Core Research Areas and Projects
Center activities are organized around several key and inter-related core research areas. Below is a brief synopsis of each core research area and related projects. To learn more about our activities, follow the links given under the specific project descriptions.
Core Research Areas
Building in Wildfire-Prone Areas
The reason we worry about wildfires is primarily because humans have developed into fire-prone wildland areas. This situation poses a direct threat to those living in and along the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Past catastrophic losses due to wildfires impacting the WUI and the growing number of people living in these areas indicate that the problem is only getting worse.
Key projects under this core research area include the Fire Information Engine Toolkit (including an interactive homeowner assessment, also available in Spanish, and a community hazard assessment), the Homeowners Wildfire Mitigation Guide, and the Builders Wildfire Mitigation Guide (available soon). In addition, we are in the process of establishing an experimental burn facility that will help us to better understand the interactions between wildfire and buildings.
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Fire in Forests at the Landscape Scale
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on vegetation treatments, with the stated goals of ecological restoration and reducing fire hazard. In many parts of the western US, these are reasonable goals, but often fuels-related treatments are based on untested assumptions or misperceptions. In many other ecosystems, it is not even clear how far fire regimes are from their natural ranges of historical variation. There is an urgent need for science-based guidance on this topic, and there are important opportunities for greater collaboration and leadership within this thematic area. Key projects under this core research area are the Fire and Fire Surrogate study, the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project, and Carbon sequestration, fire hazards, and forest management.
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Fire, Climate Change, and Sustainability
Fire is a natural and vital process, and the long-term sustainability of many ecosystems is dependent upon periodic fires. Fire must therefore be considered in conservation planning, as well as our understanding of climate change. Many CFRO projects fall under this overarching research area, including the Global Fire Partnership; Fire, Carbon Sequestration, and Averted Emissions; Living with Fire in Chaparral Ecosystems; and the Berkeley Institute of the Environment sponsored roundtable Natural Disasters and Resilient Communities.
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Projects
The Fire Information Engine Toolkit
Even in highly fire-prone areas, there are many steps that property-owners and communities can take to reduce fire risk. However, identifying the fire hazards for a specific property or neighborhood can be difficult because the public often does not have access to relevant information. The Fire Information Engine Toolkit has been developed to help homeowners and communities better understand fire hazards at a parcel level using a science-based wildfire hazard assessment and interactive web-based mapping application. Other links include search-by-address wildfire maps for California , up-to-the-minute wildfire news, and tools for researchers.
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Fire Hazard Mapping
While flood zones and earthquake faults are incorporated into urban planning and development guidelines, but this tends not to be the case for wildland fire. California is leading the way, however, in developing Fire Hazard Severity Zone (FHSZ) maps that highlight the most dangerous locations for development and link new, stringent fire-related building codes to these designated areas. As a collaborative effort with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's (CalFire) Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) to identify and characterize burnability for wildland urban interface/intermix regions in California, as part of the FHSZ update. In addition, we developed a search-by-address web mapping application that made the FHSZ maps widely available.
Related work on fire weather patterns and past fire locations in California has led to development of new methods for mapping the severities and frequencies of fire weather episodes, critical information that is currently lacking. The next update to the FHSZ maps (and new efforts being undertaken in other states), which directly affect development across California, must now incorporate various forms of extreme fire weather episodes. Collaborators on this project include Alex Hall from UCLA’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
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Fire, Carbon Sequestration, and Averted Emissions
California is on the verge of implementing carbon accounting protocols, and many want to know the role that forests may be able to play in this framework. As part of the West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB) project, we have developed a methodology for determining “baseline” area burned in different regions, which will be inputs to quantifying carbon offsets due to fuels treatments. This research has far-reaching policy implications as California and many other states prepare for a cap-and-trade carbon market process.
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Carbon sequestration, fire hazards, and forest management
Recent research in Sierra Nevada forests has revealed wildfire severity and area have increased from 1984-2006 and this was linked to changing climates. Continued increases in temperature will exacerbate this already challenging issue and could have a profound effect on carbon sequestration, forest resiliency, and ecosystem conservation in the forests of the Sierra Nevada.
California has become the leading state in the U.S. regarding enacting policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and sequester carbon. A.B. 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, points to the forestry sector for large carbon offsets. Questions surrounding carbon sequestration, fire hazards, and forest management are critical regarding carbon offsets in Sierra Nevada forests. Federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service are implementing treatments to reduce fire hazards and increase forest resiliency. Presently no information exists on how fuel treatments effect long-term carbon sequestration and how vulnerable forest carbon is to wildfire. We also lack information on how changing climates will modify wildfire activity and this could profoundly effect carbon sequestration and forest conservation. This research is focused on quantifying carbon sequestration and fluxes from the most commonly used fuels treatments on federal lands in the Sierra Nevada.
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Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project
Millions of acres of forest in California are at risk from high severity wildfire, and there has been a large debate on management of US Forest Service lands in the Sierra Nevada since 1990. Disagreements, lawsuits, planning, and many meetings have not reconciled these differences. How do fuel treatments at the landscape scale affect fire risk, wildlife, forest health, and water? How effective are different methods of public participation regarding these efforts? The UC Office of the President was contacted in 2003 by the US Forest Service to ask if a group of scientists might be willing to help reconcile these differences. The U.S. Forest Service’s 2004 Sierra Nevada Forest Amendment is the plan enacted by law that is currently being implemented in the Sierra Nevada. The plan emphasizes a system of Strategically Placed Landscape Treatments to reduce fire risk. Results from this study will be used to improve forest management across all Federal forests in California.
The Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Program is made up of researchers from the University of California, the University of Minnesota, the U.S. Forest Service, the California Resources Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the public. Visit the website and read an article about the project for more informaiton.
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Fire and Fire Surrogate Treatments for Ecological Restoration
The US Department of Interior and the US Department of Agriculture Joint Fire Science Program provided funding for a long-term study to understand the effects of alternative methods for fuel reduction and forest restoration. This Fire and Fire Surrogate Study is a large-scale, collaborative effort, with the Stephens Lab leading the effort at the Blodgett Forest Research Station in the central Sierra Nevada. For years, managers have recognized increased fire hazards in US forests have acted to reduce stem density and fuels by thinning, burning, and/or other vegetation treatments. Presently there is very little information on the ecological effects of these treatments, and this is the focus of the project.
This is a national study with 12 sites in 10 states (Montana, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida), and it has: 1) produced the best available information available on the ecological and economic effects of alternative fuel reduction methods; 2) feveloped national research site infrastructure that has already provided abundant opportunity for collaborative work; and 3) educated over two dozen fire ecologists and managers. Research papers have been used in hundreds of land management plans and have also been cited in the scientific literature a great deal (about 100 journal papers have produced from project). Read more about the project here.
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The Global Fire Partnership: Fire, Conservation, and Climate Change
The Global Fire Partnership is a collaborative project between The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the World Conservation Union (IUCN), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The original objective of the project was to complete a global assessment of native fire regimes that could be used in decision-making related to biodiversity conservation. CFRO helped to refine the expert-opinion assessment methodology and related outreach efforts by helping to organize and participating in a series of global workshops. The first workshop, co-hosted by CFRO and the Geospatial Innovation Facility (GIF) at UC Berkeley, brought together fire ecology and management experts from Canada, the United States, and Mexico to review the first phase of assessment data for the ecoregions across North America. More recently, post-doctoral researcher Meg Krawchuk visited China to help understand the role of fire in conservation areas.
An ongoing goal of this work is to identify the physical parameters that drive fire regimes at global scales (global pyrogeography), thus providing an over-arching framework for integrating additional information from scientific experts and other sources. Synthesized information will then be extended to users through a custom webGIS interface, recently developed by CFRO staff and hosted by the GIF, that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. The collaboration is also expanding to include examination of the US Forest Service LANDFIRE framework. New methods for mapping impacts of climate change on global fire activity have also resulted from this project, leading to involvement in NCEAS working group participation and wider international collaborations.
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Living with Fire in Chaparral Ecosystems
As part of the scientific expertise component of the Living with Fire in Chaparral Ecosystems (LFCE) project, a literature search on fire in Mediterranean ecosystems was conducted and many references from the international literature were compiled into a database. Research on the bushfires in Southeastern Australia has contributed significantly to the understanding of fire in Mediterranean ecosystems. For this reason, a deeper investigation of the fire literature from Australia was examined and collaborations with Australian scientists were started, including on the topic of "Leave Early, or Stay and Defend" (also referred to as "prepare, stay and defend, or leave early", and even "shelter in place" though these are not all the same thing). To promote discussion and possibly further research, researchers synthesized recurring themes in Australian bushfire research and compared and contrasted SE Australia and Mediterranean California ecosystems. Read more about this project here.
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Natural Disasters and Resilient Communities
When it comes to natural disasters, many communities are either unprepared for large events or plan only for the worst case scenario – a devastating flood, fire, or earthquake. Therefore, many smaller but more frequent disasters are ignored or assumed to be addressed by large-scale disaster plans. This focus on only the largest natural disasters is akin to treating only the advanced stages of a disease after ignoring decades of symptoms or, worse, failing to take preventative actions. Gathering an interdisciplinary group of experts, we will address a variety of questions related to impacts of small, frequent disasters on ecosystems and communities. While we cannot prevent natural disasters like floods and fires from happening, we can make our communities more resilient to disasters. Learn more about this project here.
