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Studying Fire Mitigation Strategies in Multi-Ownership Landscapes: Balancing the Management of Fire-Dependent Ecosystems and Fire Risk

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Abstract

Public forests are surrounded by land over which agency managers have no control, and whose owners expect the public forest to be a “good neighbor.” Fire risk abatement on multi-owner landscapes containing flammable but fire-dependent ecosystems epitomizes the complexities of managing public lands. We report a case study that applies a landscape disturbance and succession model (LANDIS) to evaluate the relative effectiveness of four alternative fire mitigation strategies on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (Wisconsin, USA), where fire-dependent pine and oak systems overlap with a rapidly developing wildland–urban interface (WUI). We incorporated timber management of the current forest plan and fire characteristics (ignition patterns, fire sizes, and fuel-specific fire spread rates) typical for the region under current fire suppression policies, using a combination of previously published fire analyses and interactive expert opinion from the national forest. Of the fire mitigation strategies evaluated, reduction of ignitions caused by debris-burning had the strongest influence on fire risk, followed by the strategic redistribution of risky forest types away from the high ignition rates of the WUI. Other treatments (fire breaks and reducing roadside ignitions) were less effective. Escaped fires, although rare, introduced significant uncertainty in the simulations and are expected to complicate fire management planning. Simulations also show that long-term maintenance of fire-dependent communities (that is, pine and oak) representing the greatest forest fire risk requires active management. Resolving conflict between the survival of fire-dependent communities that are regionally declining and continued rural development requires strategic planning that accounts for multi-owner activities.

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Acknowledgments

This study was a collaborative effort between the authors and personnel from the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, conducted through a series of workshops and personal interviews and funded by the National Fire Plan, to inform landscape-scale fire and fuel mitigation strategies for the Lakewood subdistrict. Key participants in the discussions and workshops include: Joel H. Skjerven, Jim Grant, Mary Lucas, Jay Saunders, John Lampereur, Al Harrison, Mark Theisen, and Geoff Chandler. We thank Robert Costanza (US Forest Service) for his assistance with model calibration and output summary. We are also grateful to Sue Stewart (US Forest Service), Roger Hammer (Oregon State University), Volker Radeloff (University of Wisconsin), and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Brian R. Sturtevant.

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B. R. Sturtevant conceived and designed the project, analyzed model output, and led the writing of the manuscript. B. R. Miranda constructed the simulation scenarios, led the acquisition of input data and model calibration, summarized the model output, and wrote sections of the manuscript. H. S. He is a principle designer and programmer of LANDIS 4.0 who specifically contributed the fuel module for the project. J. Yang designed and programmed the fire module of LANDIS 4.0 and helped calibrate the fire regime with prototype models. E. J. Gustafson helped to design the study and contributed to the writing of the manuscript. R. M. Scheller modeled species establishment coefficients as a function of soil input data from the study landscape.

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Sturtevant, B.R., Miranda, B.R., Yang, J. et al. Studying Fire Mitigation Strategies in Multi-Ownership Landscapes: Balancing the Management of Fire-Dependent Ecosystems and Fire Risk. Ecosystems 12, 445–461 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-009-9234-8

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