academy of Public Administration, the

Programs like Firewise Communities/USA help

communities build physical preparedness. P.J. Jakes
28

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

American Planning Association, and the American Society of Landscape Architects,

have also found the summaries useful for training and educating members who can

be major players in wildland-fire preparedness.

Principal Investigators

James Absher, jabsher@fs.fed.us; Deborah Chavez, dchavez@fs.fed.us: Pacific

Southwest Station; Terry Haines, thaines01@fs.fed.us: Southern Research Station;

Pamela Jakes, pjakes@fs.fed.us: Northern Research Station; Linda Kruger,

lkruger@fs.fed.us: Pacific Northwest Research Station; Evan Mercer,

emercer@fs.fed.us: Southern Research Station; Daniel Williams,

drwilliams@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station; Patricia Winter,

pwinter@fs.fed.us: Pacific Southwest Research Station

Key Partners

Bureau of Land Management, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College,

Inland Empire Fire Safe Council Alliance, Louisiana State University, North

Carolina State University, San Diego Natural History Museum, San Diego Fire

Recovery Network, Southern Oregon University, Texas A&M, Washington State

University, Western Washington University, University of Minnesota, University

of Florida, U.S. Geological Survey

Funding

National Fire Plan, Joint Fire Science Program

Literature Cited

Fege, A.; Absher J.D. [In press]. Inviting other professions to help reduce wildfire

property losses. Fire Management Today.

Jakes, P.J.; Kruger, L.; Monroe, M.; Nelson, K.; Sturtevant, V. 2004. Partners

in wildland fire preparedness: lessons from communities in the US. Conference

proceedings: 3rd international symposium on human behavior in fire: public fire

safety, professionals in partnership. London: Interscience Communications Ltd:

139–150.

Jakes, P.J.; Kruger, L.; Monroe, M.; Nelson, K.; Sturtevant, V. 2007. Improving wildfire preparedness: lessons from communities across the US. Human

Ecology Review. 14(2): 182–191.
29

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Steelman, T.A.; Kunkel, G.F. 2004. Effective community responses to wildfire threats: lessons from New Mexico. Society and Natural Resources. 17(8):

679–700.

Steelman, T.A.; Kunkel, G.F.; Bell, D. 2004. Federal and state influence on

community responses to wildfire in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

Journal of Forestry. 102(6): 21–27.

Winter, P.L.; Cvetkovich, G.T. [In press] Perceptions, impact, actions, shared

values and trust: the experience of community residents in a fire-prone ecosystem. In: Beatty, J.J.; Lee, D.C.; Pye, J.M.; Sands, Y., eds. Proceedings on

advances in threat assessment and their application to forest and rangeland

management conference. Gen. Tech. Rep. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department

of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Research Station.

http://forestencyclopedia.net. (May 9, 2007).

Additional Readings

Haines, T.K.; Renner, C.R.; Reams, M.A. 2005. Mitigating wildfire risk in

the wildland urban interface: the role of regulations. In: Aguirre-Bravo, C.;

Pellicane, P.J.; Burns, D.P.; Draggan, S., eds. Monitoring science and technology symposium: unifying knowledge for sustainability in the Western Hemisphere proceedings. Proceedings RMRS-P-42CD. Fort Collins, CO: U.S.

Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station:

715–722.

Haines, T.K.; Renner, C.R.; Reams, M.A. [In press]. Reducing wildfire risk in

the wildland-urban interface: regulation of land-use and vegetation management

practives. In: Holmes, T.P.; Prestemon, J.P.; Abt, K.L., eds. The economics of

forest disturbances: wildfires, storms, and invasive species. Foresty Sciences.

Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Vol. 79.

Haines, T.K.; Renner, C.R.; Reams, M.A.; Granskog, J.E. 2004. The national

wildfire mitigation program database: state, county, and local efforts to reduce

wildfire risk. In: Proceedings of the Society of American Foresters national

convention: one forest under two flags. Bethesda, MD: Society of American

Foresters. 31(4): 357.
30

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Jakes, P.J., comp. 2004. Homeowners, communities, and wildfire; science findings

from the National Fire Plan: proceedings of the 9th international symposium on

society and resource management. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-231. St. Paul, MN:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central Research

Station. 92 p.

Jakes, P.J.; Nelson, K. 2007. Community interaction with large wildland fire

events: critical initiatives prior to the fire. In: Daniel, T.C.; Carroll, M.S.;

Moseley, C.; Raish, C., eds. People, fire, and forests: a synthesis of wildfire

social science. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press: 91–103.

Olson, C.; Shindler, B. 2007. Citizen-agency interactions in planning and

decisionmaking after large fires. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-715. Portland,

OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest

Research Station. 38 p.

Reams, M.A.; Haines, T.K.; Renner, C.R.; Wascom, M.; Kingre, H. 2005.

Goals, obstacles, and effective strategies of wildfire mitigation programs in

the wildland-urban interface. Forest Policy and Economics. 7(5): 818–826.

Taylor, J.G.; Gillette, S.C.; Hodgson, R.W.; Downing, J.L. 2005. Communicating with wildland interface communities during wildfire. Open-file report

2005–1061. 26 p. Reston, VA: U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological

Survey. www.fort.usgs.gov/products/publications/21455/21455.asp.

(April 2007).

Vogt, C.A. 2004. Consideration of property risk reduction at the time of home

purchase by wildland-urban interface (WUI) homeowners. In: Murdy, J.J.,

comp., ed. Proceedings of the 2003 Northeastern recreation research symposium. Gen. Tech. Rep. NE-317. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station: 11–17.
31

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Evaluate Opportunities for Biomass Processing

Facility Siting and Economic Feasibility of Landscape-Scale Fuel Treatment

Highlight Contacts

Jeremy Fried: jeremy.fried@fs.fed.us; Jamie Barbour: jbarbour01@fs.fed.us;

Pacific Northwest Research Station

Relation to Strategic Plan

The work reported here is primarily related to Portfolio D: Integrated fire and fuels

management research; Element D3: Biomass utilization, product development and

forest operations associated with fire and fuel management activities. Also Portfolio

E: Develop and deliver knowledge and tools; Element E1: Synthesis and tool

development.

Background

Landscape-scale deployment of mechanical thinning of western forests to reduce

fuel accumulations, as called for by the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, has been

slow to materialize, in large part owing to the limited availability of funds to

subsidize such activities, the high costs of these labor-intensive treatments, and the

low to nonexistent commercial value of the majority of the trees removed in such

operations. Construction of facilities that would convert biomass to energy is seen

as a prospect for generating new markets for small-diameter wood, and potentially

contributing to expansion of the scope of fuel treatment possibilities. Answering the

questions of where to construct such facilities, and the appropriate scale at which to

do so, depends, among other things, on the location and quantity of the resources

upon which they will draw and the costs of transporting harvested material across

the landscape. Biomass plant investors and operators, fuels managers, state and

private foresters, and community planners are keenly interested in answers to such

questions.

Approach

The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) BioSum analysis framework was developed to combine forest inventory data representing an analysis region, a treatment

cost model, a fuel treatment effectiveness model, and a raw material hauling cost

model to explore alternative landscape-scale treatment scenarios that achieve a

variety of management objectives (Fried 2003, Fried et al. 2005). Raw material

The financial barriers to large-scale

fuel treatments vary

across the west.
32

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

volumes generated by mechanical fire-hazard-reduction treatments are estimated by

applying silvicultural treatments to data derived from forest inventory plots;

estimates of treatment costs are generated via the Fuel Reduction Cost Simulator

(Fight et al. 2006); gross product values are calculated as the product of modeled

harvest quantities and local product prices; and a variety of treatments, developed

in consultations with local silviculturists and fire management experts, are simulated to assess treatment effectiveness and net and gross treatment costs (Fried and

Christensen 2004, Fried et al. 2003). Candidate sites for building processing

facilities can be simulated and evaluated with respect to economic feasibility (Fried

et al. 2005), or the framework can be extended via mixed-integer optimization to

jointly select treatments for each acre and site-suitable expansion of processing

capacity (Daugherty and Fried 2007).

Products and Tools

The FIA BioSum model has been applied to a 25-million-acre region of Oregon

and California and to the entirety of Arizona and New Mexico in support of research studies and articles (e.g., Barbour et al., in press; Bilek et al. 2005), presentations to Washington office, regional and forest staffs, other scientists, forest and

fire managers, and the biomass-to-energy community. The FIA BioSum simulation

software, which provides users with a user-friendly, automated, integrated analysis

environment and all the needed model components to conduct BioSum analyses for

any area in the United States for which FIA plot and road network data are available, is in beta release, and documentation, an on-line help subsystem, sample data

sets, and a user tutorial are nearing completion.

Results and Applications

Under a range of policy scenarios with different objectives in the Oregon and

California regional analysis, removal of considerable amounts of commercialsize trees is needed to accomplish fire hazard reduction goals when objectives are

centered on either maximizing net revenue or maximizing treatment effectiveness.

Even if the objective is to minimize merchantable volume, about two-thirds of the

removed weight would be in saw logs. Tops and limbs from merchantable commercial conifers and whole trees of hardwoods and noncommercial conifers are major

sources of submerchantable wood for which there is essentially no market but

bioenergy. Assuming a 10-year implementation and depreciation of the biomass

plants constructed to support fuel treatment, and treatment of all acres for which
33

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

treatments would achieve fuel reduction benefits, the study region is capable of

annually producing $590 million in net revenue, yielding 6 to 12 million green tons

of biomass and 840 million to 1.2 billion cubic feet of merchantable wood, and

over the course of a decade, achieving effective treatment of 2.8 to 8.1 million

acres while providing bioenergy capacity of 496 to 1009 megawatts (MW). Analysis with a range of forest bioenergy-facility capacities revealed robustness in the

optimal spatial distribution of bioenergy facilities. This robustness depends on the

extent of the transportation network relative to the sources of woody biomass and

on the ability to change plot-treatment combinations to define different biomass

collection areas. Custom analyses have been conducted in support of biomass plant

capacity decisions (in Lakeview, Oregon), forest practices policy development (by

the California Department of Forestry and Fire in California), and regional analysis

of opportunities to attract bioenergy investment capital (in New Mexico).

Awards and Recognition

Director’s award for FIA excellence for fiscal year (FY) 2002, USDA Forest

Service. For outstanding research in the development and implementation of the

BioSum model to assess the economic and fire risk impacts of treating stands across

broad landscapes.

INFORMS 2004 Best paper (out of 25) in forestry sponsored sessions award,

Institute for Management Science and Operations Research, Section on Energy,

Natural Resources and the Environment. Presentation by J.S. Fried and P.J.

Daugherty, Joint optimization of fuel treatment selection and processing facility

siting for landscape-scale fire hazard reduction.

Principal Investigators

Jeremy Fried, jeremy.fried@fs.fed.us; Jamie Barbour, jbarbour01@fs.fed.us;

Roger Fight (now retired) Pacific Northwest Research Station

Funding

National Fire Plan; Pacific Northwest Research Station, Forest Inventory and

Analysis Program; Western Forest Leadership Coalition
34

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Literature Cited

Barbour, R.J.; Fried, J.S.; Daugherty, P.J.; Fight, R. [In press]. Predicting the

potential mix of wood products available from timbershed scale fire hazard

reduction treatments. Forest Policy and Economics.

Bilek, E.M.; Skog, K.E.; Fried, J.S.; Christensen, G. 2005. Fuel to burn:

economics of converting forest thinnings to energy using BioMax in southern

Oregon. Gen. Tech. Rep. FPL-GTR-157. Madison, WI: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory. 27 p.

Daugherty, P.J.; Fried, J.S. 2007. Jointly optimizing selection of fuel treatments

and siting of forest biomass-based energy production facilities for landscapescale fire hazard reduction. INFOR: Information Systems and Operational

Research. 45(1).

Fight, R.D.; Hartsough, B.R.; Noordijk, P. 2006. Users guide for FRCS: fuel

reduction cost simulator software. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-668. Portland,

OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 23 p.

Fried, J.S. 2003. Evaluating landscape-scale fuel treatment policies with FIA data.

Western Forester. 48(1): 6–7.

Fried, J.S.; Barbour, R.J.; Fight, R. 2003. FIA BioSum: applying a multi-scale

evaluation tool in southwest Oregon. Journal of Forestry. 101(2): 8.

Fried, J.S.; Christensen, G. 2004. FIA BioSum: a tool to evaluate financial

costs, opportunities, and effectiveness of fuel treatments. Western Forester.

49(5): 12–13.

Fried, J.S.; Christensen, G.; Weyermann, D.; Barbour, R.J.; Fight, R.;

Hiserote, B.; Pinjuv, G. 2005. Modeling opportunities and feasibility of siting

wood-fired electrical generating facilities to facilitate landscape-scale fuel

treatment with FIA BioSum. In: Bevers, M.; Barrett, T.M., comps. Systems

analysis in forest resources: proceedings of the 2003 symposium. Gen. Tech.

Rep. PNW-GTR-656. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest

Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station: 195–204.
35

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Human Factors in Fire Management

Highlight Contact

Armando González-Cabán, Pacific Southwest Research Station:

agonzalezcaban@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

This work supports objectives in Portfolio C, Element C3: Organizational

effectiveness.

Background

Although most wildland fires are suppressed effectively in initial or extended

attack, occasionally fires become exceptionally large, resulting in unusual resource

damages, significant financial impacts, and possibly loss of life. Understanding how

to better manage fires (where it is desired and undesired), and to improve methods

for controlling their costs and impacts requires a detailed knowledge of the

decisionmaking processes that were ongoing prior to and during the incident.

Approach

Decision and risk science approaches as well as organizational and individual

behavior theory and the policy sciences have been used to understand large fires—

including costs, wildland fire use, and prescribed fire planning and operations, high

reliability, safety, and sense-making on the fire-line. To understand managers’

decision space, researchers developed a model for decomposing and reconstructing

large-fire decision processes, including influence diagrams, decision tree analysis,

multiattribute utility analysis (MAU), and other models based on decision process

tracing methodologies. To understand the factors influencing large-fire suppression

costs, a survey of members of national incident management teams (IMT) determine how their structure, functions, and decision space potentially affect suppression costs.

Products and Tools

The “Event Frame” methodology has been tested in actual fire incidents

(MacGregor and González-Cabán 2004). By identifying crucial decision events

at different stages of the incidents and the factors that affect them, fire managers

can possibly identify areas for suppression costs savings.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

The wildland fire situation analysis (WFSA) evaluation led to development of a

decision skills curriculum to improve training for fire managers and fire planners

(González-Cabán and MacGregor 1998). The paper-based WFSA tool was substantially revised and updated, then fully computerized and placed on the Forest

Service Web site for download directly by users.

Results and Applications

The majority of IMT members feel that although cost containment and effectiveness are in the forefront of their decisionmaking process, the decision space in

which they operate leaves them with little room for major cost-reduction decisions

(Canton-Thompson et al. 2006). These findings echo those of MacGregor and

González-Cabán (2004) and support the need for further basic research in this area.

Research into how institutional and managerial constraints affect prescribed burning costs found that the single most influential factor affecting prescribed burning

costs was the individual manager’s risk posture (González-Cabán 1997). A national

survey of the fire management community uncovered the importance of understanding degree of risk tolerance in how fire management decisions are made

(Winter and Bigler-Cole 2006). To help improve incident planning, a survey of

incident commanders was undertaken; it showed that lack of training and necessary

skills in how to use existing decision-support tools, such as the WFSA leads to

improper use.

From 1999 through 2005, 450 federal and state fire personnel have taken the

decision skills training course throughout the Forest Service regions. Efforts to

bring organizational theory to the fire community has resulted in four national

workshops on high-reliability theory (“Managing the Unexpected,” approximately

400 attendees since 2004) a national workshop on conducting after-action reviews,

establishment of the interagency Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, and efforts

to understand the causes of prescribed fire escapes (Black and Dether 2006).

Principal Investigators

Armando González-Cabán, agonzalezcaban@fs.fed.us; Patricia Winter,

pwinter@fs.fed.us: Pacific Southwest Research Station; David E. Calkin,

dcalkin@fs.fed.us; Janie Canton-Thompson, jcantonthompson@fs.fed.us: Rocky

Mountain Research Station; Geoffrey Donovan, gdonovan@fs.fed.us: Pacific

Northwest Research Station; Krista Gebert, kgebert@fs.fed.us; Anne Black,

aeblack@fs.fed.us; James Saveland, jsaveland@fs.fed.us; Alan Watson,

awatson@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station
37

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Key Partners

MacGregor-Bates, Inc., Decision Research, Rocky Mountain Research Station,

University of Michigan, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service,

Bureau of Indian Affairs

Funding

Joint Fire Science Program, National Fire Plan

Literature Cited

Black, A.E.; Dether, D. 2006. Learning from escaped prescribed fires—

lessons for high reliability. Fire Management Today. 66(4): 50–56.

http://leopold.wilderness.net/staff/black.htm. (May 9, 2007).

Canton-Thompson, J.; Thompson, B.; Gebert, K.; Calkin, D.; Donovan, G.;

Jones, G. 2006. Factors affecting suppression costs as identified by incident

management teams. Res. Note RMSR-RN-30. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 12 p.

http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_rn030.pdf. (May 9, 2007).

González-Cabán, A. 1997. Managerial and institutional factors affect prescribed

burning costs. Forest Sciences. 43(4): 535–543.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/saf/fs/1997/00000043/00000004/

art00011. (May 9, 2007).

González-Cabán, A.; MacGregor, D.G. 1998. Improving decision making process

for the Forest Service’s wildland fire situation analysis. In: Viegas, D.X., ed.

Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on forest fire research and 14th

conference on fire and forest meteorology. Lisbon, Portugal: University of

Coimbra: 2209–2225. Vol. 1, E18. http://www.eufirelab.org/toolbox2/library/

references.php?pageNum_References=20&totalRows_References=2031.

(May 9, 2007).

MacGregor, D.; González-Cabán, A. 2004. Framework for representing large-fire

decisions and outcomes. In: González-Cabán, A., ed. Proceedings of the 2nd

symposium on fire economics, planning and policy: a global view [CD-ROM].

On file with: Armando González-Cabán, Forest Fire Laboratory, 4955 Canyon

Crest Drive, Riverside, CA 92507. http://www.eu-medin.org/cordoba/fireec04/

papers/23.pdf. (May 9, 2007).
38

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Winter, P.L.; Bigler-Cole, H. 2006. Improving a national fire information program: a needs assessment approach. Proceedings of the 3rd international fire

ecology and management congress. [DVD, track 2, public perception].

www.emmps.wsu.edu/2006firecongressproceedings. (May 9, 2007).

Additional Readings

Black, A.M.; Williamson, D.; Doane, D. [In press]. Wildland fire use barriers and

facilitators. Fire Management Today.

Doane, D.; O’Laughlin, J.; Morgan, P.; Miller, C. 2006. Barriers to wildland

fire use: a preliminary problem analysis. International Journal of Wilderness.

12: 36–38.

Keller, P., ed. 2004. Managing the unexpected in prescribed fire use operations: a

workshop on the high reliability organization. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR137. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky

Mountain Research Station. 73 p.

Knotek, K.; Watson, A.E. 2006. Organizational characteristics that contribute to

success in engaging the public to accomplish fuels management at the wilderness/non-wilderness interface. In: Andrews, P.L.; Butler, B.W., comps. Fuels

management—how to measure success: conference proceedings. Proceedings

RMRS-P-41. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Rocky Mountain Research Station: 703–713.

Laband, D.; González-Cabán, A.; Hussain, A. 2006. Factors that influence

administrative appeals of proposed USDA Forest Service fuels reduction

actions. Forest Science. 52(5): 477–488.

Larson, G.; Wright, V.; Spaulding, C.; Rossetto, K.; Rausch, G.; Richards, A.;

Durnford, S. [In press]. Using social science to understand and improve wildland fire organizations: an annotated list of readings. Gen. Tech. Rep. Fort

Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain

Research Station.
39

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Loomis, J.; Muller, J.; González-Cabán, A.; Champ, J. 2004. Comparison of

survey administration mode in determining public support and willingness to

pay for prescribed burning in California. In: González-Cabán, A., ed. Proceedings of the 2nd international symposium on fire economics, planning, and policy:

a global view. [CD-ROM]. On file with: Armando González-Cabán, Forest Fire

Laboratory, 4955 Canyon Crest Drive, Riverside, CA 92507. http://www.eumedin.org/cordoba/fireec04/papers/23.pdf. (May 9, 2007).

Loomis, J.B.; Bair, L.S.; González-Cabán, A. 2001. Prescribed fire and public

support: Knowledge gained, attitudes change in Florida. Journal of Forestry.

99(11): 18–23.

MacGregor, D.; Finucane, M.; González-Cabán, A. [In press]. Risk perception, adaptation and behavior change: self-protection in the wildland-urban

interface. In: Martin, W.E.; Raish, C.; Kent, B., eds. Wildfire risk: human

perception and management implications. Washington, DC: Resources for the

Future. Chapter 9.

Thomas, D. [In press]. Capturing the deep smarts of fire behavior and fuels

experts. Proceedings of the 2nd fire behavior and fuels conference. Destin, FL:

[Publisher unknown].

Williamson, M.A. [In press]. Factors in United States Forest Service district

rangers’ decision to manage a fire for resource benefit. International Journal

of Wildland Fire.

Winter, P.L.; Bigler-Cole, H. [In press]. Information needs, tolerance for risk,

and protection from risk: the case of national predictive services customers. In:

Beatty, J.J.; Lee, D.C.; Pye, J.M.; Sands, Y., eds. Proceedings on advances in

threat assessment and their application to forest and rangeland management

conference. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Southern Research Stations. http//forestencyclopedia.net. (May 9, 2007).
40

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736
41

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Optimal Fire and Fuels Management

Highlight Contacts

Evan Mercer, Southern Research Station: emercer@fs.fed.us; Greg Jones, Rocky

Mountain Research Station: jgjones@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

The work reported here is primarily related to Portfolio C: Social fire science,

Element C2: Socioeconomic aspects of fire and fuels management but is also

relevant to Portfolio D: Integrated fire and fuels management research.

Background

Record suppression costs have led to a multitude of fire cost reviews and cost

studies by oversight agencies, and new rules and regulations. One of the most

important and elusive issues in fire management is defining the “best” amount of

fuel treatments to apply to a forested landscape. Research is developing tools and

information that address a wide variety of issues related to fire suppression costs

and fuels management.

Approach

Scientists have addressed several issues related to fire suppression costs: developing

cost indices for gauging performance in cost containment, evaluating crew costs,

developing models to optimize deployment of suppression resources, evaluating

estimates of fire size and suppression costs, and developing short-term and longterm forecasts of suppression costs.

Several studies have developed models for evaluating and optimizing fuel treatments. One study incorporates fuel treatment into a stand-level model to determine

planting density, timing and intensity of fuel treatment, and rotation that maximize

net discounted value. The model not only includes product values and costs measured at the time of treatment but also the value of damage reduction if a fire

occurs after fuel treatment. This is important because a valuation that does not

include the expected value of damage reduction will underestimate the economic

value of fuel treatment and distort the prioritization of fuel treatment projects.

Another fuel treatment study incorporates data on forest resources, meteorology,

fire occurrence, and economic impacts into a probabilistic modeling framework to

Tools have been

developed to address a variety of

fire suppression

costs and fuels

management issues.
42

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

build a state-of-the-science assessment of prescribed burning efficacy in Florida.

The capstone analysis, applied to Volusia County in Florida, defines the optimal

prescribed burning regime for a range of potential fire scenarios.

Computer analysis systems (MAGIS and MAGIS eXpress) have been developed

that incorporate multiple objectives and optimize landscape level, spatial schedules

of fuels treatments. MAGIS and MAGIS eXpress have been used to address tradeoffs among various fuel-treatment goals for the protection of property, human life,

wildlife, and hydrology. An additional project is predicting available biomass from

fuel and treatments, costs to deliver this biomass to markets, and comparing net

quantities of greenhouse gases and particulate matter produced if this biomass is

used for energy as opposed to disposal by burning onsite and using fossil fuels to

produce the equivalent useable energy.

Products and Tools

A stratified cost index (SCI) was developed to compare the costs of large fires. The

SCI is being used by the Forest Service and (tested by the Department of the

Interior [DOI]) as a performance measure for suppression cost containment; by

Fire Program Analysis; and is being tested for use in wildland fire decision support

system (WFDSS).

MAGIS and MAGIS eXpress are “deployed” via an Rocky Mountain Research

Station Web site (http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/econ/magis/).

Results and Applications

A study of fire suppression crew costs showed that agency crews are less costly than

contract crews, although agency crew costs differ widely. An assessment of the past

accuracy of wildland fire situation analyses found that fire size and suppression cost

estimates are systematically biased. These results have been useful in training fire

managers.

A system for projecting annual suppression expenditures for the Forest

Service throughout a fire season has been used by the Forest Service in meeting

antideficiency regulations with regard to fire suppression expenditures and is also

being implemented for the DOI agencies with fire suppression responsibilities.

Procedures are being developed for making long-term suppression cost forecasts

that could be used in the fire suppression budgeting process. A collaborative study

of long-term climate and cost trends showed that suppression costs are closely
43

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

correlated with weather conditions and that although total suppression costs have

been rising in recent years, suppression costs expressed on a per-acre basis have not

been increasing.

For loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) in the Southern United States, the optimal

levels of fuel treatment and rotation age were found to increase as fire risk increases. The expected economic gain from fuel treatment increases with fire risk

and is four times the value of the stand without fuel treatment when annual fire risk

is 4 percent per year. We also evaluated two kinds of financial incentives for fuel

treatment: compensating landowners for the cost of fuel treatment and requiring

landowners to share the cost of fire suppression. We found that cost-sharing of fire

suppression is more effective at reducing total social cost than cost sharing of fuel

treatment.

A Florida study demonstrated that increasing the prescribed burning program

from the current annual 4 to 5 percent of forests to 13 percent annually result in

economic gains. The results also define broader policy and program implications

such as (1) expanding the supply of fuel treatment services could have a great

effect on managers’ ability to meet goals, (2) optimal policies depend heavily on

potential fire severity in addition to area, and (3) when public land managers use

private sector services to prescribe burn, they drive the cost of these services higher

for private forests, an unintended consequence that reduces fuels management on

private lands. This study provides a methodological breakthrough and demonstrates

a complete cost-benefit analysis of a fuels treatment program.

Awards and Recognition

Chief’s award for excellence in budget and financial accountability, for fire suppression forecasting, 2003.

Principal Investigators

David E. Calkin, dcalkin@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station; Geoffrey

Donovan, gdonovan@fs.fed.us: Pacific Northwest Research Station; Krista Gebert,

kgebert@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station; Robert Haight;

rhaight@fs.fed.us: North Central Research Station; Gregory Jones

gjones@fs.fed.us; Brian Kent, bkent@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station;

Evan Mercer, emercer@fs.fed.us; Jeffrey P. Prestemon, jprestemon@fs.fed.us:

Southern Research Station
44

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Key Partners

Forest Service Washington office Fire and Aviation Management; Department of

the Interior; Boise Wildland Fire Research and Development Unit; Scripps Institute, University of California at San Diego; University of Montana; Washington

State University; National Forest Systems (regional offices and national forests)

Funding

This research was supported by the Joint Fire Science Program, National Fire Plan

Research and Development, and base research unit funding.

Additional Readings

Amacher, G.S.; Malik, A.S.; Haight, R.G. 2005. Not getting burned: the importance of fire prevention in forest management. Land Economics. 81: 284–302.

Amacher, G.S.; Malik, A.S.; Haight, R.G. 2006. Reducing social losses from

forest fires. Land Economics. 82: 367–383.

Butry, D.T.; Mercer, D.E.; Prestemon, J.P.; Pye, J.M.; Holmes, T.P. 2001.

What is the price of catastrophic wildfire? Journal of Forestry. 99: 9–17.

Calkin, D.E.; Gebert, K.M.; Jones, J.G.; Neilson, R.P. 2005. Forest Service

large fire area burned and suppression expenditure trends, 1970-2002. Journal

of Forestry. 103(4): 179–183.

Donovan, G.H. 2005. A comparison of the costs of Forest Service and contract

fire crews. Western Journal of Applied Forestry. 20(4): 233–239.

Donovan, G.H. 2006. Determining the optimal mix of federal and contract fire

crews: a case study from the Pacific Northwest. Ecological Modeling. 194:

372–378.

Donovan, G.H. 2007. Comparing the cost of contract and agency fire crews. Fire

Management Today. 67(1): 9–12.

Donovan, G.H.; Noordijk, P. 2005a. A comparison of wildland fire situation

analysis (WFSA) predictions and actual outcomes. Fire Management Today.

65(2): 25–27.

Donovan, G.H.; Noordijk, P. 2005b. Assessing the accuracy of wildland fire

situation analysis (WFSA) fire size and suppression cost estimates. Journal

of Forestry. 103(1): 10–13.
45

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Gebert, K.M.; Calkin, D.E.; Yoder, J. 2007. Estimating suppression expenditures

for individual large wildland fires. Western Journal of Applied Forestry. 22(3):

188–196.

Gebert, K.M.; Schuster, E.G. [In press]. Forest Service fire suppression expenditures in the Southwest. In: Narog, M.G., tech. coord. Proceedings of the 2002

fire conference on managing fire and fuels in the remaining wildlands and open

spaces of the Southwestern United States. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-189. Albany,

CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station.

Haight, R.G.; Fried, J.F. [In press]. Deploying wildland fire suppression resources with a scenario-based standard response model. INFOR: Information

Systems and Operational Research.

Hyde, K.; Jones, J.G.; Silverstein, R.; Stockmann, K.; Loeffler, D. 2006.

Integrating fuel treatments into comprehensive ecosystem management. In:

Andrews, P.L.; Butler, B.W., comps. Fuels management—how to measure

success: conference proceedings. Proceedings RMRS-P-41. Fort Collins, CO:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research

Station: 549–561.

Jones, G.; Chew, J.; Silverstein, R.; Stalling, C.; Sullivan, J.; Troutwine, J.;

Weise, D.; Gardwood, D. [In press]. Spatial analysis of fuel treatment options

for chaparral on the Angeles National Forest. In: Narog, M.G., tech. coord.

Proceedings of the 2002 fire conference on managing fire and fuels in the

remaining wildlands and open spaces of the Southwestern United States. Gen.

Tech. Rep. PSW-189. Albany, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest

Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station.

Loeffler, D.; Calkin, D.E.; Silverstein, R.P. 2006. Estimating volumes and costs

of forest biomass in Western Montana using forest inventory and geospatial

data. Forest Products Journal. 56(6): 31–37.

Mercer, D.E.; Prestemon, J.P.; Butry, D.T.; Pye, J.M. 2007. Evaluating alternative prescribed burning policies to reduce net economic damages from wildfire.

American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 89(1): 63–77.

Prestemon, J.P.; Mercer, D.E.; Pye, J.M.; Butry, D.T.; Holmes, T.P.; Abt, K.L.

2001. Economically optimal wildfire intervention regimes. Paper presented at

the American Agricultural Economics Association annual meeting. Chicago, IL:

American Agriculture Association. 18 p.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Prestemon, J.P.; Pye, J.M.; Butry, D.T.; Holmes, T.P.; Mercer, D.E. 2002.

Understanding broad scale wildfire risks in a human-dominated landscape.

Forest Science. 48(4): 685–693.

Silverstein, R.P.; Loeffler, D.; Jones, J.G.; Calkin, D.E.; Zuuring, H.R.; Twer,

M. 2006. Biomass utilization modeling on the Bitterroot National Forest. In:

Andrews, P.L.; Butler, B.W., comps. Fuels management–how to measure

success: conference proceedings. Proceedings RMRS-P-41. Fort Collins, CO:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research

Station: 673–688.

Troutwine, J.M. 2005. Forest fuel management: a spatial decision-support system

developed by Rocky Mountain Research Station provides forest managers with

the tools to effectively remove a build-up of fuels while adhering to principles

of ecological multiple-use forest management and responding to public interests. Geospatial Solutions: 22–27.

Zuuring, H.; Troutwine, J.M.; Jones, J.G.; Sullivan, J. 2005. Decision support

models for economically efficient integrated forest management. Proceedings:

2005 ESRI international user conference. [Place of publication unknown]:

[Publisher unknown]. 22 p.
47

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Public Perceptions

Highlight Contacts

Sarah McCaffrey, Northern Research Station: smccaffrey@fs.fed.us; Patricia

Winter, Pacific Southwest Research Station: pwinter@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

The work reported here is primarily related to Portfolio C, Element C1: Public

interactions with fire and fuels management.

Background

A critical component of the current wildland fire problem in the United States is

the growing number of people living in high-fire-hazard areas. Active involvement

of the public is essential to hazard reduction efforts.

Approach

Over two dozen studies have been undertaken to better understand what shapes

public views and acceptance of different fire and fuels management efforts. These

studies have used a variety of methods (including onsite and mailed recreationist

surveys, focus groups and workshops, telephone surveys, and mailed surveys), and

been applied in diverse ecosystem and human community types across the United

States, including Florida, Massachusetts, the Southwest, the Lake States, and the

Rocky Mountain Region.

Products and Tools

Results of studies can be found in Winter and Cvetkovich (2003), and on a number

of Web sites: the Northern Research Station People and Fire Web site (http://

www.nrs.fs.fed.us/4902/focus/people_fire/); the Fuel SAF-T project Web site

(http://www.fire-saft.net/); and the Integrated Resource Solutions Web site (http://

www.irsolutions.net/beta/). As part of a project to develop a suite of products and

tools for planning at the project level, several documents were developed that

synthesize the state of knowledge on communicating with homeowners on fuels

management; aesthetics and fuels management; social acceptability of fuels treatments, and collaboration with homeowners and communities (view the Fuels

Synthesis Web site: http://forest.moscowfsl.wsu.edu/fuels/publications.html). The

site also includes a series of brief fact sheets for managers to assist them with
48

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

interacting with the public as they plan and implement fuels treatments. In addition, a general technical report designed to provide key findings from 18 National

Fire Plan research studies in a format accessible to practitioners (McCaffrey 2006),

and a book with 16 articles designed to provide managers and other professionals

with insight into human response to risk and how it shapes wildland fire mitigation

activities (Martin et al. 2007) have been produced.

Results and Applications

These studies have demonstrated that fire and fuels management is a concern to

individuals throughout the United States. The majority of populations studied

(residents and recreationists) support thinning and prescribed burning as management tools to reduce fire risk (Hendricks et al. 2003, McCaffrey 2006). Research

has found a relationship between beliefs, knowledge and familiarity with a practice,

and increased support for the practice. For example, knowledge about the ecological benefits of a practice is associated with increased support, particularly for more

controversial aspects such as smoke from prescribed fire (Weisshaupt et al. 2005).

Trust and confidence in the implementing agency are also key factors influencing

support (Absher and Vaske 2007, Martin et al. 2007). A majority of residents in

fire-prone communities engage in many defensible-space activities and express

support for associated recommendations (Absher and Vaske 2007, McCaffrey

2006). Although risk perception and awareness are necessary for homeowners to

become active in protecting their homes, neither is a sufficient condition. Risk

perception is a complex process that is shaped by individual differences in various

factors including risk tolerance and perceived values at risk. The perceived effectiveness of the risk-reduction action, confidence in one’s ability to perform the

action, and perceived responsibility for fire management also influence readiness to

take protective actions (Martin et al. 2007). No consistent evidence has been found

that any specific portion of the population—whether an urban or rural resident, a

new or long-term homeowner, permanent or seasonal resident, or new or experienced forest visitor—is more or less likely to understand fire risk or support a fuels

management practice (Martin et al. 2007, McCaffrey 2006). Additional research is

exploring whether there are variations in perceptions and attitudes for different

ethnic/cultural groups (González-Cabán et al. 2007, Martin et al. 2007). Education

and communication that provides clarification of how agency actions reduce fire

Tools have been

developed to help

land managers

interact with the

public.
49

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

risk and improve ecosystem health, and also addresses actions that seem inconsistent with shared values, has been shown to be essential to maintaining trust and

building support (Martin et al. 2007, McCaffrey 2006). Collaboration can play a

key role in establishing confidence and arriving at mutually acceptable risk reduction measures.

These findings are being used by managers to develop programs that can more

effectively take into account public views and encourage proactive public participation in fire and fuels management efforts. This information has been provided to

managers, fire safe councils, and other interested parties via Web sites, fuels management courses and workshops, general technical reports, meetings, and presentations. Findings from the study of Southwesterners’ preferences for fire management were used in a fire managers’ workshop series in the Pacific Northwest

Region (Region 6).

Principal Investigators

James Absher, jabsher@fs.fed.us; Deborah Chavez, dchavez@fs.fed.us; Armando

González-Cabán, agonzalezcaban@fs.fed.us: Pacific Southwest Research Station;

Pamela Jakes, pjakes@fs.fed.us; Sarah McCaffrey, smccaffrey@fs.fed.us: Northern

Research Station; Carol Raish, craish@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station;

Patricia Winter, pwinter@fs.fed.us: Pacific Southwest Research Station

Key Partners

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo; Colorado State

University; Michigan State University; Pennsylvania State University; University

of Arizona; University of Florida; University of Massachusetts; University of

Minnesota; Washington State University; Western Washington University

Funding

Supported by the National Fire Plan and the Joint Fire Science Program.
50

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Literature Cited

Absher, J.D.; Vaske, J.J. 2007. Modeling public support for wildland fire policy.

In: Reynolds, K.M.; Thompson, A.J.; Köhl, M.; Shannon, M.A.; Ray, D.;

Rennolls, K., eds. Sustainable forestry: from monitoring and modeling to

knowledge management and policy science. Wallingford, United Kingdom:

CABI International: 159–170. Chapter 9.

González-Cabán, A.; Loomis, J.B.; Rodriguez, A.; Hesseln, H. 2007. A comparison of CVM response rates, protests, and willingness to pay of Native

Americans and general population for fuels reduction policies. Journal of

Forest Economics. 13: 49–71.

Hendricks, W.; Chavez, D.; Phippen, K. 2003. Observance-influence of fire

management and place attachment at Big Sur. In: Jakes, P.J., comp. Homeowners, communities, and wildfire: science findings from the National Fire

Plan: proceedings of the 9th international symposium on society and resource

management. Gen. Tech. Rep. NC-231. St. Paul, MN: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central Research Station: 45–54.

Martin, W.E.; Raish, C.; Kent, B., eds. 2007. Wildfire risk: human perceptions

and management implications. Washington, DC: Resources for the future.

McCaffrey, S., tech. ed. 2006. The public and wildland fire management: social

science findings for managers. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-1. Newtown Square, PA:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station.

202 p.

Weisshaupt, B.R.; Carroll, M.S.; Blatner, K.A.; Robinson, W.D.; Jakes, P.J.

2005. Acceptability of smoke from prescribed forest burning in the northern

inland West: a focus group approach. Journal of Forestry. 103(4): 189–193.

Winter, P.L.; Cvetkovich, G.T. 2003. A study of Southwesterners’ opinions on

the management of wildland and wilderness fires: fire management version.

www.wildfirelessons.net/documents/SDSU_tech_02_fire_FMO_eversion.pdf.

(April 2007).
51

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Additional Readings

Cvetkovich, G.T.; Winter, P.L. 2007. The what, how, and when of social reliance

and cooperative risk management. In: Siegrist, M.; Earle, T.C.; Gutscher, H.,

eds. Trust in cooperative risk management: uncertainty and skepticism in the

public mind. London: Earthscan: 187–209.

Daniel, T.C.; Carroll, M.S.; Moseley, C.; Raish, C., eds. 2007. People, fire,

and forests: a synthesis of wildfire social science. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State

University Press. 226 p.

González-Cabán, A.; Loomis, J.B.; Bair, L.S. 2003. Forest fire reduction policies

in Florida: comparison between English- and Spanish-speaking households. In:

Galley, K.E.M.; Klinger, R.C.; Sugihara, N.G., eds. Proceedings of fire conference 2000: the 1st national congress on fire ecology, prevention, and management. Misc. Publ. 13. Tallahassee, FL: Tall Timbers Research Station: 124–131.

Loomis, J.; Ellingson, L.; González-Cabán, A.; Seidl, A. 2006. The role of

ethnicity and language in contingent valuation analysis: a fire prevention policy

application. American Journal of Economics and Sociology. 65(3): 559–586.

Martin, I.M.; Bender, H.; Raish, C. [In press]. What motivates individuals to

protect themselves from risks: the case of wildland fires. Risk Analysis.

McCaffrey, S. 2004. Thinking of wildfire as a natural hazard. Society and Natural

Resources. 17(6): 509–516.

Monroe, M.C.; Pennisi, L.; McCaffrey, S.; Mileti, D. 2005. Social science to

improve fuels management: a synthesis of research related to communicating

with the public on fuels management efforts. Gen. Tech. Rep. GTR-NC-267.

St. Paul, MN: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central

Research Station. 42 p.

Nelson, K.C.; Monroe, M.C.; Johnson, J.F.; Bowers, A. 2004. Living with fire:

homeowner assessment of landscape values and defensible space in Minnesota

and Florida, USA. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 13(4): 413–425.

Raish, C.; González-Cabán, A.; Condie, C.J. 2005. The importance of traditional fire use and management practices for contemporary land managers in

the American Southwest. Environmental Hazards. 6: 115–122.
52

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Toman, E.; Shindler, B.; Brunson, M. 2006. Fire and fuel management communication strategies: citizen evaluations of agency outreach activities. Society and

Natural Resources. 19: 321–336.

Vaske, J.J.; Absher, J.D. [In press]. Predicting homeowners’ defensible space

behavior intentions. Human Ecology Review.

Vaske, J.J.; Absher, J.D.; Bright, A.D. [In press]. Salient value similarity, social

trust and attitudes toward wildland fire management strategies. In: Burns, R.,

comp., ed. Proceedings of the 2006 Northeastern recreation research symposium. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Northeastern Research Station.

Vogt, C.; Winter, G.; Fried, J.S. 2005. Predicting homeowners’ approval of fuel

management at the wildland-urban interface using the theory of reasoned

action. Society and Natural Resources. 18: 337–354.
53

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Strategic and Tactical Fuel Treatment Evaluation

Tools

Highlight Contact

Ken Skog, Forest Products Laboratory: kskog@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

The work reported here supports objectives in Portfolio C: Social fire science,

Element C3: Organizational effectiveness; Portfolio D: Integrated fire and fuels

management research, Element D3: Biomass utilization, product development and

forest operations associated with fire and fuels management activities; and Portfolio

E: Develop and deliver knowledge and tools to policymakers, wildland fire managers, and communities, Element E1: Synthesis and tool development.

Background

Strategic identification and local placement of fuel treatments are significant

regional and local forest management problems addressed by two tools developed

by Forest Service Research and Development.

Approach

The two tools described below were developed by teams composed of Forest

Service and university research scientists and national forest experts. Specialist

contributed expertise on silvicultural systems, fire hazard and fire hazard reduction,

forest inventory data, harvesting systems and harvest cost estimation, economic

evaluation, mathematical modeling, and Web-based modeling.

Products and Tools

Fuel Treatment Evaluator (FTE) 3.0 (Miles et al. 2006) is a Web-based tool that

helps analysts identify forest areas in the West with high fire hazard, simulate

alternative thinning treatments to meet hazard reduction targets, and estimate kinds

and amounts of wood biomass removed and costs of removal (Skog et al. 2006).

The tool addresses the key problem of identifying locations where biomass removals could cover the costs of thinning treatments to reduce hazard (see fig. 1).

My Fuel Treatment Planner (myFTP) (Fight 2006) is a user friendly tool that

assists managers in estimating costs, net revenues, economic effects, and surface

fuels associated with various fuel reduction treatments. The spreadsheet application
54

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

is simple to use yet based on years of data. MyFTP provides insights on how to

think through economic analyses and interacts compatibly with existing planning

tools (see fig. 2).

Results and Applications

The FTE 3.0 has been used to identify opportunities for using wood biomass from

thinnings to generate electric power (1) across the Western United States for the

Western Governors Association (Skog and Barbour 2006) and (2) in parts of

Oregon for the Oregon Forest Resources Institute (OFRI 2006).

MyFTP has been incorporated into the analytical process for the FIRESHED

program, which is used for all Forest Service fire hazard reduction projects in

California, is being piloted at 10 other locations around the Western United States,

is now available for general use, and has been incorporated into national training

required for fuel specialist certification.

Principal Investigators

Ken Skog, kskog@fs.fed.us: Forest Products Laboratory; Jamie Barbour,

jbarbour01@fs.fed.us, Roger Fight (now retired): Pacific Northwest Research

Figure 1—Forest treatment alternatives used by the Fuel Treatment Evaluator 3.0.
55

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Station; Karen Abt, kabt@fs.fed.us: Southern Research Station; Ted Bilek,

tbilek@fs.fed.us: Forest Products Laboratory; Bobby Hugget, rhuggett@fs.fed.us:

Southern Research Station; Pat Miles, pmiles@fs.fed.us: Northern Research

Station; Elizabeth Reinhardt, ereinhardt@fs.fed.us; Wayne Shepperd,

wshepperd@fs.fed.us: Rocky Mountain Research Station

Key Partners

Forest Management, Washington office, Forest Service; Clean and Diversified

Energy Advisory Committee for the Western Governors Association (WGA

report); Mason, Bruce & Girard, Inc. (Oregon Forest Resources Institute report);

Figure 2—Biomass removed (oven dry tons) from simulated thinnings by

160,000-acre hexagon for uneven-age fuel-hazard-reduction treatments.
56

GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

National Forest System: Pacific Northwest Region (Region 6); Northern Region

(Region 1); University of Washington Stand Management Cooperative; University

of California, Davis

Funding

This research was supported by National Fire Plan Research and Development.

Literature Cited

Fight, R. 2006. My fuel treatment planner. [Web site with software and guidebook]. http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/data/myftp/myftp_home.htm. (May 2007).

Miles, P.D.; Skog, K.E.; Huggett, R.J. 2006. Fuel treatment evaluator 3.0.

[Web-based analysis tool]. http://ncrs2.fs.fed.us/4801/fiadb/fire_tabler_us/

rpa_fuel_reduction_treatment_opp.htm. http://www.ncrs2.fs.fed.us/4801/fiadb/

FTE_Version3/WC_FTE_version3.asp. (May 2007).

Oregon Forest Resources Institute [OFRI]. 2006. Biomass energy and biofuels

from Oregon’s forests. Portland, OR. [Roger Lord prepared chapter 2: Assessment of potential using the Fuel Treatment Evaluator 3.0 Web analysis tool].

http://www.oregonforests.org/media/pdf/Biomass_Full_Report.pdf. (May 2007).

Skog, K.E.; Barbour, R.J. 2006. Forest fuel treatment & thinning biomass–

timberland. In: Western Governors Association. 2006 biomass taskforce report:

supply addendum. Denver, CO: 11-12ff. http://www.westgov.org/wga/initiatives/cdeac/Biomass-supply.pdf. (May 2007).

Skog, K.E.; Barbour, R.J.; Abt, K.L.; Bilek, E.M.; Burch, F.; Fight, R.D.;

Hugget, R.J.; Miles, P.D.; Reinhardt, E.D.; Shepperd, W.D. 2006. Evaluation of silvicultural treatments and biomass use for reducing fire hazard in

Western States. Res. Pap. FPL-RP-634. Madison, WI: U.S. Department of

Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory. 29 p.

http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplrp/fpl_rp634.pdf. (May 2007).

Additional Reading

Biesecker, R.L.; Fight, R.D. 2006. My fuel treatment planner: a user guide. Gen.

Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-663. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 31 p. http://www.fs.fed.us/

pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr663.pdf. (May 2007).
57

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Understand the Wildland-Urban Interface

Highlight Contact

Susan Stewart, Northern Research Station: sistewart@fs.fed.us

Relation to Strategic Plan

This work supports objectives in Portfolio C, Element C2: Socioeconomic aspects

of fire and fuels management.

Background

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is where houses and dense vegetation are both

present. With few limits on where homes are built, housing now extends across

suburban and rural landscapes, and the most intense development pressure is felt in

forested areas. These housing trends have serious implications for wildfire suppression costs, public safety, and fire ecology. Understanding the WUI provides the

foundation for quantifying wildland fire risks and prioritizing treatments.

Approach

Based on the Federal Register definition of the WUI, housing (census) and land

cover (National Land Cover Datasets) data were combined in a geographical

information system (GIS) to identify census blocks with at least low-density

housing (>6.17 housing units/km2

, or >1 housing unit per 40 acres) and wildland vegetation (>50 percent of pixels). Where housing met the threshold but

vegetation was less dense, portions of census blocks were included when they fell

within 2.4 km (1.5 mi) of dense wildland vegetation (>75 percent) (fig. 3). Rectifying 1990 and 2000 census blocks allowed subcounty analysis of WUI growth

(Hammer et al. 2007).

Based on the WUI’s location and growth, work can begin to assess the relative

fire hazards facing residential areas across the country and target high-hazard

neighborhoods with the information, outreach, resource management, and regulations needed to mitigate wildland fire danger. Regional data sets detailing biophysical conditions have been used to assess the WUI fire hazard in portions of

California, Michigan, Oregon, Washington, and Utah; as Landfire data become

available, this analysis can be extended nationally.

Understanding the

WUI helps quantify

fire risks and prioritize treatments.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

In Puerto Rico, satellite (Landsat TM) and population (census) data were

combined to classify land use and identify the WUI, the suburban and exurban

residential areas with forest or grassland vegetation (fig. 4). Fuel loads and fire

danger zones were also identified.

Products and Tools

At http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/projects/WUI_Main.asp, users can download WUI

and housing density maps and data for states and Forest Service regions in the

lower 48 States. The WUI data also support other tools, such as the Fuel Treatment

Evaluator developed by Miles et al. 2006, and a Web site where homeowners can

assess their property’s WUI status and fire hazard, at http://firecenter.berkeley.edu/

toolkit/. Maps of Puerto Rico’s WUI, fuel loads, and fire danger zones are available

through the Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry.

Results and Applications

The WUI in 2000 encompassed 37 percent of U.S. homes (Radeloff et al. 2005).

All states in the lower 48 had some WUI, and in 19 states, it includes more than

half of all homes. The booming housing market of the 1990s added 8.2 million

housing units, 60 percent of all new homes, to the WUI. In northern lower Michigan, 25 percent of the WUI faces relatively high fire hazard and over 88 percent of

the WUI with high fire hazard has low housing density (<1 housing unit per 2 ha or

Figure 3—The 2000 wildland-urban interface.
59

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

5 ac) (Haight et al. 2004, fig. 5); in southern California’s shrublands, the interactions between human presence and fire-prone ecosystems has increased ignitions

and threatens to change ecosystem characteristics. Analysis of housing growth

and fire regime condition class in California, Oregon, and Washington found

there were nearly 1.5 million WUI housing units in areas with 0- to 35-year firereturn intervals and 3.4 million in areas with 35- to 100+ year fire-return intervals

(Hammer et al. 2007). In both fire regimes, most WUI housing units (66 percent

and 90 percent, respectively) are in areas with a current condition outside the

historical range of variability.

As in the continental United States, the WUI covers one-third of the land area

in Puerto Rico (Martinuzzi et al. 2007). The vast majority of wildland fires in

Puerto Rico are human-induced and these increasingly occur within the WUI or in

protected areas bordering it. Each year, an estimated 3,000 to 6,000 wildland fires

occur in Puerto Rico. Their ecological effects are compounded by high species

diversity, a high number of endemic species, extensive landscape fragmentation,

vulnerability to drought, and high levels of human use of the landscape, particularly in the WUI. This analysis helps fire managers better define fire risks and

management priorities for Puerto Rico.

Wildland-urban interface research has found a wide community of users, from

technicians developing geographic information system data layers for community

or regional plans, to policymakers interested in the scope of the WUI problem, to

popular media covering wildland fire.

Figure 4—Wildland-urban interface in Puerto Rico.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Literature Cited

Haight, R.G.; Cleland, D.T.; Hammer, R.B.; Radeloff, V.C.; Rupp, T.S. 2004.

Assessing fire risk in the wildland urban interface. Journal of Forestry. 102(7):

41–48.

Hammer, R.B.; Radeloff, V.C.; Fried, J.S.; Stewart, S.I. 2007. Wildland urban

interface growth during the 1990s in California, Oregon and Washington.

International Journal of Wildland Fire. 16: 255–265.

Martinuzzi, S.; Gould, W.A.; Ramos Gonzalez, O.M. 2007. Land development,

land use, and urban sprawl in Puerto Rico: integrating remote sensing and

population census data. Landscape and Urban Planning. 79: 288–297.

Miles, P.D.; Skog, K.E.; Huggett, R.J. 2006. Fuel treatment evaluator 3.0.

[Web-based analysis tool]. http://ncrs2.fs.fed.us/4801/fiadb/fire_tabler_us/

rpa_fuel_reduction_treatment_opp.htm. http://www.ncrs2.fs.fed.us/4801/fiadb/

FTE_Version3/WC_FTE_version3.asp. (May 2007).

Radeloff, V.C.; Hammer, R.B.; Stewart, S.I.; Fried, J.S.; Holcomb, S.S.;

McKeefry, J.F. 2005. The wildland urban interface in the United States.

Ecological Applications. 15(3): 799–805.

Figure 5—High fire risk areas in Wisconsin, Lower Northern Michigan, and the

Upper Peninsula.
61

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Fire Social Science Research–Next Steps

Richard W. Haynes, Sarah McCaffrey, and Jeff Prestemon

Discussion

Since 2000, National Fire Plan funding has allowed fire social science research to

expand significantly. Much has been learned about the social and economic issues

connected with wildland fire and fuels management. The highlights illustrate the

breath of social fire-science work that has taken place in Forest Service Research

and Development as well as a range of research outcomes including tools that can

be used to solve a variety of problems. This focus on developing tools useful to

managers has been one of the hallmarks of work with the fire community where

research outputs are denominated in descriptions of tools that were placed in managers hands. The highlights illustrate a variety of tools from the wildland urban

interface maps to software or other computer-based “decision support tools.”

The concept of “tools” can be painted with a broader brush to include not only

computer software, but also other forms of checklists, inventories, guidelines, and

templates based on research and that serve the needs of fire management. Such

tools expand the range of opportunities for mutual and constructive interaction

among researchers, managers and the public. If we extend the concept of tools to

include “means” of various types to achieve one or more “ends,” then we can

identify field-related outputs of research in terms of consultations, workshops,

seminars, and other forms of training and education as forms of “tools” to support

fire or other management operations.

The information developed to date is being used to enhance the ability of

agencies and communities to meet land management objectives in an effective and

efficient manner that is well informed by public needs and preferences and contributes to a broader understanding of key public values and concerns about fire and

fuels management—before, during, and after wildland fires and fuels treatments;

social and economic effects of different fire and fuels management decisions; external and internal barriers to effective fire management; and effect of existing and

proposed policies on management options and decision space. The research will

also provide guidelines and tools for effective and efficient communication, both

externally and internally; improving safety, reliability, and ability to meet management objectives; working with communities and other partners to achieve fire and

fuels management goals; and assessing tradeoffs in economic, ecological, and

quality-of-life values of different decision options.
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

Although much has been learned, there are still many areas where research can

continue to contribute to improved fire management. Below we identify these

future research needs. Each of these needs is characterized by an array of products

that include scholarly research, syntheses, and tools for the user community. With

regard to priorities, we suggest that more resources be directed toward the organizational effectiveness element. We recognize that such shifts need to be made

incrementally.

Future Research Directions

C1-Public Interactions

Public perception and trust—

There is a need to expand research on the dynamics of trust, how trust interacts with

fire and fuels management actions and the agencies taking such actions, and how

trust manifests across a greater variety of ethnic, cultural, and economic groups to

determine how these groups accept and are affected by fire and fuel management

programs.

• What are the consequences of alternative “social contracts” (i.e., the

expectations that communities or individuals might have that public

agencies will protect them) for fire management? Does the shift of the

Forest Service to becoming a fire management agency break its “social

contract” with the American public as a conservation agency, and are there

new suppression approaches (e.g., appropriate management response) that

challenge the existing social contract?

• Do the basic tenets of trust building and trust retention (for example,

honesty, credibility, and fairness) hold in the arena of fire management, or

does the public demand something different from wildland fire managing

agencies?

Collaboration and planning—

There is a need to improve our understanding of the barriers placed by the public

(or the market) on effective fuel management and fire suppression activities.

What are the primary decision considerations in implementing prescribed fire

at the wilderness/nonwilderness interface to both support wilderness resource

benefits and protect nonwilderness values?
63

Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

What are the trends in public attitudes toward wildland fire use for resource

benefits outside of wilderness, and what are the societal or physical influences on

these attitudes?

Communication—

There is a need to identify public information needs before, during, and after fires

and fuel treatment activities, especially prescribed burning, and the form of dissemination that best serves fire and fuels management decisionmaking. We need to

develop tools that help integrate social, economic, risk and uncertainty information

into fire and fuels management decisionmaking processes.

C2-Socioeconomic Effects

Impacts of wildland fire and fuels management—

There is a need to develop frameworks that enable managers to identify and quantify the short- and long-term socioeconomic impacts of fire and fuels management

on people, communities, markets and natural resources, including their temporal

and distributional effects.

• What decision frameworks will aid fire management in mixed-ownership

situations? Do private homeowners respond to larger social objectives (e.g.,

firefighter safety and restoration of fire on public lands) when improving

fire resistance of their private lands?

• What are the social impacts of decisions made during wildland fire? Are

there alternative decision frameworks that minimize these impacts while

maintaining citizen and firefighter safety? What influences their decisions

to leave or stay?

Costs and benefits of fire and fuels management—

There is a need to develop frameworks to support evaluations of the market and

nonmarket benefits associated with fire and fuels management (fire suppression,

hazardous fuels reduction, use of wildland fire and restoration work).

• What methods are available to reduce fire suppression costs that are socially

acceptable and achievable (recognizing values saved and lost from fire

suppression)?

• Are suppression costs commensurate with the values at risk?
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GENERAL TECHNICAL REPORT PNW-GTR-736

There is a need to develop methods to represent better the values at risk that the

agency is attempting to protect.

• What are the methodological and empirical issues that need to be

understood?

• How can measures of values at risk be made operational?

There is a need for tools that managers can use for evaluating fire management

alternatives.

• How can managers analyze the efficiency and equity effects of fire

suppression and fuels management?

• How can managers improve their understanding of methods to reduce

human-caused wildland fire? Such methods will need to build on

understanding the social, economic, and biophysical underpinnings of

human-started fires, and the implications of human-started fires for changes

in aggregate wildland fire activity, values at risk, fuels management, fire

prevention efforts, and wildland fire suppression expenditures.

• What tools can be developed to improve engagement with communities and

other partners in fire suppression and prevention and for dealing with

safety and public health concerns associated with fire?

C3-Organizational Effectiveness

Organizational issues—

There is a need to improve the understanding and knowledge of how organizational

structures and institutional incentives and disincentives impact the effectiveness and

efficiency of fire and fuels management organizations.

• What are the temporal, spatial, budgetary, economic, and social impacts

and tradeoffs among alternative fuels management, prevention, detection,

suppression, and postfire rehabilitation strategies?

• What is the role and effect of incentives and disincentives on fire

management decisionmaking? How are changes in individual manager’s

personal incentive structures affecting decisionmaking? What are the

impacts of regulatory changes (i.e., the new air quality regulations and

others) on fire management decisions?
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Fire Social Science Research—Selected Highlights

Personal and situational issues—

There is a need to develop assessments of how the perception of and attitudes about

risk of fire personnel impact fire and fuels management decisions, what factors

affect perceptions of risk, and how these perceptions differ within the agency, and

with the public.

• How do the agencies train the emerging fire decisionmakers given their

differences in experience, education, values, perceptions of environmental

factors (like global climate change), aversion to risk, and trust in

organizational objectives?

Metric Equivalents

When you know: Multiply by: To get:

Acres 0.405 Hectares

Tons .907 Tonnes

Cubic feet .0283 Cubic meters

Miles 1.609 Kilometers

Square miles 2.59 Square kilometers
Pacific Northwest Research Station

Web site http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw

Telephone (503) 808-2592

Publication requests (503) 808-2138

FAX (503) 808-2130

E-mail pnw_pnwpubs@fs.fed.us

Mailing address Publications Distribution

Pacific Northwest Research Station

P.O. Box 3890

Portland, OR 97208-3890
U.S. Department of Agriculture

Pacific Northwest Research Station

333 S.W. First Avenue

P.O. Box 3890

Portland, OR 97208-3890

Official Business

Penalty for Private Use, $300