Wildfire Management Strategy and Its Relation to Operational Risk

Abstract

Changes to US wildfire policy in 2009 blurred the distinction between fires managed for resource benefits and fires with primarily suppression objectives, making management strategies difficult to track. Here, qualitative text is coded from a sample of 282 Wildland Fire Decision Support System Relative Risk Assessments completed on wildfires between 2010 and 2017 to examine the prevalence of different strategies and their associations with risk. Suppression is used most, associated with high risk. Managers discuss intent to suppress even when it is untenable. Monitoring, confine, or point protection are used much less commonly and when risk is low. The Southwest region discusses a diversity of strategies, leveraging landscape barriers from past management to support them; the Northwest discusses suppression or monitoring and rarely links strategy selection to barriers. Based on associations between physical barriers to fire spread, risk, and strategy, creating more barriers may provide a path forward to better implement fire policy. Study Implications: Systematic analysis of text data in wildfire decision documents provides insights into how fires are managed. Most wildfires are still aggressively suppressed despite federal fire policy promoting the use of fire to enhance resources. When managers discuss risk during wildfires, it is evident that physical barriers to fire spread (e.g., rivers, roads, trails, rocky scree), including mechanical fuel treatments, prescribed fires, and previous wildfires, are important factors in operational fire planning. However, management strategies promoting the use of wildfire to enhance ecological resiliency or reduce transmission of future fires to values are used sparingly. Southwest fire managers are relying on past wildfires, fuel treatments, and prescribed fires more so than the Northwest to engage in a full spectrum of fire management strategies. This finding suggests that, at least in some geographies, ongoing investments in fuels management will pay dividends in reducing risk and broadening opportunities to meet federal policy goals.