Krista M. Gebert

Spatially explicit forecasts of large wildland fire probability and suppression costs for California

In the last decade, increases in fire activity and suppression expenditures have caused budgetary problems for federal land management agencies. Spatial forecasts of upcoming fire activity and costs have the potential to help reduce expenditures, and increase the efficiency of suppression efforts, by enabling them to focus resources where they have the greatest effect. In this paper, we present statistical models for estimating 1–6 months ahead spatially explicit forecasts of expected numbers, locations and costs of large fires on a 0.125° grid with vegetation, topography and hydroclimate data used as predictors. As an example, forecasts for California Federal and State protection responsibility are produced for historic dates and compared with recorded fire occurrence and cost data. The results seem promising in that the spatially explicit forecasts of large fire probabilities seem to match the actual occurrence of large fires, with the exception of years with widespread lightning events, which remain elusive. Forecasts of suppression expenditures did seem to differentiate between low- and high-cost fire years. Maps of forecast levels of expenditures provide managers with a spatial representation of where costly fires are most likely to occur. Additionally, the statistical models provide scientists with a tool for evaluating the skill of spatially explicit fire risk products.

The Effect of Newspaper Coverage and Political Pressure on Wildfire Suppression Costs

Controlling wildfire suppression expenditures has become a major public policy concern in the United States. However, most policy remedies have focused on the biophysical determinants of suppression costs: fuel loads and weather, for example. We show that two non-biophysical variables—newspaper coverage and political pressure—have a significant effect on wildfire suppression costs. Hausman tests showed that newspaper coverage and fire size were endogenous, so regression models were estimated using two-stage least squares. We suggest a number of non-biophysical policy remedies that may be able to reduce wildfire suppression expenditures more cost-effectively than traditional biophysical remedies such as fuel management.

Economics of Wildfire Management

In the United States, increased wildland fire activity over the last 15 years has resulted in increased pressure to balance the cost, benefits, and risks of wildfire management. Amid increased public scrutiny and a highly variable wildland fire environment, a substantial body of research has developed to study factors affecting the cost-effectiveness of wildfire management activities. This book examines the state-of-the-art in the economics of wildfire management. The introductory chapter presents the broad goal of the book: to take stock of research to-date on the economics of wildfire management and examine a way forward for answering remaining research questions. Subsequent chapters review existing research, present new empirical analyses of fire management expenditures, and examine potential applications of expenditure models for decision making.

Factors affecting fire suppression costs as identified by incident management teams

This study uses qualitative sociological methodology to discover information and insights about the role of Incident Management Teams in wildland fire suppression costs. We interviewed 48 command and general staff members of Incident Management Teams throughout the United States. Interviewees were asked about team structure, functioning, and decision making as a framework for determining their views on issues that drive costs. Topics affecting costs that emerged prominently are discussed in this report. They include, in no particular order: lack of decision space; outside costs over which Incident Management Teams have no control; rigid policies and rules limiting the ability to manage effectively, including cost-effectively mitigating for safety dangers on the ground; external decisions affecting costs; use of sophisticated technology; expanding public demand for information related to sophisticated technology; increased use of contracting for equipment and services; other demands on the agency; increased aircraft use; agency reorganizations affecting workforce availability; and new rules and regulations limiting flexibility needed for geographic differences. These findings should be useful in addressing wildfire suppression cost issues in the future.

Modeling Fire Expenditures with Spatially Descriptive Data

A regression model of suppression expenditures based on spatially descriptive fire characteristics in the United States Forest Service, Northern Region (Region 1) is expanded to include all six regions of the western United States. Spatially descriptive landscape and fire characteristics are calculated using available final burned area perimeters for large wildfires (greater than approx. 121 hectares). These characteristics are used as independent variables to describe variations in total suppression expenditures for 419 fires. Hierarchical partitioning is employed to develop a parsimonious regression model, and results are checked for spatial autocorrelation. Results suggest that spatially descriptive data is useful for explaining variations in suppression expenditures, and spatial data with regional controls can account for spatial error patterns observed in the dependent variable. Spatially descriptive models have the potential to be used for a variety of applications where expenditure estimates are needed and planning and management activities rely on spatially explicit information that can be used in expenditure models. However, finer-scale geospatial data is necessary to integrate spatially descriptive expenditure models with spatially explicit fire management planning tools (such as outputs from fire simulations).

Corrigendum to: Factors influencing large wildland fire suppression expenditures

There is an urgent and immediate need to address the excessive cost of large fires. Here, we studied large wildland fire suppression expenditures by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Among 16 potential non-managerial factors, which represented fire size and shape, private properties, public land attributes, forest and fuel conditions, and geographic settings, we found only fire size and private land had a strong effect on suppression expenditures. When both were accounted for, all the other variables had no significant effect. A parsimonious model to predict suppression expenditures was suggested, in which fire size and private land explained 58% of variation in expenditures. Other things being equal, suppression expenditures monotonically increased with fire size. For the average fire size, expenditures first increased with the percentage of private land within burned area, but as the percentage exceeded 20%, expenditures slowly declined until they stabilised when private land reached 50% of burned area. The results suggested that efforts to contain federal suppression expenditures need to focus on the highly complex, politically sensitive topic of wildfires on private land.

Outlook and Future Research Directions for the Economics of Wildfire Management

This chapter summarizes the findings on the state-of-the-art for wildfire management economics research. The previous chapters have demonstrated that there is considerable complexity in describing the determinants of large fire suppression expenditures, and much remains to be known about the costs of fire management. Future research directions are summarized, including community responses to perceived fire risk, managerial incentives and risk preferences, and socio-political factors in fire management decisions. Current trends in large wildfire activity and management expenditures suggest that further economic research may be useful in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of wildfire management.

Regional and Temporal Trends in Wildfire Suppression Expenditures

This chapter explores regional and temporal patterns of wildfire suppression expenditures. A key question addressed is whether expenditure differences across time or between regions are explained by differences in fire characteristics, differences in management responses to fire, or unobserved factors. Three analyses are conducted: A time-series analysis of aggregate expenditures at the regional level to discern year-over-year trends due to random processes; an analysis of trends in cost-performance metrics based on the Stratified Cost Index model; and, a micro-level regression model that examines the determinants of suppression expenditures over time and between regions. In the latter case, introducing year- and region-specific interactions with fire characteristics in expenditure regressions can indicate whether observations of higher (or lower) expenditures in certain years and regions can be attributed to variation in fire characteristics or to unobserved differences between years and regions. Taken together, these analyses highlight the complex relationships between expenditures, fire characteristics, climate and weather, and human factors in determining suppression expenditures.

Development and Application of Wildland Fire Expenditures Models

Models of fire management expenditures can play a crucial role in the management of wildland fire incidents. This chapter reviews the development and uses of expenditure models, such as the Stratified Cost Index (SCI). Expenditure models are used in decision support tools, budget planning tools, post-season incident reviews, and land management planning. Fire expenditure models are also useful for examining the decisions made by managers on fire incidents and factors influencing suppression activities. Increased exposure to the effects of wildfire and escalating suppression expenditures, particularly in the western United States, suggests that there is a need for improved expenditure models in the future.

Linking Suppression Expenditure Modeling with Large Wildfire Simulation Modeling

Land management agencies face uncertain tradeoffs regarding investments in preparedness and pre-fire management versus future suppression expenditures and impacts to valued resources and assets. This chapter illustrates one potential method for linking suppression expenditure models with fire simulation models in order to estimate suppression expenditures and evaluate alternative risk mitigation strategies. A case study application in the Deschutes National Forest illustrates how fire simulation outputs can be linked with geospatial information from other databases to calibrate a model of wildfire suppression expenditures. The resulting output can describe the expenditure consequences of different spatial and temporal arrangements of fuel treatments. In the case study example, fuel treatments that reduce median fire sizes on the landscape by 5.25 % yield suppression expenditure savings of 5.03 % over a ten-year time span. Within the treated areas only, effects of fuel treatments on fire size and expenditures are larger as more fires interact with the treated portions of the landscape. The approach illustrated in the case study allows analysts to address a variety of salient wildfire management and policy questions, including comparative assessments of alternative wildfire management strategies and comparisons of expected suppression expenditures across landscapes and geographic areas.