Hazards SEES: Land Management Strategies for Confronting Risks and Consequences of Wildfire

一个由自然科学家和社会科学家组成的小组确定了将减少野火风险和影响的土地管理战略。联邦和州政府机构采用的燃料处理技术，如稀释和控制燃烧，往往会对人类和生态系统产生意想不到的后果，因为无论是机构还是研究界都不完全了解火，植被和生态系统服务之间的相互作用。此外，机构决策者可能会根据公众关注、经济考虑和政治动态做出有关燃料处理的决定。这项研究结合了对机构决策的分析，并了解了燃料处理对火灾风险、供水、野生动物栖息地和碳储存的影响。此外，还与土地管理人员举行了一系列会议，以确保研究有助于土地管理人员改善城市地区边界公共土地上的野火管理。该项目涉及燃料处理决策、火灾风险、流域生态和水文的综合模型。该模型结合了机构决策的经验分析与火灾蔓延的随机模型和区域水文模拟系统（RHESSys），生态系统生长和水文的空间分布的机制模型。研究小组使用该模型分析燃料处理决策的影响，并根据反映气候，植被，水文和土地管理行动之间相互作用的标准制定最佳燃料处理策略。该小组利用一系列利益攸关方会议，在制定这些标准时征求土地管理者的意见。该项目包括在新墨西哥州和塞拉利昂南部的临界区观测站以及圣巴巴拉的长期生态研究站测试综合模型。该团队使用最先进的计算技术来开发集成的建模工具、工作流程、文档和可视化，以支持更广泛的研究社区使用该模型，并将其集成到更大规模的地球系统模型中。这项工作直接促进可持续性，帮助土地管理者优化其流域的燃料处理策略，以降低野火的风险、频率、严重程度和成本，并支持其他流域规模的生态系统服务，如供水、栖息地和碳固存。

A team consisting of natural scientists and social scientists identifies land management strategies that will reduce the risk and the impacts of wildfires. Federal and state agencies apply fuel treatment techniques such as thinning and controlled burns that often generate unintended consequences for humans and ecosystems because neither the agencies nor the research community fully understand the interactions among fire, vegetation, and ecosystem services. Furthermore, agency decision makers may make decisions about fuel treatments on the basis of public attention, economic considerations, and political dynamics. This research combines an analysis of agency decision making with an understanding of the consequences of fuel treatment for fire risk, water provision, wildlife habitat, and carbon storage. In addition, there are a series of meetings with land managers to ensure that the research helps land managers to improve the management of wildfire in the public lands that border urban areas.This project involves an integrated model of fuel treatment decision making, fire risk, and watershed ecology and hydrology. The model combines empirical analysis of agency decision making with a stochastic model of fire spread and the Region Hydro-Ecologic Simulation System (RHESSys), a spatially distributed mechanistic model of ecosystem growth and hydrology. The research team uses the model to analyze the impact of fuel treatment decisions and prescribes optimal fuel treatment strategies according to criteria that reflect interactions among climate, vegetation, hydrology, and land management actions. The team uses a series of stakeholder meetings to obtain land manager input in the development of these criteria. The project includes testing the integrated model at Critical Zone Observatory sites in New Mexico and the southern Sierra and at a Long-Term Ecological Research site in Santa Barbara. The team uses state-of-the art computing to develop integrated modeling tools, workflows, documentation, and visualization that support the use of the model by a broader research community and its integration into larger scale earth system models. The work directly facilitates sustainability by helping land managers to optimize fuel treatment strategies for their watersheds to reduce the risks, the frequency, the severity, and the costs of wildfires and support other watershed-scale ecosystem services such as water provision, habitat and carbon sequestration.