International Journal of Wildland Fire

This scoping review examined information about the impacts of wildland fires on children, adolescents and family functioning. Impacts of wildland fires are related to age, gender, time and property loss. Future investigations need to focus on the family unit, children and adolescents as primary participants within a disaster framework.

This study analysed current and future potential patterns of forest fires at a national scale in China. Under projected climate change, the probability of fire could substantially increase in the not-too-distant future. Spatially, increased fire probability is projected to shift northward in China. The potentially altered fire probabilities would likely pose challenges to land managers in maintaining health and functions of forest ecosystems.

We used Hurdle models to analyse the influence of human and biophysical variables in predicting both the likelihood and frequency of fire recurrent ignition points. They showed a negative relationship with population and road density and a positive relationship with land-cover variables. Road density was the strongest predictor of recurrent fire ignitions, followed by the presence of shrublands and grasslands. NDVI and NDWI were also good predictors of fire recurrence.

In the present study, we quantify the consumption of ground and surface fuels in first-, second- and third-entry prescribed burns. We find that the following characteristics influence fuel consumption: total fuel load; proportion of overstorey pine; slope; canopy cover; basal area of live trees; burn number; and stand.

We propose a new method to generate an ensemble of wildfire simulations to predict fire spread. Ensembles are evaluated with probabilistic scores that are new to the wildlfire community. Application to seven fires supports that the method may be used with the limited data availability typical of an operational context, provided that we can access sufficient computational resources.

Classifying post-fire imagery for building damage, destruction, and defensive actions at the 2012 Colorado Waldo Canyon Fire showed a favourable performance when compared with ground-based assessments. This work highlights the importance of including post-fire imagery in post-fire assessments and the need to account for defensive actions in post-fire studies of the wildland–urban interface.

Resource objective wildfires improved ecological conditions by maintaining intact conditions in pine-oak forest, restoring forest structure in mixed-conifer forest, and shifting spruce-fir forest to more open and heterogeneous forest structure conditions, all of which promoted a more fire- and climate-resilient species composition.

Although most maps of fire regimes are derived from fire data, we spatially delineated eight distinctive fire regime ecoregions in California based on an unsupervised classification of biophysical and anthropogenic variables. The map corresponded well with the major land cover types of the state and provided clear separation of historical fire frequency and size.

We investigated the main drivers of spotting in wildfires by analysing infrared aerial images and environmental data for 338 spotting wildfires in south-east Australia. We found source fire area to be the most important predictor of spotting distance and number of spot fires (>500 m), with important secondary effects of fuel, weather and topography.

We analysed trends in human- and lightning-caused wildfires ≥ 2 ha in Canada for two time periods: 1959–2018 and 1981–2018. For the 1959–2018 period, 48% of wildfires were attributed to human cause, while 52% were due to lightning. For the 1981–2018 period, 44% of wildfires were attributed to humans and 56% to lightning.

We present an improved TBSI (temperature burn scar index) for mapping cropland burned areas caused by wildfires. The new model was applied to a winter wheat agricultural region in the Haihe River Basin in northern China. The results indicate that the proposed method is robust and accurate.

Fire mosses are early successional species that can colonise severely burned landscapes. We conducted a survey of 10 wildfires in the southwestern USA. Fire moss cover increased in shaded north-facing hillslopes in relatively wet locations. When compared with the bare soil surface, fire mosses reduced erosion and enhanced water infiltration.

Wildfires seem to amplify the differences for quantity and quality of soil organic matter and microbial amount and activity in soils under herbaceous and tree covers. This study investigated soil properties and microbial communities after fires that occurred in the summer of 2017 in Vesuvius National Park. Soils covered by herbaceous species, compared with those covered by trees, seem to be more sensitive to the overall variations owing to fire, and less able to restore their functionality – probably a result of the lowest microbial abundance and higher carbon losses.

We developed global and spatial quantile regression models to investigate the spatially varying relationships between forest fires and environmental factors at different quantiles of fire occurrence. Both models can identify the relationship between fire at different occurrence levels and their influencing factors; in particular, the spatial quantile regression model can provide more spatial information on the relationship across a large region and will be beneficial for fire management and prevention planning.

We measured plant community succession, spanning 16 years, following fire on Wyoming big sagebrush steppe, eastern Oregon. Treatments were burned and unburned sagebrush steppe. Early succession was dominated by native herbaceous perennials, though non-native exotics also increased. It was estimated that cover of sagebrush would return to pre-burn levels in 115 years.

This study is the first to present how wildfires change the quality of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in boreal forest soil water as measured by ultra-high-resolution mass spectral analysis. The results suggest that fire generated several species of black carbon, but changed the DOM molecular composition only slightly because burned plant residues provided diverse lignin-like molecules in soils.

Changes in peak and sustainable aerobic fitness of wildland firefighters were evaluated over a wildland fire season. Individual and group peak aerobic fitness was unchanged. Sustainable aerobic fitness of crew members became more homogeneous, improving for initially less-fit firefighters but decreasing for initially more-fit firefighters. WLFFs lost small amounts of fat and lean body mass over the season.

Post-fire organic litter and herbaceous cover depend on whether or not other disturbances precede fire. Resulting differences in ground cover affect post-fire regeneration of conifers. Litter cover promoted high-density conifer regeneration after fire-only, but inhibited it when blow-down or beetle outbreak preceded fire. Likewise, herbaceous cover promoted conifer regeneration after fire-only, but inhibited it when bark beetle outbreak preceded fire.

Using rate of fire spread data from experiments in grass fuels, we comment on the simulation results obtained by Moinuddin et al. (2018). In contrast with these simulations results, available empirical data shows grass height to have a direct (positive) effect on rate of fire spread.

Tree growth provides an index of vigour; we demonstrate that measures of pre-fire tree growth appear to influence probabilities of delayed post-fire mortality in common conifers of the western USA. Fire severity is thus partially a function of tree vigour, and consequently may be affected by changing environmental conditions.

Two methods for quantifying a fire’s speed are the cumulative and the interval spread rates. These two metrics were analysed using data from experimental fires conducted at laboratory and field scales. Mean spread rates for the interval method were found to be generally faster than that of the cumulative method.

This paper quantifies dead wood dynamics in Australian savannas. Field observations and modelling demonstrate considerable scope for increasing carbon stocks in woody debris through reducing fire frequency. These calculations include standing dead trees, a hitherto unquantified carbon pool that comprises most of the woody debris in these systems.

A method for estimating socioeconomic impacts of satellite observations in the context of supporting wildland fire suppression decisions is discussed. We address asset valuation issues and describe a simulated wildfire decision-making experiment in the setting of the 2011 Las Conchas Fire. Modelling was provided by WRF-SFIRE.

Alpine environments are considered the Earth’s third pole and adversely affected by climate change. Himalaya residents often use fire for socioeconomic purposes. Fire in alpine shrublands can increase the availability of valuable herbaceous and woody species used as medicine, in religion and as fodder.

Field-scale fire experiments were conducted to quantify the effect of wheat crop condition on fire behaviour. Data were used to evaluate existing fire spread models applied operationally to forecast fire propagation in grass and croplands in Australia. These models were shown to adequately predict the rate of fire spread in wheat crops.

The use of a decision-making framework is demonstrated through a case study. The case study focuses on the process of selecting a long-term landscape fuel management strategy to guide operational delivery. The decision-making framework encourages stakeholder deliberation and supports decision makers to make decisions involving trade-offs of multiple values.

Using past fire records, we identified planned and unplanned fire occurrences between 2004 and 2015 in south-east Queensland. Unplanned fires covered a larger extent, were more frequent and occurred mostly in spring, whereas planned fires occurred mostly in winter. The use of accurate fire records in mapping enhances fire management capabilities.

We present a statistical method to quantify and map wildfire spread to assets and the reduction gained by removing fuel from treatment blocks based on fire spread patterns in historical fires. The likelihood of spread to assets was highest in areas with high forest cover, but spread reduction was highest in treatment blocks at the wildland–urban interface.

Fire managers need to make decisions about expenditure in a more transparent manner. Here we undertake an economic analysis of fire management in the Australian Capital Territory to identify cost-effective management approaches. Absence of fuel treatments in this landscape will increase the risk of loss in the long term.

We use fire behaviour simulations and Bayesian networks to estimate the risk mitigation effects of prescribed burning for area burnt, house loss, life loss, length of powerline and road damaged, and area burnt below minimum tolerable fire interval. Our methods can be used to quantify and compare risk across regions.

We explored the cost and benefits of modifying the spatial arrangement of prescribed burns on public land. We found that wildland–urban (WUI) interface treatments are significantly more expensive than landscape treatments and, despite additional benefits gained from WUI treatments, in most cases, it is not the most economically efficient strategy.

Australia’s sparsely settled rangelands cover 78% of the nation, where contemporary fire regimes range from being infrequently burnt in the arid centre following significant rainfall events, to being frequently burnt in northern savannas following annually reliable monsoonal rains. We show that limited prescribed fire management is undertaken today, and, with reference to the Northern Territory, illustrate the immense demographic, institutional, logistical, and economic challenges involved. Proposed solutions include supporting and contracting the developing network of remote Indigenous Ranger Groups to deliver front-line preparedness and response services, building on and taking advantage of commercial savanna burning projects, and nurturing cross-sectoral and -institutional arrangements generally.

Historically unmanaged fire regimes are implicated in the detected decline of savanna biodiversity. Analysis of a contemporary primarily carbon market funded indigenous fire management program shows that most defined ecological thresholds are being addressed. While there is room for improvement, and work is required to more appropriately define and monitor ecological fire regime thresholds, these results demonstrate what is possible through well-resourced co-operative fire management.