Wildfire Risk


Thank you to the 135 people who contributed their time and perspectives to this survey effort!


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Northwestern Wyoming: Mapping the network of Wildfire Risk managers

In June 2022, we surveyed wildfire professionals in northwestern Wyoming to understand how different people and organizations are connected to each other and identify the breadth of experience, job types, scale and focus of work, and other factors that characterize the wildfire management network in this region. This is the latest of three study regions in which the CoMFRT Project (Co-Management of Fire Risk Transmission) has conducted a survey of this nature. These results not only identify the unique characteristics of this study region, but also provide the opportunity to compare the Wyoming wildfire network to that in north-central Washington and northern Utah. 

Northern Utah's Wasatch Region: Co-Management of Fire risk Transmission

Initiatives such as the Catastrophic Wildfire Risk Reduction Plan, the 2016 Utah legislative fire policy updates, Shared Stewardship, and the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy have convened a diversity of stakeholders from different agencies, jurisdictions, organizations, and interests, and envision a new future for wildfire risk management.  Participation in this research directly supports the aims of these state and federal initiatives by systematically mapping the diverse range of individuals, organizations, and agencies that are working to reduce wildfire risk in the region; assessing strategic alignment between practitioners; documenting how information and resources are shared; and identifying what and where additional resources may be needed.  

Thank you to the more than 200 people who participated in the Phase 1 online questionnaire on wildfire risk management in Northern Utah’s Wasatch Region in 2019!

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North Central Washington: Co-Management of Fire risk Transmission

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Local, state, and federal investments are shaping the future of wildfire risk management across the nation. To better understand how these investments are transforming the wildland fire management system, Portland State University (PSU) is partnering with the Co-Management of Fire Risk Transmission (CoMFRT) project.  The project goal is to better understand what the strategies and innovations are allowing people and institutions to work successfully together across jurisdictional, agency, organizational, and interest boundaries, and across scales and differences in context.  PSU is conducting research to identify who is part of the wildfire management system, what are their roles, where do they work, and how are they connected to each other.  The USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station is coordinating the CoMFRT partnership.  Outcomes from the project will include science-based recommendations for investments to improve the wildland fire system, sustain fire-adapted communities, and conserve the land.  

The CoMFRT team has initiated research in North Central Washington and Northern Utah, both are nationally recognized hotspots of wildfire risk.  

In October 2019, the CoMFRT team and stakeholders from local wildfire risk management organizations hosted a workshop to present research findings and brainstorm ways to transform the results into actionable recommendations for decision makers.  The following poster was presented by the PSU team and a workshop report is forthcoming.

CoMFRT Wenatchee poster - PSU.pdf

Visualizing fuels treatment effects on Wildfire Risk

These three animations explore the effect of different treatment patterns on wildfire spread in the area around Mt Emily in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. Forty percent of the Mt Emily landscape was treated (thin-from-below and mastication) in each treatment scenario: (a) focused on areas where stand density was greatest (i.e. the wildlands scenario), and (b) focused on stands where the density of nearby residences was greatest (i.e. the WUI scenario). A third scenario (i.e., the untreated scenario) withholds treatment and is included to show wildfire spread at current fuel loads. A single wildfire was simulated under fixed wind speed and direction, which ignites on the national forest southwest of Mt Emily with winds blowing at 20mph from the southwest. 

The wildfire animations (below) show fire growth over the same period of time for each of the 3 scenarios. The treated wildlands scenario slows the spread of the fire giving the most time between ignition and when the fire arrives near homes and other structures (white dots). The difference in spread rate is due to treatment patterns alone and shows how treatment interspersed throughout the national forest slows fire growth to a greater extent than treatment that is focused along the area directly abutting residential development. The simulation assumes that treatments involved thinning, removal of surface fuel (e.g., mastication, piling), and prescribed underburns. It did not simulate wildfire spotting.


Treatments, experimental design, and simulation results published in Ager et al. (2010); simulations animated by Cody Evers in 2015.


Ager, AA, NM Vailant, & MA Finney. 2015. A comparison of landscape fuel treatment strategies to mitigate wildland fire risk in the urban interface and preserve old forest structure.  Forest Ecology and Management 259(8):1556-570.  DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2010.01.032.

Treatment Scenarios

Mt_Emily Fire Simulation

Animations (above) of fire spread for three scenarios shows how the different treatment scenarios affect fire growth and spread as the same fire approaches developed areas near the base of Mt. Emily.  White dots represent homes and other structures.  Landscape colors represent vegetation with different fuel characteristics.

The All lands Wildfire Risk Explorer

The All Lands Wildfire Risk portal explores the social and biophysical aspects of wildfire risk in the context of large wildfires.  The portal focuses on wildfires that are transmitted across multiple boundaries and is designed to help assess the complexity and diversity of wildfire risk to communities in the western US.  (Pictured below: Bend, OR).  

Bend, Oregon

The USFS Cross Boundary Wildfire management Explorer

The USFS Cross Boundary Wildfire Management explorer specifically examines the geography of wildfire exposure from national forests by highlighting the parts of each national forest that are most likely to contribute threaten communities with wildfire and the neighborhoods or areas within communities where exposure to wildfire from national forests is greatest.

The effects of wildfires on local labor markets (2004 - 2008)

In general, western US counties experienced seasonally adjusted employment growth from 2003 through mid-2006, stagnated, and then began contracting in 2008 as the housing crisis and Great Recession took hold of the US economy (Figure 2). This pattern was more volatile in counties that experienced large wildfires during the study period. Growth in wildfire-affected counties in the pre-2006 period was more rapid than in counties that never experienced wildfire, and wildfire-affected counties experienced greater contraction in the post-2006 period. 

Wildfires tended to exhibit positive effects on employment during and immediately after suppression efforts. However, the general positive effect masked winners and losers across sectors — such as increases in employment in natural resource and government sectors and decreases in leisure and hospitality services as well as manufacturing sectors. The overall positive effect then transitioned to a negative drag on local employment growth for a period of up to two years following the wildfire.  Wildfires also amplified seasonal trends, leading to higher highs and lower lows, contributing to boom and bust cycles in employment and wage growth.

Changes in employment growth by month following a large wildfire. Zero on the x-axis is a month in which a large wildfire is being actively suppressed; asterisks (*) on the x-axis labels indicate time periods for which the deviation from the expected monthly growth rate for all counties was significant (alpha = 0.05).

The work above has been supported by multiple agreements with collaborators at the US Forest Service and colleagues from other universities including: