Working Together to Restore:
Communities In Action
Living in the West often means learning to live with wildfire. Many communities and land managers recognize the threat of wildfire to homes, lives, and forests, and have been actively working together to develop community wildfire protection plans, restore forested areas in the wildland-urban interface, protect watersheds, and promote Firewise principles for homeowners.
Communities like Flagstaff, Arizona and collaborative organizations like the Four Forest Restoration Initiative (4FRI), Greater Flagstaff Forest Partnership (GFFP), and the Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project (FWPP) are leaders in innovative restoration opportunities and partnerships as well as local outreach and education.
To learn more about these partnerships and initiatives, or how to better protect your community from wildfire, visit these websites:
The Economic and Social Benefits of Restoration
Healthy forests provide a myriad of economic and social benefits. Forests offer ecosystem services like clean water, carbon storage, flood and erosion control, and recreation opportunities, and throughout much of the West they often support vital tourist economies. Restorative mechanical thinning treatments make economic and ecological sense because they promote economic development in local economies while reducing wildfire risk and restoring ecosystem health.
To better understand the economic trade-offs of restoration, the ERI has worked closely with Northern Arizona University-affiliated and independent economists on full-cost accounting and cost avoidance studies that examine the direct, indirect, and hidden costs of severe wildfires. In addition to economic analyses, ERI studies social impacts of wildfire.
Below are several of our most recent white papers that explore the social and economic implications of wildfire and restoration:
- WHITE PAPER: Assessment of Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) in Arizona and Throughout the West (2020)
- WHITE PAPER: Wildfire Trends Across the Western US: Forest Fires Have Increased in Size, Severity, and Frequency Across Western Forests (2020)
- WHITE PAPER: Administrative and Legal Review Opportunities for Collaborative Groups (2015)
- WHITE PAPER: Flagstaff Watershed Protection Project: Creating Solutions through Community Partnerships(2015)
- WHITE PAPER: A Full Cost Accounting of the 2010 Schultz Fire (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: The Efficacy of Hazardous Fuel Treatments: A Rapid Assessment of the Economic and Ecologic Consequences of Alternative Hazardous Fuel Treatments (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: Forest Restoration Treatments: Their Effect on Wildland Fire Suppression Costs (2013)
- WHITE PAPER: Workforce Needs of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative Project: An Analysis (2012)
- WHITE PAPER: Ecological Restoration as Regional Economic Stimulus (2010)
Partnerships
The ERI maintains a national profile of excellence in the field of forest restoration and fire through scholarly activities, media, testimony, and participation at national meetings and other venues. Through this engagement, ERI has established more than 200 partnerships with governments, organization, and others in Arizona, the West, and across the nation.
Fact Sheet: The Cost of Forest Thinning Operations in the Western United States: A Literature Review
An increase in frequent, catastrophic wildfires is a challenge to forests and communities across the western United States. Forest thinning treatments can reduce the risk of catastrophic fires and improve forest health. However, the cost of treatments varies depending on factors such as slope gradients, small-diameter trees, silvicultural prescriptions, and harvesting systems and methods. Land managers often use thinning treatments as a management approach, and broader knowledge on the productivity and costs of harvesting machinery can assist in their planning efforts.
Special Report: Managed Wildfire: A Research Synthesis and Overview
All wildfires in the United States are managed, but the strategies used to manage them vary by region and season. “Managed wildfire” is a response strategy to naturally ignited wildfires; it does not prioritize full suppression and allows the fire to fulfill its natural role on the landscape, meeting objectives such as firefighter safety, resource benefit, and community protection. This wildfire management strategy can be effective for reducing tree densities, landscape homogeneity, fuel load continuity, and future fire behavior, while also working to reintroduce fire to fire-prone ecosystems. Research on managed wildfire has expanded significantly in recent years. This synthesis is designed to distill the current science on managed wildfire to foster a wide discussion of the strategy among managers, practitioners, and the knowledgeable public.
Journal Article: Climate influences on future fire severity: a synthesis of climate‑fire interactions and impacts on fire regimes, high‑severity fire, and forests in the western United States
Increases in fire activity and changes in fire regimes have been documented in recent decades across the western United States. Climate change is expected to continue to exacerbate impacts to forested eco-systems by increasing the frequency, size, and severity of wildfires across the western United States (US). Warming temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns are altering western landscapes and making them more susceptible to high-severity fire. Increases in large patches of high-severity fire can result in significant impacts to landscape processes and ecosystem function and changes to vegetation structure and composition. In this synthesis, we examine the predicted climatic influence on fire regimes and discuss the impacts on fire severity, vegetation dynamics, and the interactions between fire, vegetation, and climate.