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Funded by the National Science Foundation Fire Science Innovations through Research and Education (FIRE) program
Award #2623531
Research Team
Paige Fischer, University of Michigan (Principal Investigator - apfisch@umich.edu)
Kayla Bordelon, Oregon State University
Meg Krawchuk, Oregon State University
Becky Kerns, USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station
Cat Edgeley, Utah State University
Ann Jeffers and Seymore Spence, University of Michigan
Ana Barros, Washington Department of Natural Resources
Emily Jane Davis, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
Project Overview
Project Overview
As population growth and development expand the wildland–urban interface (WUI), communities in high-biomass forests face growing and often unfamiliar risks, including fast-moving fires, evacuations, smoke exposure, property damage, and disruption to local economies and public health.
Our research will help communities west of the Cascade Range anticipate and adapt to emerging wildfire hazards.
Working directly with wildfire practitioners, planners, agencies, and community partners, the research team will identify effective forest management, home hardening, defensible space, and community planning strategies to support both near-term risk reduction and long-term adaptation.
Transdisiplinary Approach
Transdisiplinary Approach
Our project team includes three natural scientists, two engineers, and two social scientists. We will partner with the US Forest Service Westside Fire Initiative and a practitioner-partner committee (PPC) representing organizations that support PNW community wildfire planning will collaborate on research activities throughout the project.
Four Main Goals
Four Main Goals
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1
Advance understanding of emerging wildfire hazards in high-biomass forests (HBFs)
Advance understanding of emerging wildfire hazards in high-biomass forests (HBFs)
Emerging wildfire hazards in HBFs constitute a new domain for fire science because of their potential size, severity, and extreme behavior; however, current methods for defining regimes and anticipating fire behavior rely on past trends with limited integration of contemporary drivers.
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2
Build understanding of effective practices for protecting wildland urban-interface (WUI) communities from emerging wildfire hazards
Build understanding of effective practices for protecting wildland urban-interface (WUI) communities from emerging wildfire hazards
Current methods for modeling fire behavior in the WUI are oversimplified, disconnected, and unable to incorporate the large amounts of data needed to evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation practices for different scenarios.
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3
Further understanding of transformational adaptation to emerging wildfire hazards in Wildlife-Urban Interface communities
Further understanding of transformational adaptation to emerging wildfire hazards in Wildlife-Urban Interface communities
People make decisions to reduce risk based on their prior experience with hazards, but what influences communities to adopt new practices and implement them at scale to adapt to new wildfire hazards remains poorly understood.
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4
Support practitioners with new resources for community adaptation to emerging wildfire hazards
Support practitioners with new resources for community adaptation to emerging wildfire hazards
Emerging wildfire hazards in HBFs constitute a new domain for fire science because of their potential size, severity, and extreme behavior; however, current methods for defining regimes and anticipating fire behavior rely on past trends with limited integration of contemporary drivers.
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Want to learn more? Have comments?
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