Pacific Northwest Research Station

The past few decades have seen an influx of people buying homes in the wildland-urban interface, where fuel loads are often elevated owing to aggressive fire suppression over the past century. Some agencies and organizations have responded by targeting education programs at people who already live in these areas, but there has been little information about the role of wildfire risk on the home purchase decisions in fire-prone areas. Of the homebuyers surveyed in this study, only 27 percent realized they were purchasing a home in an area at risk of wildfire prior to making an offer on the house. When asked what would have been a good way for homebuyers to become more informed about wildfire risk, the most common response was that they wanted to get this information from their realtors, which given the potential conflict of interest, seems unlikely to happen.

Contact: Geoffrey Donovan, gdonovan@fs.fed.us, Goods, Services, and Values Program

Station scientists wanted to know how nonindustrial private forest owners in eastern Oregon perceive and address wildfire risk. They discovered that 75 percent of surveyed owners of ponderosa pine forests had treated some portion of their land between 2003 and 2008. Primary residents were almost eight times more likely to reduce fire risk on their property than absentee owners. Also, owners living near public lands were more likely to manage their land, providing the added benefit of buffering fire risk between public and private land.

Lack of knowledge or skills did not emerge as a significant barrier to fire risk management, implying that educational strategies may not be the best investment of public funds. Instead, owners indicated that they lacked sufficient resources to offset the costs of hazardous fuel reduction, and that they would benefit from cost-share funds and markets for logs and wood products generated through thinning.

This study identified types of landowners who might benefit from policies and programs for wildfire risk education. It also revealed insights into the management motivations and constraints of different groups of owners, which can help decisionmakers tailor policies and programs to specific audiences.

Contact: Paige Fischer, paigefischer@fs.fed.us, Goods, Services, and Values Program

Fuel treatments at the wildland-urban interface are not universally accepted by the homeowners they are intended to benefit. To help managers understand and predict homeowners’ attitudes toward different types of fuel treatments, and their intentions to approve the use of such treatments, scientists developed a survey that was tested and administered in California, Florida, and Michigan.

The survey revealed that California residents tended to have positive attitudes toward mechanical treatments to remove fuel and toward defensible-space ordinances that require homeowners to remove flammable vegetation near their homes. Florida residents tended to have more positive attitudes toward prescribed burns, while fewer Michigan residents were supportive of mechanical treatments or prescribed burns. Although strong regional differences were observed, nearly all homeowners in the wildland-urban interface were generally supportive of at least one of the fuel management approaches under consideration.

Land managers can use and adapt this survey to poll homeowners living in fire-prone areas around the country. When necessary, managers can follow up with targeted information that may change homeowners’ beliefs and attitudes toward fuel management activities.

Contact: Jeremy Fried, jsfried@fs.fed.us, Resource Monitoring and Assessment Program

Managing dry forests on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range involves striking a balance between the desired forest structure and the risk of wildfire or insect outbreaks. Management decisions are based on different objectives, environmental settings, social acceptability, and natural disturbances. To help managers weigh all these factors and predict potential outcomes of their actions, the Interagency Mapping and Assessment Project (IMAP) complied data and developed methods and models for mid- to broad-scale landscape assessment and planning.

The IMAP team assessed 680,000 acres in the central Oregon Cascades by using three different management scenarios suggested through public input. The simulations showed that (1) fuel treatments in the wildland-urban interface may shift wildfire behavior as fires burn in grass, shrubs, and open forests ,but may not reduce overall wildfire probability; (2) treatments designed to encourage multistory, large-tree forests resulted in increased wildfire and insect outbreaks; and (3) managing toward historical conditions resulted in increases in single-story large tree forests and decreases in high-severity wildfire and insect outbreaks.

IMAP models are being used in forest plan revisions for the Umatilla, Malheur, and Wallowa-Whitman National Forests. Models are currently being developed for the Fremont-Winema, Deschutes, and Ochoco National Forests.

Contact: Miles Hemstrom, mhemstrom@fs.fed.us, Focused Science Delivery Program