Over the past three decades, the area burned in wildfires across the united states has dramatically increased, leading to undesirable shifts in ecosystem condition, health and safety risks, growing…

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, through the Joint Fire Science Program (CFDA 15.232), has awarded a $499,850 cooperative agreement to Colorado State University to conduct research on the landscape-level effects of fuel treatments on wildfire activity, behavior, and suppression operations.

The 3-year project aims to: (1) quantify how landscape-level fuel treatments influence daily area burned, fire behavior observations, and fire severity; (2) analyze how fuel treatment type and age impact fire severity; and (3) assess how recent broadcast burning affects the effectiveness of wildfire suppression operations. The researchers will leverage a comprehensive regional database across Colorado to address these research questions. The findings will be shared with the scientific community, public stakeholders, and forest managers through research papers, decision support tools, and training materials to support coordinated landscape fuel treatment strategies.

Over the past three decades, the area burned in wildfires across the united states has dramatically increased, leading to undesirable shifts in ecosystem condition, health and safety risks, growing fire suppression costs, and loss of homes, livelihoods, and lives. To mitigate these undesirable impacts, various agencies and individual landowners have implemented fuel treatments designed to alter the amount and structure of surface, ladder, and or canopy fuels. While fuel treatments can be an effective strategy to decrease fire behavior and undesirable effects within treatments, IT is unclear if and when fuel treatments may influence fire behavior, effects, or effectiveness of wildland fire suppression operations outside of the treatment itself (i.e., landscape-level effects).the proposed research will determine if and how landscape fuel treatment strategies influence fire activity, ecological effects, and active fire suppression operations. Specifically, by focusing on the intersection with recent wildfires of recent broadcast burning across the west and of a range of fuel treatments in colorado, we address the following five aims: (1.1) quantify the landscape-effect of treatments on daily area burned (1.2) quantify the landscape-effect of treatments on observations of fire behavior (1.3) quantify the landscape-effect of treatments on fire severity (2.1) quantify the landscape-effect of treatments on fire severity conditioned on weather and (3.1) quantify the landscape-effects of recent broadcast burning on the effectiveness of suppression operations. By leveraging a comprehensive regional database across colorado, we will also address a sixth aim: (2.2) quantify the landscape-effects of fuel treatment type and age on fire severity.as continued development in the WUI and warming are expected to drive future widespread burning across the western US, coordination of effective and efficient landscape fuel treatment is critical to mitigating undesirable fire impacts. In response to this need, the proposed research will quantify the effects of landscape fuel treatment strategies and thereby address the needs of a diverse set of stakeholders. We will share our research with the scientific community, the public, and current and future forest managers through a robust science exchange plan that includes: (1) coordination of stakeholder meetings (2) production of new research papers and corresponding research briefs and press releases (3) decision support tools for current land managers (4) development of new training materials for future natural resource professionals and (5) leveraging existing efforts, including the recently established western dry forest and fire program of the nature conservancy.