Prescribed Burning

Wildfire activity in the western United States has been on the rise since the mid-1980s, with longer, higher-risk fire seasons projected for the future. Prescribed burning mitigates the risk of extreme wildfire events, but such treatments are currently underutilized. Fire managers have cited lack of firefighter availability as a key barrier to prescribed burning.

Mechanical thinning is often prescribed in dry coniferous forests to reduce stand density, ladder fuels, and canopy fuels before using prescribed burning to manage surface fuels. Mechanical mastication is a tool for thinning forests where commercial thinning is not viable.

Fuel-reduction and restoration treatments (“treatments”) are conducted extensively in dry and historically frequent-fire forests of interior western North America (“dry forests”) to reduce potential for uncharacteristically severe wildfire.

• The mechanistic links between fire-caused injuries and post-fire tree mortality are poorly understood. Current hypotheses differentiate effects of fire on tree carbon balance and hydraulic function, yet critical uncertainties remain about the relative importance of each and how they interact.

Changes in natural wildfire patterns can cause significant impacts on biodiversity, health, and economies. This has sparked discussions on better fire management. One strategy used by countries is Integrated Fire Management (IFM), with prescribed burning as one of the main tools. Prescribed burns effectively depend on specific burn windows.

Background: To combat losses and threats from fire exclusion and extreme wildfire events, communities in the United States are increasingly self-organizing through locally led Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) to plan and implement prescribed burns on private lands.

Background: Prescribed burning is an effective tool for reducing fuels in many forest types, yet there have been few opportunities to study forest resilience to wildfire in areas previously treated.

In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies.

The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was initiated more than two decades ago with the goal of evaluating the ecological impacts of mechanical treatments and prescribed fire in different ecosystems across the United States.

Background: Prescribed fires play a critical role in reducing the intensity and severity of future wildfires by systematically and widely consuming accumulated vegetation fuel. While the current probability of prescribed fire escape in the United States stands very low, their consequential impact, particularly the large wildfires they cause, raises substantial concerns.