CSU develops wildfire management ‘playbook’

Posted by egable on November 17th, 2008 filed in Forests, Fire

Colorado State University researchers have developed a wildfire management “playbook” for federal agencies to use to strategically manage wildfires.

The system, known as Starfire, or Strategic Treatment Assessment Response Spectrum and Fire, is the first of its kind to generate fuel treatment priorities across an entire planning unit or national park and the first to address strategic smoke management where communities and local air quality can be adversely affected.

Wildland fires increasingly threaten life, property and natural resources and have been costly to fight. Federal agencies spend more than $3 billion annually to fight wildfires.

Doug Rideout and Yu Wei from Colorado State’s Fire Economics and Management Laboratory, in cooperation with the National Park Service, pioneered the system to address cumulative effects surrounding wildfires. They say their approach enables fire managers to handle new and emerging policies by balancing the ecosystem benefits of wildfire with the need to protect life, property and natural resources. In some situations, overly aggressive fire suppression has encouraged ecosystem degradation, beetle infestations and an accumulation of fuels that have possible catastrophic consequences.

Rideout and Wei use Starfire to analyze and outline contributing factors of wildfires such as fuels, plant species, smoke management, fire behavior, ignition spread probability, ecosystem benefits and losses, historic weather data, cultural trees, property and real estate development. Once all of the data is compiled and assessed, Rideout and Wei develop a series of maps designed to support collaborative decision-making and inter-agency cooperation.

The system was first developed and tested at the Tehipite wildfire in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California this summer. Starfire is also expected to be used at Yellowstone National Park and Bureau of Land Management properties throughout the West.