Our over-arching objective is to inform fuel reduction strategies that improve fuel treatment effectiveness for reducing risk of catastrophic wildfires

The Regents of the University of Idaho have been awarded a $516,953.58 Cooperative Agreement from the Bureau of Land Management's Joint Fire Science Program (CFDA 15.232) to conduct research on improving fuel treatment effectiveness for reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfires. The key activities are to: 1) Evaluate how forest vegetation and fuel loads change over time after mechanical and fire fuel reduction treatments, using the Fire and Botanical Assessment Tool (FBAT) data; 2) Assess the effectiveness of fuel reduction treatments for reducing undesirable wildfire effects by validating fire behavior model predictions with empirical observations; and 3) Simulate how vegetation change and fuel accumulation may vary with future climate conditions to influence potential fire behavior. The project aims to provide actionable results for forest management decisions that improve forest resilience in a changing climate. The University of Idaho will partner with the California Fire Science Consortium to disseminate the research findings through field tours, research briefs, webinars, a scientific conference session, and a journal special issue.

We propose to leverage the fbat data resources to address the following research questions: Q1: how do forest vegetation and fuel loads change over time after mechanical and fire fuel reduction treatments we will use the fbat data on vegetation and fuels at multiple time-points to evaluate immediate change and change over E10 years. Q2: how effective are fuel reduction treatments for reducing undesirable wildfire effects, and how do predicted fire behavior and effects differ from empirical observations we will apply the fbat data to vegetation and fire behavior models and validate the predictions with existing CO-located empirical measures of fire behavior and effects. Q3: how does vegetation change and fuel accumulation vary with climate conditions to influence potential future fire behavior we will simulate vegetation change and fuel accumulation for current and future climate scenarios and predict fire behavior and effects for contrasting burning conditions. The proposed project will provide unique capacity to predict changes in vegetation and fuels over time, to evaluate how fuel treatments and time since treatment influence fire behavior, and to evaluate how results differ among contrasting treatments and with environmental variability. Our capability to validate predicted fire behavior and effectsusing existing empirical measurements will provide important insights on the confidence of potential fire behavior predictions, which can help further advance models and decision support tools. The results will be synthesized into a decision support tool that enables managers to select the type, intensity, and frequency of fuel reduction treatments best suited for local forest conditions and desired outcomes. We will partner with the california fire science consortium to offer a field tour, research briefs, and a webinar. We will organize a special session at a scientific meeting and coordinate a journal special issue on the session topic. We anticipate that our results and products will benefit fuels and fire managers, other scientists, and policymakers by improving knowledge of relationships among fuels and fire behavior, and how these relationships may vary in the future. The proposed study aims to provide actionable results for forest management decisions that improve forest resilience in a changing climate.