A firefighter conducts a prescribed burn in the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon to restore habitat, reduce wildfire risk, and manage invasive species.
Photo Credit: U.S. FWS

By L. Mae Lacey, Justin P. Suraci, Caitlin E. Littlefield, Blake S. Busse, and Brett G. Dickson.

Read the full paper here.

While wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems, they are becoming larger and more dangerous. As a consequence, they present a growing threat to both humans and nature. Often, land managers try to reduce the severity of wildfires by removing live and dead trees and dry brush from forests before a wildfire starts. This can be costly and time consuming work. With limited resources, land managers like the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) have to strategically decide on which areas they focus. This process does not always consider the different ways certain human communities and ecosystems are vulnerable to wildfire. Instead, the process tends to focus on the risk to human-built structures.

To address this missing consideration, we identified the areas within the United States that are likely to benefit the most from proactive management to mitigate wildfire risk based on the social vulnerability of human communities and the ecological values and ecosystem services most at risk of being harmed or lost due to wildfire. Social vulnerability is based on variables like low income and high prevalence of respiratory health conditions sensitive to smoke inhalation, while ecological values and services include biodiverse areas and clean drinking water sources. We compared the areas we identified to those that the USFS is currently targeting. Our goal was to understand how more explicitly considering highly vulnerable human and ecological communities within the USFS’ current target areas can give the USFS a greater overall ‘bang for their land management buck.’

We found that including social vulnerability and ecological considerations substantially increased the representation of vulnerable human communities and ecological values relative to the USFS’ current target areas. This means that by prioritizing wildfire risk mitigation efforts in the locations where these highly vulnerable areas coincide with the USFS’ current targets, the USFS will likely receive a higher return on their investment from both a human- and nature-minded perspective. This analysis provides actionable guidance in the form of an interactive web map application to explore the spatial distribution of these areas with the greatest return on management investment and ultimately integrate them into existing prioritizations.