Assessing the Impact of Prescribed Fuel Reductions on Wildfire Intensity

Prescribed burns and thinning of vegetation are two human approaches to restoring ecosystem health while reducing risks of adverse outcomes from wildfires. Successful outcomes help increase safety and survival while reducing financial losses in manpower to fight these fires, rebuilding of structures, reducing health risks, and replanting of native vegetation. A demonstration of the efficacy of this approach could incentivize expansion of the approach to treat more areas. Carbon models from the US Forestry Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program can be used to identify changes in the carbon density from the treated areas and the buffer zones, extending 250ft outward. The FIA model was generated in 2018, and the sample selection includes prescribed burns from 2010-2017 that exceed 100 acres. A reduction in carbon within the treated area from the buffer zone will help determine if these measures are successful.

-First, I evaluated the carbon mass within the Prescribed Burn Area versus the surrounding buffer areas to assess the mean reduction and its variance.

-Next, I will identify intersections of subsequent wildfires with previously treated areas and then evaluated the impact of the treated areas on preventing further spread with a categorical variable indicating success or failure. I will also examine the likelihood of success or failure based on the amount of mass reduction within the previously treated areas.

-Optional: Future work would include expanding the time interval to include a greater number of fire intersections, and, potentially, to find a critical threshold for how much mass needs to be reduced to affect success.

Preliminary Results: Of approximately 600 treated areas, about 100 areas show no carbon while the buffer zone contains some carbon.