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.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abrams, DM. 1998. The red maple paradox. BioScience 48: 355–364
Akcakaya HR, Radeloff VC, Mladenoff DJ, He HS. 2004. Integrating landscape and metapopulation modeling approaches: Viability of the sharp-tailed grouse in a dynamic landscape. Conservation Biology 18: 526–537
Allen CD, Savage M, Falk DA, Suckling KF, Swetnam TW, Schulke T, Stacey PB, Morgan P, Hoffman M, Klingel JT. 2002. Ecological restoration of southwestern ponderosa pine Ecosystems: A broad perspective. Ecological Applications 12: 1418–1433
Andrews PL. 1986. BEHAVE: Fire behavior prediction and fuel modeling system-BURN subsystem, Part 1. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research StationGeneral Technical Report INT-194. Ogden, UT, 130 pp
Arienti MC, Cumming SG, Boutin S. 2006. Empirical models of forest fire initial attack success probabilities: The effects of fuels, anthropogenic linear features, fire weather, and management. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 36: 3155–3166
Bailey RG. 1998. Ecoregions: the ecosystem geography of the oceans and continents. New York: Springer. 176 pp
Butry DT, Pye JM, Prestemon JP. 2002. Prescribed fire in the interface: separating the people from the trees. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report SRS-48
Cardille JA, Ventura SJ. 2001. Occurrence of wildfire in the northern Great Lakes region: Effects of land cover and land ownership assessed at multiple scales. International Journal of Wildland Fire 10: 145–154
Cardille JA, Ventura SJ, Turner MG. 2001. Environmental and Social Factors Influencing Wildfires in the Upper Midwest, United States. Ecological Applications 11: 111–127
Cleland DT, Crow TR, Saunders SC, Dickmann DI, Maclean AL, Jordan JK, Watson RL, Sloan AM, Brosofske KD. 2004. Characterizing historical and modern fire regimes in Michigan (USA): A landscape ecosystem approach. Landscape Ecology 19: 311–325
Cortner H, Gardner P, Taylor J. 1990. Fire hazards at the urban-wildland interface: What the public expects. Environmental Management 14: 57–62
Cruz MG, Alexander ME, Wakimoto RH. 2005. Development and testing of models for predicting crown fire rate of spread in conifer forest stands. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 35: 1626–1639
Dellasala DA, Williams JE, Williams CD, Franklin JF. 2004. Beyond smoke and mirrors: a synthesis of fire policy and science. Conservation Biology 18: 976–986
Didion M, Fortin MJ, Fall A. 2007. Forest age structure as indicator of boreal forest sustainability under alternative management and fire regimes: A landscape level sensitivity analysis. Ecological Modelling 200: 45–58
Dombeck MP, Williams JE, Wood CA. 2004. Wildfire policy and public lands: Integrating scientific understanding with social concerns across landscapes. Conservation Biology 18: 883–889
Dupuy JL, Morvan D. 2005. Numerical study of a crown fire spreading toward a fuel break using a multiphase physical model. International Journal of Wildland Fire 14: 141–151
Finney MA. 2002. Fire growth using minimum travel time methods. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 32: 1420–1424
Finney MA. 2004. FARSITE: Fire Area Simulator–Model development and evaluation. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station Research Notes RMRS-RP-4
Frelich LE. 2002. Forest dynamics and disturbance regimes: studies from temperate evergreen-deciduous forests. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 266 pp
Gonzalez JR, Palah, Marc, Pukkala T. 2005. Integrating Fire Risk Considerations in Forest Management Planning in Spain GÇô A Landscape Level Perspective. Landscape Ecology 20: 957–970
Grundel R, Pavlovic NB, Sulzman CL. 1998. Habitat use by the endangered Karner blue butterfly in oak woodlands: the influence of canopy cover. Biological Conservation 85: 47–53
Gustafson EJ, Hammer RB, Radeloff VC, Potts RS. 2005. The relationship between environmental amenities and changing human settlement patterns between 1980 and 2000 in the Midwestern USA. Landscape Ecology 20:773–789
Gustafson EJ, Loehle C. 2006. Effects of parcelization and land divestiture on forest sustainability in simulated forest landscapes. Forest Ecology and Management 236: 305–314
Gustafson EJ, Shifley SR, Mladenoff DJ, Nimerfro KK, He HS. 2000. Spatial simulation of forest succession and timber harvesting using LANDIS. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 30: 32–43
Gustafson EJ, Sturtevant BR, Fall A. 2006. A collaborative, iterative approach to transfer modeling technology to land managers. Perera, AH, Buse, LJ, Crow, TR (editors). Forest landscape ecology: Transferring knowledge to practice. New York: Springer Science & Business Media
Gustafson EJ, Zollner PA, Sturtevant BR, He HS, Mladenoff DJ. 2004. Influence of forest management alternatives and land type on susceptibility to fire in northern Wisconsin, USA. Landscape Ecology 19: 327–341
Haight RG, Cleland DT, Hammer RB, Radeloff VC, Rupp TS. 2004. Assessing fire risk in the wildland-urban interface. Journal of Forestry 104: 41–48
Hanson PJ, Weltzin JF. 2000. Drought disturbance from climate change: response of United States forests. Science of the Total Environment 262: 205–220
Hawbaker T, Radeloff V, Hammer R, Clayton M. 2005. Road density and landscape pattern in relation to housing density, and ownership, land cover, and soils. Landscape Ecol 20:609–25
He HS, Hao ZQ, Larsen DR, Dai LM, Hu YM, Chang Y. 2002a. A simulation study of landscape scale forest succession in northeastern China. Ecological Modelling 156: 153–166
He HS, Larsen DR, Mladenoff DJ. 2002b. Exploring component based approaches in forest landscape modeling. Environmental Modelling and Software 17: 519–529
He HS, Li W, Sturtevant BR, Yang J, Shang BZ, Gustafson EJ, Mladenoff DJ. 2005. LANDIS 4.0 users guide. LANDIS: a spatially explicit model of forest landscape disturbance, management, and succession. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, North Central Research Station General Technical Report NC-263
He HS, Shang BZ, Crow TR, Gustafson EJ, Shifley SR. 2004. Simulating forest fuel and fire risk dynamics across landscapes - LANDIS fuel module design. Ecological Modelling 180: 135–151
Hessburg PF, Agee JK, Franklin JF. 2005. Dry forests and wildland fires of the inland Northwest USA: Contrasting the landscape ecology of the pre-settlement and modem eras. Forest Ecology and Management 211: 117–139
Keane RE, Cary GJ, Davies ID, Flannigan MD, Gardner RH, Lavorel S, Lenihan JM, Li C, Rupp TS. 2004. A classification of landscape fire succession models: Spatial simulations of fire and vegetation dynamics. Ecological Modelling 179: 3–27
Landers, JL, Van Lear DH, Boyer WD. 1995. The longleaf pine forests of the southeast: Requiem or renaissance? Journal of Forestry 93: 38–44
Lee B, Park PS, Chung J. 2006. Temporal and spatial characteristics of forest fires in South Korea between 1970 and 2003. International Journal of Wildland Fire 15: 389–396
Lefort P, Leduc A, Gauthier S, Bergeron Y. 2004. Recent fire regime (1945–1998) in the boreal forest of western Quebec. Ecoscience 11: 433–445
Loehle C. 2004. Applying landscape principles to fire hazard reduction. Forest Ecology and Management 198: 261–267
Malamud BD, Millington JDA, Perry GLW. 2005. Characterizing wildfire regimes in the United States. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 102:4694–99
Mladenoff DJ. 2004. LANDIS and forest landscape models. Ecological Modelling 180: 7–19
Noss RF, LaRoe ET, III, Scott JM. 1995. Endangered ecosystems of the United States: a preliminary assessment of loss and degredation. U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C. USA Biological Report 28
Pennanen J, Kuuluvainen T. 2002. A spatial simulation approach to natural forest landscape dynamics in boreal Fennoscandia. Forest Ecology and Management 164: 157–175
Post WM, Pastor J. 1996. LINKAGES - An individual-based forest ecosystem model. Climatic Change 34: 253–261
Prestemon JP, Pye JM, Butry DT, Holmes TP, Mercer DE. 2002. Understanding broadscale wildfire risks in a human-dominated landscape. Forest Science 48: 685–693
Probst RJ, Donner MD, Bocetti IC, Sjogren S. 2003. Population increase in Kirtland’s warbler and summer range expansion to Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, USA. Oryx 37: 365–373
Radeloff VC, Hammer RB, Stewart SI, Fried JS, Holcomb SS, Mckeefry JF. 2005. The wildland -urban interface in the United States. Ecological Applications 15: 799–805
Radeloff VC, Hammer RB, Voss PR, Hagen AE, Field DR, Mladenoff DJ. 2001. Human demographic trends and landscape level forest management in the northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens. Forest Science 47: 229–241
Radeloff VC, Mladenoff DJ, Boyce MS. 2000. A historical perspective and future outlook on landscape scale restoration in the northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens. Restoration Ecology 8:119–126
Radeloff VC, Mladenoff DJ, He HS, Boyce MS. 1999. Forest landscape change in the northwestern Wisconsin Pine Barrens from pre-European settlement to the present. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 29: 1649–1659
Rhodes JJ, Baker WL. 2008. Fire probability, fuel treatment effectiveness and ecological tradeoffs in western U.S. public forests. The Open Forest Science Journal 1: 1–7
Scheller RM, Mladenoff DJ. 2007. An ecological classification of forest landscape simulation models: tools and strategies for understanding broad-scale forested ecosystems. Landscape Ecology 22: 491–505
Scheller RM, Mladenoff DJ, Thomas RC, Sickley TA. 2005. Simulating the effects of fire reintroduction versus continued fire absence on forest composition and landscape structure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Northern Minnesota, USA. Ecosystems 8: 396–411
Scheller RM, Van Tuyl S, Clark K, Hayden NG, Hom J, Mladenoff DJ. 2008. Simulation of forest change in the New Jersey Pine Barrens under current and pre-colonial conditions. Forest Ecology and Management 255: 1489–1500
Schulte LA, Mladenoff DJ, Crow TR, Merrick LC, Cleland DT. 2007. Homogenization of northern U.S. Great Lakes forests due to land use. Landscape Ecology 22: 1089–1103
Snyder GW. 1999. Strategic holistic integrated planning for the future: fire protection in the Urban/Rural/Wildland Interface (URWIN). USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-173
Sturtevant BR, Cleland DT. 2007. Human and biophysical factors influencing modern fire disturbance in Northern Wisconsin. International Journal of Wildland Fire 16: 398–413
Wade D, Miller S, Stowe J, Brenner J. 2005. Rx fire laws: tools to protect fire: the ‘ecological imperative’. In: Dickinson MB, Ed. Fire in eastern oak forests: delivering science to land managers. US Forest Service Northern Research Station, Columbus, OH, USA, p 233–262: General Technical Report NRS-P-231
Ward BC, Mladenoff DJ, Scheller RM. 2005. Simulating landscape-level effects of constraints to public forest regeneration harvests due to adjacent residential development in Northern Wisconsin. Forest Science 51: 616–632
Wimberly MC. 2004. Fire and forest landscapes in the Georgia Piedmont: An assessment of spatial modeling assumptions. Ecological Modelling 180: 41–56
Xu CG, He HS, Hu YM, Chang Y, Li XZ, Bu RC. 2005. Latin hypercube sampling and geostatistical modeling of spatial uncertainty in a spatially explicit forest landscape model simulation. Ecological Modelling 185: 255–269
Yang J, He HS, Gustafson EJ. 2004. A Hierarchical Fire Frequency Model to Simulate Temporal Patterns of Fire Regimes in Landis. Ecological Modelling 180: 119–133
Yang J, He HS, Sturtevant BR, Miranda BR, Gustafson EJ. 2008. Comparing the effects of fire modeling methods on simulated fire patterns and succession: A case study in the Missouri Ozarks. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 38: 1290–1302
Zollner PA, Gustafson EJ, He HS, Radeloff VC, Mladenoff DJ. 2005. Modeling the influence of dynamic zoning of forest harvesting on ecological succession in a northern hardwoods landscape. Environmental Management 35: 410–425
Zollner, PA, Roberts LJ, Gustafson EJ, He HS, Radeloff VC. 2008. Influence of forest planning alternatives on landscape pattern and ecosystem processes in Northern Wisconsin, USA. Forest Ecology and Management 254: 429–444
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.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Author Contributions
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.
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
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
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-009-9234-8