The good news was that when 30% of the burnable landscape was actively managed to reduce fire risk with forest-thinning techniques and grassland restoration, the threat to homes fell by nearly half in the world of extreme wildfires.Ģ) Choose treatments wisely: Reducing forest density by thinning out smaller trees and underbrush effectively reduced the spread and severity of fires in extreme fire weather. ![]() In our worst-case scenario – in which rural development expands without constraint and the forests aren’t thinned by people or allowed to burn naturally – over 30 times more homes were threatened than under conditions with less rural population growth and more management. Here are three key lessons we’re learning from our research on how people might reliably reduce their losses in a future that could bring more fires, unpredictable larger fires, or both.ġ) Prepare for uncertainty: In a simulated world with extreme, unpredictable wildfires, 10 times more homes were threatened in our study area than in identical rural development and forest management scenarios under less extreme climate impacts. It turned out that those worst-case projections were dwarfed by the wildfires in 2020 just outside our study area. Under the other, more extreme climate model, wildfires larger than any experienced in the Willamette Valley’s recent past could erupt without warning, threatening homes even as landowners’ vegetation management reduced the fires’ spread. Under one climate model, wildfire behavior remained much the same as in the recent past while the number of fires grew because of increased human ignitions as the population increased. We tested different strategies under two climate models in 600 simulated futures. Over time, the simulated landowners could respond to emerging threats while protecting valued crops, amenities, lifestyles and ecosystems. Our simulations played out in carefully mapped representations of that landscape beginning in 2007, including its vegetation, property boundaries and the type of landowner managing each parcel, such as farmers, foresters or rural residents who moved to the countryside from the city.įor each of 50 simulated years, as climate models generated fire weather and altered the vegetation, each landowner chose actions such as removing hazardous fuels like small trees and underbrush, restoring fire-adapted ecosystems, growing crops, building homes or protecting homes with landscaping and building materials recommended by the National Fire Protection Association’s Firewise program.įorest thinning (left) and grassland restoration can help reduce wildfire severity. ![]() To do this, we created a computer version of the rural landscape around Eugene-Springfield, a midsize metropolitan area in Oregon’s Willamette Valley with a rapidly expanding population. What might the future hold?īecause climate change is contributing to unprecedented extreme fire weather, we used simulation modeling to explore and test how forest management and rural development could reduce or amplify wildfire risks in coming decades. Our research team of landscape architects, ecologists, social scientists and computer scientists has been exploring and testing strategies to help. The emergence of extreme fires in recent years and the resulting devastation shows that communities need better means to anticipate mounting dangers, and underscores how settlement patterns, land management and lifestyles will have to change to prevent even larger catastrophes. Clockwise from left, NASA, McKenzie River Trust, Lane County, J. Images during, before and after Oregon’s Holiday Farm Fire, which burned 170,000 acres and destroyed 768 homes and other structures in 2020, show the landscape challenges left behind. How can people prepare for a future that’s unlike anything their communities have ever experienced? But they also want to protect core values they cherish – good places to raise their children, freedom to choose their lifestyle, a sense of place in nature and belonging. They want to know how to protect their homes, their families, their communities. Fear of what the future holds in a changing climate lends uncertainty to people’s daily lives. ![]() This kind of trauma is becoming familiar, from loss of homes to the obliteration of entire towns. At the same time, firefighters were also trying to protect two other communities – all not far from where the deadly Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018. Hours earlier, the sheriff had warned Greenville’s remaining residents to get out immediately as strong, gusty winds drove the Dixie Fire toward town. 4, reducing neighborhoods and the historic downtown to charred rubble. A wildfire burning in hot, dry mountain forest swept through the Gold Rush town of Greenville, California, on Aug.
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