Pacific Northwest Research Station

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	Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center

Pacific Northwest Research Station
333 SW First Avenue
Portland, OR 97204

(503) 808-2592

Reducing Fire Risk to People and Resources Issue

Jamie Barbour (Portland), 503-808-2542
Jane L. Hayes (La Grande), 541-962-6549
Alan Ager (Pendleton), 541-278-3740

Forestry Sciences Laboratory
620 SW Main, Suite 400
P.O. Box 3890
Portland, OR 97208-3890

ABOUT US

[Photograph]: Fire and smoke in a forest fire.

The Reducing Fire Risk to People and Resources Issue is one of the five current issues of focus for the PNW Research Station's Focused Science Delivery Program. This issue focuses on examining ways to reduce the probability of uncharacteristic severe wildfire while maintaining ecological values and providing opportunities for local communities.

RESEARCH AREAS

The Reducing Fire Risk Issue comprises three types research and development or projects designed to assist land managers by developing models or tools to assist with evaluation of outcomes of land management policies, facilitating the evaluation of the finances of thinning and the effectiveness of thinning in reducing fire hazard, and ranking areas for fire risk.

[Photograph]: A subdivision where fire destroyed one home and skipped over others. The Interior Northwest Landscape Analysis System (INLAS) develops or enhances techniques for examining policy and resource management alternatives for forested landscapes and rangelands. Application of these techniques helps decisionmakers examine change in ecological and socioeconomic systems under varying policy or land management options. INLAS links a number of resource, disturbance, and landscape simulation models to examine the interactions of management, succession, and disturbance with a set of policy goals for 4^th-code hydrologic unit (about 500,000 to 1,000,000 acres) subbasins in northeastern Oregon. The effects of natural disturbances like wildfire, ungulate herbivory, forest insects and diseases, as well as specific management actions are included. Outputs from simulations illustrate effects on aquatic conditions, terrestrial habitat, potential for wood utilization, and other socioeconomic opportunities.

The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) BioSum model, developed collaboratively with the Human and Natural Resources Interactions and FIA programs, is a strategic planning tool intended to provide initial financial and effectiveness screening of proposed locations for biomass cogeneration facilities, including those sites with the greatest potential to contribute to fire hazard reduction.

The Spatial Resource Support System project, a partnership between State and Private Forestry and Research, is developing an evaluation system that accounts for human needs, ecological conditions of forests, and fire threat. This decision support system produces individual and combined indices that can be used to develop rankings that are displayed numerically and spatially in the form of maps.

US Forest Service - Pacific Northwest Research Station
Last Modified: Friday, 01 May 2009 at 20:32:09 EDT