Collaborative Research: Fire Risk and Ecological Intergrity in the Wildland Urban Interface of Colorado Front Range

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In the western U.S. resource managers are increasingly concerned with the objectives of restoring ecosystems to their pre-settlement conditions while also mitigating the risks of fires to property and resource values. The dual management goals of ecological restoration and fire-risk mitigation are not always compatible, especially where natural fire regimes consisted of large, severe fires. This collaborative research project will explore relationships among forest management, land-use change, fire risk, and ecological integrity in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) spanning four counties of the Colorado Front Range. The investigators will develop spatially explicit baseline studies that evaluate how fire exclusion and land-use patterns have affected wildfire behavior and the spatial extent of fire risk to people and property across the WUI landscape. Building upon these baseline assessments, the study will consider which spatial combination of land-use and forest-management scenarios would significantly reduce fire risk while also protecting ecological integrity across a heterogeneous wildland-urban interface. This work integrates natural and human dimensions of resilience and landscape change in the WUI of the Colorado Front Range.Scientific and communication products will be generated through this project, with many having application to societal questions of how resilient human and natural communities can be sustained in a fire-prone, ever-expanding WUI. Products are expected to include (1) baseline studies of historical fire regimes and forest-stand structures across the Colorado Front Range WUI, (2) studies of historical exurban development patterns and their effect on the degree and distribution of wildfire risk across the WUI, (3) analysis of departure from historical ecological conditions and an improved wildfire risk map, and (4) spatially explicit evaluation of key fire-mitigation and forest restoration options.