- Author: Zhi Qiu
Current U.S. forest fire policy emphasizes short-term outcomes versus long-term goals. This perspective drives managers to focus on the protection of high-valued resources, whether ecosystem-based or developed infrastructure, at the expense of forest resilience. Given these current and future challenges posed by wildland fire and because the U.S. Forest Service spent >50% of its budget on fire suppression in 2015, a review and reexamination of existing policy is warranted. One of the most difficult challenges to revising forest fire policy is that agency organizations and decision making processes are not structured in ways to ensure that fire management is thoroughly considered in management decisions...
/span>- Author: Zhi Qiu
"An unprecedented 40-year experiment in a 40,000-acre valley of Yosemite National Park strongly supports the idea that managing fire, rather than suppressing it, makes wilderness areas more resilient to fire, with the added benefit of increased water availability and resistance to drought.
After a three-year, on-the-ground assessment of the park's Illilouette Creek basin, UC Berkeley researchers concluded that a strategy dating to 1973 of managing wildfires with minimal suppression and almost no preemptive, so-called prescribed burns has created a landscape more resistant to catastrophic fire, with more diverse vegetation and forest structure and increased water storage, mostly in the form of meadows in areas cleared by fires."
Wildfire management vs. fire suppression benefits forest and watershed
- Author: Carlin Starrs
Center for Forestry and Center for Fire Research and Outreach co-Director Dr. Bill Stewart was recently interviewed regarding the cost effectivenes sof aerial attack when fighting wildfire.
The full article can be found at this link: http://www.kcra.com/investigates/us-forest-service-studies-effectiveness-of-aerial-attacks-on-fires/32878748