Project Details

Fuel treatments such as prescribed fire and mechanical treatments are tools used widely by land managers to meet objectives such as reduction of fire area burned, reduction of fire behavior variables such as flame length and rate of spread, and reduction of fire severity. Fuel treatments have ballooned in scope and expense and, in the face of a warming climate and increasing fire severity, agencies in the state of Utah are allocating significant resources to this area. The state of Utah, the BLM in Utah, and the Forest Service in Utah have all committed large amounts of funding to fuel treatments over the past several years and moving forward. Fuel treatments can be effective in meeting objectives, but the research evidence for this comes mostly from case studies in low-elevation, pine-dominated systems. We need a better understanding of which fuel treatments are most effective, in which vegetation types they are most effective, and for how long they are effective so that managers have good information as they prioritize projects and make decisions.

Provide evidence about the nature of the problem and the need to address it. Identify the significance of the problem using a variety of data sources. For example, if a habitat restoration project is being proposed to benefit greater sage-grouse, describe the existing plant community characteristics that limit habitat value for greater sage-grouse and identify the changes needed for habitat improvement.

Provide an overall goal for the project and then provide clear, specific and measurable objectives (outcomes) to be accomplished by the proposed actions. If possible, tie to one or more of the public benefits UWRI is providing.

Although wildfire is a integral component of natural ecosystems, it can have harmful effects on human communities through damage to property, watersheds, and air quality. It is also expensive; fire prevention is far more cost-effective than fire suppression, especially for large, high-severity fires. Fuel reduction treatments can help reduce the threat of high-severity fire, and also result in other ecological benefits. For example, fuel reduction treatments that reduce the threat of wildfire and subsequent cheatgrass invasion may be the only tool that can maintain important wildlife habitat, since cheatgrass is almost impossible to eradicate after it dominates a landscape and the grass-fire cycle is established. Other values, such as healthy watersheds and intact soil, are also easier and cheaper to protect than to rebuild. This project is designed to evaluate the effectiveness of fuel treatments and make recommendations about whether they are optimal in reducing the threats and risks to values in Utah.

LOCATION: Justify the proposed location of this project over other areas, include publicly scrutinized planning/recovery documents that list this area as a priority, remote sensing modeling that show this area is a good candidate for restoration, wildlife migration information and other data that help justify this project's location.

TIMING: Justify why this project should be implemented at this time. For example, Is the project area at risk of crossing an ecological or other threshold wherein future restoration would become more difficult, cost prohibitive, or even impossible.

Several Fire Management objectives in the State of Utah Resource Management Plan, which align with the Utah Catastrophic Wildfire Reduction Strategy (CatFire), overlap with this project. Goals of CatFire include resilient landscapes, fire adapted communities, and strong and effective local wildfire response. Fuels treatments can help with all of these goals, and a detailed understanding of fuels treatments that are maximally effective can help with efficient, cost-effective actions that meet CatFire goals. Other objectives of CatFire that overlap include "Make sure literature is updated as necessary to incorporate current research information", "Identify gaps in research and pursue funding to address research needs", and "Maintain collaborative efforts with interagency partners to deliver and update information". Finally, Utah's goal to "Expand planning opportunities" for Wildland Fire Fuel Management overlaps with this project as well.

The US Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management uses the Utah Land Use Plan Amendment for Fire and Fuels Management. Although several resource protection measures are relevant, the one that most directly relates to this project is "Establish fuel treatment projects at strategic locations to minimize size of wildfires and to limit further loss of sagebrush". One goal of this project directly addresses this measure by evaluating whether fuel treatment projects are indeed being placed at locations that minimize the size of wildfires.

The USDA Forest Service Region 4 encompasses all of Utah, as well as parts of other states. Each National Forest in Utah has a Forest Plan, and each of them include language on fuels treatments. For example, the Forest Plan for the Uinta portion of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest states that "the reduction of fuels in the wildland urban interface protects homes, forest infrastructure, and sensitive watersheds from catastrophic wildfire... Fuels treatments consist of prescribed fire, wildland fire use, mechanical treatments, biological treatments, and other approved fuels treatment techniques. These treatments play an active role in the management of forested and non-forested vegetation health, rangeland health, wildlife habitat, watershed, and social concerns across the Forest. All fuels treatment methods are utilized to improve vegetation structure and age class diversity." The Dixie National Forest Plan Goal # 48 is to "Establish and maintain fuel mosaics which result in an acceptable hazard and spread potential of wildfire, allow an appropriate wildfire suppression, and coordination to other resource programs and objectives." This project will address these Forest Plan and others in the state of Utah by evaluating whether fuels treatments are meeting stated objectives as well as acting effectively to reduce wildfire risk.

List management plans where this project will address an objective or strategy in the plan. Describe how the project area overlaps the objective or strategy in the plan and the relevance of the project to the successful implementation of those plans. It is best to provide this information in a list format with the description immediately following the plan objective or strategy.

Fuels reduction treatments are designed to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire, which can result in damage to homes and infrastructure, watersheds, wildlife habitat, and other critical infrastructure. This project is focused on fuel reduction treatments across the state of Utah, and outcomes will be shared with the goal of refining how and where fuel treatments are implemented, to better protect values at risk.

Previous research has shown, in dry pine-dominated forests, that fuel treatments (especially thin + burn treatments) reduce fire severity, crown and bole scorch, and tree mortality compared to untreated forests. However, the findings are less consistent for other types of treatments, such as mastication. Most fuel treatment research has focused on dry pine forests, and most research has consisted of case studies. This limits the general inferences that can be made about the effectiveness of treatments.There has been far less work examining fuel treatment effectiveness in rangeland or high-elevation forests, and also far less work examining large datasets to analyze patterns in fuel treatments and wildfires at a regional scale.

"Exposure" to fire is a metric used to try to determine whether fuel treatment projects are being targeted to the appropriate regions. This is important for cost-effective use of limited resources. Of the thousands of treated acres, many of those do not experience fire within the window of treatment effectiveness (up to ~15 years). The cost of treatment per unit area ($5-2000/acre) is an order of magnitude less than the cost of suppression and rehabilitation, especially in severe wildfires ($27/acre up to >$20,000/acre). Therefore, the judicious placement of treatments is key to optimizing the total funds spent on the combination of mitigation and suppression on western landscapes.

If applicable, detail how the proposed project will significantly reduce the risk of fuel loading and/or continuity of hazardous fuels including the use of fire-wise species in re-seeding operations. Describe the value of any features being protected by reducing the risk of fire. Values may include; communities at risk, permanent infrastructure, municipal watersheds, campgrounds, critical wildlife habitat, etc. Include the size of the area where fuels are being reduced and the distance from the feature(s) at risk.

Describe how the project has the potential to improve water quality and/or increase water quantity, both over the short and long term. Address run-off, erosion, soil infiltration, and flooding, if applicable.

Description of efforts, both completed and planned, to bring the proposed action into compliance with any and all cultural resource, NEPA, ESA, etc. requirements. If compliance is not required enter "not applicable" and explain why not it is not required.

In the first approach, we will use existing datasets from the Utah Forestry Fire and State Lands, the Utah BLM, and the USFS in Utah to summarize fuel treatment interactions with fire perimeters and fire starts, to assess treatment exposure to wildfire. The first question we will answer is: how are fire risk metrics and fuel treatments related? We will create a grid over the state of Utah; within each grid cell, fire risk metrics will be correlated with fuel treatment characteristics to assess whether fuel treatments are located in highest-risk regions within Utah. Fire risk metrics will come from the Utah Wildfire Risk Assessment Portal (UWRAP) as well as data we can derive from datasets such as area burned, fire severity, and fire starts. The second question we will address using these data is: what is the probability that a treatment is "tested" by fire in Utah, and what is the likelihood that a fire will encounter a treatment? To answer these questions, we will use ArcGIS software and account for timing of both fires and treatments (e.g., a treatment is not "tested" by a fire that burned prior to the treatment). The third question the graduate student will answer using fuel treatment and fire spatial data is: how do fire starts, final fire sizes, fire severity, and suppression costs compare when fires start in treated vs. untreated areas? In answering this question, we will also be able to evaluate whether treatments vary by age or treatment type, or by underlying vegetation type, in their effect on wildfire metrics.

In the second approach, we will use existing monitoring data to compare treatment objectives with values measured in monitoring plots. Questions may include: for how many years are objectives met? Do treated areas differ significantly from untreated areas? The details of this analysis will depend on the variables monitored by each agency and how long plots are monitored, as well as where monitoring plots are located. This dataset is least certain in terms of the outcomes we can produce. However, it is worth exploring. Taking advantage of available data will allow us to extract all useful information from the work that has been done and provide feedback about relative effectiveness of different types of treatments in meeting objectives as well as longevity of treatments. We will also be able to provide feedback about the utility of the monitoring data being collected and whether there are key additional variables that could be measured to increase the value of monitoring programs.

In the third approach, we will use existing datasets to model fire behavior in the presence and absence of treatments. Actual fire starts that occurred in treated areas will be modeled using fuel models representing treated and untreated fuels. We will compare the outcomes in terms of flame length, rate of spread, and other fire behavior characteristics that are important for suppression to answer: Do fuel treatments result in measurable differences in fire behavior and potential ecological effects? Scaled up to scales of space and time larger than individual wildfires, what is the overall effect of fuel treatments on area burned and fire severity in Utah? This work could be used as a first step toward developing a tool that would allow managers to model treatment impacts to fire and help prioritize and plan management actions.

Describe the actions, activities, tasks to be implemented as part of the proposed project; how these activities will be carried out, equipment to be used, when, and by whom.

Describe plans to monitor for project success and achievement of stated objectives. Include details on type of monitoring (vegetation, wildlife, etc.), schedule, assignments and how the results of these monitoring efforts will be reported and/or uploaded to this project page. If needed, upload detailed plans in the "attachments" section.

List any and all partners (agencies, organizations, NGO's, private landowners) that support the proposal and/or have been contacted and included in the planning and design of the proposed project. Describe efforts to gather input and include these agencies, landowners, permitees, sportsman groups, researchers, etc. that may be interested/affected by the proposed project. Partners do not have to provide funding or in-kind services to a project to be listed.

Detail future methods or techniques (including administrative actions) that will be implemented to help in accomplishing the stated objectives and to insure the long term success/stability of the proposed project. This may include: post-treatment grazing rest and/or management plans/changes, wildlife herd/species management plan changes, ranch plans, conservation easements or other permanent protection plans, resource management plans, forest plans, etc.

Potential for the proposed action to improve quality or quantity of sustainable uses such as grazing, timber harvest, biomass utilization, recreation, etc. Grazing improvements may include actions to improve forage availability and/or distribution of livestock.