Open Access
Issue
Published:
14 April 2015
Negative consequences of positive feedbacks in US wildfire management
),
Download citation
622
Views
17
Downloads
181
Crossref
N/A
WoS
201
Scopus
0
CSCD
Over the last two decades wildfire activity, damage, and management cost within the US have increased substantially. These increases have been associated with a number of factors including climate change and fuel accumulation due to a century of active fire suppression. The increased fire activity has occurred during a time of significant ex-urban development of the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) along with increased demand on water resources originating on forested landscapes. These increased demands have put substantial pressure on federal agencies charged with wildfire management to continue and expand the century old policy of aggressive wildfire suppression. However, aggressive wildfire suppression is one of the major factors that drive the increased extent, intensity, and damage associated with the small number of large wildfires that are unable to be suppressed. In this paper we discuss the positive feedback loops that lead to demands for increasing suppression response while simultaneously increasing wildfire risk in the future. Despite a wealth of scientific research that demonstrates the limitations of the current management paradigm pressure to maintain the existing system are well entrenched and driven by the existing social systems that have evolved under our current management practice. Interestingly, US federal wildland fire policy provides considerable discretion for managers to pursue a range of management objectives; however, societal expectations and existing management incentive structures result in policy implementation that is straining the resilience of fire adapted ecosystems and the communities that reside in and adjacent to them.
menu
Negative consequences of positive feedbacks in US wildfire management
),
Abstract
Over the last two decades wildfire activity, damage, and management cost within the US have increased substantially. These increases have been associated with a number of factors including climate change and fuel accumulation due to a century of active fire suppression. The increased fire activity has occurred during a time of significant ex-urban development of the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) along with increased demand on water resources originating on forested landscapes. These increased demands have put substantial pressure on federal agencies charged with wildfire management to continue and expand the century old policy of aggressive wildfire suppression. However, aggressive wildfire suppression is one of the major factors that drive the increased extent, intensity, and damage associated with the small number of large wildfires that are unable to be suppressed. In this paper we discuss the positive feedback loops that lead to demands for increasing suppression response while simultaneously increasing wildfire risk in the future. Despite a wealth of scientific research that demonstrates the limitations of the current management paradigm pressure to maintain the existing system are well entrenched and driven by the existing social systems that have evolved under our current management practice. Interestingly, US federal wildland fire policy provides considerable discretion for managers to pursue a range of management objectives; however, societal expectations and existing management incentive structures result in policy implementation that is straining the resilience of fire adapted ecosystems and the communities that reside in and adjacent to them.
References(83)
Allen CD, Savage M, Falk DA, Suckling KF, Swetnam TW, Schulke T, Stacey PB, Morgan P, Hoffman M, Klingel JT (2002) Ecological restoration of southwestern ponderosa pine ecosystems: a broad perspective. Ecol Appl 12:1418–1433
Brockway DG, Gatewood RG, Paris RB (2002) Restoring fire as an ecological process in shortgrass prairie ecosystems: initial effects of prescribed burning during the dormant and growing seasons. J Environ Manage 65(2):135–152
Brown TC, Hobbins MT, Ramirez JA (2008) Spatial distribution of water supply in the Coterminous United States. J Am Water Resour As (JAWRA) 44(6):1474–1487
Busenberg G (2004) Wildfire management in the United States: the evolution of a policy failure. Rev Policy Res 21(2):145–156
Calkin DE, Gebert KM, Jones JG, Neilson RP (2005) Forest Service large fire area burned and suppression expenditure trends. 1970–2002. J For 103(4):179–183
Calkin D, Finney MA, Ager AA, Thompson MP, Gebert KG (2011) Progress towards and barriers to implementation of a risk framework for Federal wildland fire policy and decision making in the United States. For Policy Econ 13(5):378–389
Calkin DE, Venn TJ, Wibbenmeyer MJ, Thompson MP (2013) Estimating US federal wildland fire managers' preferences toward competing strategic suppression objectives. Int J Wildland Fire 22(2):212–222
Calkin DE, Cohen JD, Finney MA, Thompson MP (2014) How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters. Proc Natl Acad Sci 111(2):746–751
Canton-Thompson J, Gebert KM, Thompson B, Jones G, Calkin D (2008) External human factors in incident management team decisionmaking and their effect on large fire suppression expenditures. J For 106(8):416–424
Cochrane MA, Moran CJ, Wimberly MC, Baer AD, Finney MA, Beckendorf KL, Eidenshink J, Zhu Z (2012) Estimation of wildfire size and risk changes due to fuels treatments. Int J Wildland Fire 21(4):357–367
Cohen JD (2000) Preventing disaster, home ignitability in the wildland-urban interface. J For 98(3):15–21
Collins R, de Neufville R, Claro J, Oliveira T, Pacheco A (2013) Forest fire management to avoid unintended consequences: a case study of Portugal using system dynamics. J Environm Manage 130:1–9
Doan D, O'Lauglin J, Morgan P, Miller C (2006) Barriers to wildland fire use: a preliminary problem analysis. Int J Wilderness 12:36–38
Dombeck MP, Williams JE, Wood CA (2004) Wildfire policy and public lands: Integrating scientific understanding with social concerns across landscapes. Conserv Biol 18(4):883–889
Donovan GH, Brown TC (2005) An alternative incentive structure for wildfire management on national forest land. For Sci 51(5):387–395
Donovan GH, Noordijk P (2005) Assessing the accuracy of wildland fire situation analysis (WFSA) fire size and suppression cost estimates. J For 103(1):10–13
Donovan GH, Prestemon JP, Gebert K (2011) The effect of newspaper coverage and political pressure on wildfire suppression costs. Soc Nat Res 24(8):785–798
Eidenshink J, Schwind B, Brewer K, Zhu Z, Quayle B, Howard S (2007) A project for monitoring trends in burn severity. Fire Ecol (Special Issue) 3:3–21
Finney MA (2005) The challenge of quantitative risk assessment for wildland fire. For Ecol Manage 211:97–108
Fowler C, Konopik E (2007) The history of fire in the southern United States. Human Ecol Rev 14(2):165–176
Gebert KM, Calkin DE, Yoder J (2007) Estimating suppression expenditures for individual large wildland fires. West J Appl For 22:188–196
Gude PH, Jones K, Rasker R, Greenwood MC (2013) Evidence for the effect of homes on wildfire suppression costs. Int J Wildland Fire 22(4):537–548
Hann WJ, Bunnell DL (2001) Fire and land management planning and implementation across multiple scales. Int J Wildland Fire 10(4):389–403
Hessburg PF, Agee JK, Franklin JF (2005) Dry forests and wildland fires of the inland Northwest USA: contrasting the landscape ecology of the pre-settlement and modern eras. For Ecol Manag 211:117–139
Hyde KD, Dickinson MB, Bohrer G, Calkin DE, Evers L, Gilbertson-Day J, Nicolet T, Tague C (2013) Research and development supporting fire effects prediction for fire and fuels management: status and needs. Int J Wildland Fire 22(1):37–50
Jakes PJ, Nelson KC, Enzler SA, Burns S, Cheng AS, Sturtevant V, Williams DR, Bujak A, Brummel RF, Grayzeck-Souter S, Staychock E (2011) Community wildfire protection planning: is the Healthy Forests Restoration Act's vagueness genius? Int J Wildland Fire 20(3):350–363
Knapp PA (1996) Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) dominance in the Great Basin Desert: history, persistence, and influences to human activities. Global Environ Chang 6(1):37–52
Liang J, Calkin DE, Gebert KM, Venn TJ, Silverstein RP (2008) Factors influencing large wildland fire suppression expenditures. Int J Wildland Fire 17:650–659
Lydersen JM, North MP, Collins BM (2014) Severity of an uncharacteristically large wildfire, the Rim Fire, in forests with relatively restored frequent fire regimes. Forest Ecol Manag 328:326–334
Maguire LA, Albright EA (2005) Can behavioral decision theory explain risk-averse fire management decisions? For Ecol Manag 211(1):47–58
McCaffrey S, Toman E, Stidham M, Shindler B (2012) Social science research related to wildfire management: an overview of recent findings and future research needs. Int J Wildland Fire 23:567–576
Moritz MA, Batllori E, Bradstock RA, Gill MA, Handmer J, Hessburg PF, Leonard J, McCaffrey S, Odion DC, Schoennagel T, Syphard AD (2014) Learning to coexist with wildfire. Nature 515(7525):58–66
North MP, Collins BM, Stephens SL (2012) Using fire to increase the scale, benefits, and future maintenance of fuels treatments. J For 110(7):392–401
Noss RF, Beier P, Covington WW, Grumbine RE, Lindenmayer DB, Prather JW, Schmiegelow F, Sisk TD, Vosick DJ (2006) Recommendations for integrating restoration ecology and conservation biology in ponderosa pine forests of the Southwestern United States. Restor Ecol 14(1):4–10
O'Neill SJ, Handmer J (2012) Responding to bushfire risk: the need for transformative adaptation. Environ Res Lett 7:014–018
Parks SA, Miller C, Nelson CR, Holden ZA (2014) Previous fires moderate burn severity of subsequent wildland fires in two large western US wilderness areas. Ecosystems. doi: 10.1007/s10021-013-9704-x
Pechony O, Shindall DT (2010) Driving forces of global wildfires over the past millennium and the forthcoming century. P Natl Acad Sci 107(45):19167–19170
Reinhardt ED, Keane RE, Calkin DE, Cohen JD (2008) Objectives and considerations for wildland fuel Treatment in the Interior Western United States. For Ecol Manag 256:1997–2006
Rhodes A (2011) Opinion: ready or not? Can community education increase householder preparedness for bushfire? Aust J Emerg Manag 26:6–10
Rideout DB, Ziesler PS, Kernohan NJ (2014) Valuing fire planning alternatives in forest restoration: Using derived demand to integrate economics with ecological restoration. J Environ Manag 141:190–200
Rist L, Moen J (2013) Sustainability in forest management and a new role for resilience thinking. For Ecol Manag 310:416–427
Short KC (2014) A spatial database of wildfires in the United States, 1992–2011. Earth Syst Sci Data 6:1–27
Smit B, Wandel J (2006) Adaptation, adaptive capacity and vulnerability. Global Environ Change 16(3):282–292
Spies TA, White EM, Kline JD, Fischer AP, Ager A, Bailey J, Bolte J, Koch J, Platt E, Olsen CS, Jacobs D, Shindler B, Steen-Adams MM, Hammer R (2014) Examining fire-prone forest landscapes as coupled human and natural systems. Ecol Soc 19(3):9, http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06584-190309
Steelman TA, McCaffrey S (2013) Best practices in risk and crisis communication: Implications for natural hazards management. Nat Hazards 65(1):683–705
Stephens SL, Ruth LW (2005) Federal forest-fire policy in the United States. Ecol Appl 15(2):532–542
Stewart OC (2002) Forgotten fires: native Americans and the transient wilderness. Univ Oklahoma Press, Norman
Teske CC, Seielstad CA, Queen LP (2012) Characterizing fire-on-fire interactions in three large wilderness areas. Fire Ecol 8(2):82–106
Theobald DM, Romme WH (2007) Expansion of the US wildland urban interface. Landscape Urban Plan 83(4):340–354
Thompson MP (2014) Social, institutional, and psychological factors affecting wildfire incident decision making. Soc Nat Res 27(6):636–644
Thompson MP, Calkin DE (2011) Uncertainty and risk in wildland fire management: a review. J Environ Manag 92:1895–1909
Thompson MP, Calkin DE, Finney MA, Gebert KM, Hand MS (2013) A risk-based approach to wildland fire budgetary planning. For Sci 59(1):63–77
Venn TJ, Calkin DE (2011) Accommodating non-market values in evaluation of wildfire management in the United States: challenges and opportunities. Int J Wildland Fire 20(3):327–339
Walker BH, Gunderson LH, Kinzig AP, Folke C, Carpenter SR, Schultz L (2006) A handful of heuristics and some propositions for understanding resilience in social-ecological systems. Ecol Soc 11(1):13
Warziniack T, Thompson M (2013) Wildfire risk and optimal investments in watershed protection. West Econ Forum 12(2):19–28
Wibbenmeyer MJ, Hand MS, Calkin DE, Venn TJ, Thompson MP (2013) Risk preferences in strategic wildfire decision making: a choice experiment with U.S. wildfire managers. Risk Analy 33(6):1021–1037
Williams J (2013) Exploring the onset of high-impact mega-fires through a forest land management prism. Forest Ecol Manag 294:4–10
Wilson RS, Winter PL, Maguire LA, Ascher T (2011) Managing wildfire events: risk-based decision making among a group of federal fire managers. Risk Anal 31:805–818
Publication history
Copyright
Rights and permissions
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.
FEEDBACK 
TOP