Skip to main content
Author(s):
Erin J. Belval, Christopher D. O'Connor, Matthew P. Thompson, Michael S. Hand
Year Published:

Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Fire & Economics
Fire Suppression
Fuels
Fuel Treatments & Effects
Suppression treatments

NRFSN number: 20409
Record updated:

Previously burned areas can influence the occurrence, extent, and severity of subsequent wildfires, which may influence expenditures on large fires. We develop a conceptual model of how interactions of fires with previously burned areas may influence fire management, fire behavior, expenditures, and test hypotheses using regression models of wildfire size and suppression expenditures. Using a sample of 722 large fires from the western United States, we observe whether a fire interacted with a previous fire, the percent area of fires burned by previous fires, and the percent perimeter overlap with previous fires. Fires that interact with previous fires are likely to be larger and have lower total expenditures on average. Conditional on a fire encountering a previous fire, a greater extent of interaction with previous fires is associated with reduced fire size but higher expenditures, although the expenditure effect is small and imprecisely estimated. Subsequent analysis suggests that fires that interact with previous fires may be systematically different from other fires along several dimensions. We do not find evidence that interactions with previous fires reduce suppression expenditures for subsequent fires. Results suggest that previous fires may allow suppression opportunities that otherwise might not exist, possibly reducing fire size but increasing total expenditures.

Citation

Belval EJ, O’Connor CD, Thompson MP, and Hand MS. 2019. The Role of Previous Fires in the Management and Expenditures of Subsequent Large Wildfires. Fire 2(4): 57. https://doi.org/10.3390/fire2040057

Access this Document

Treesearch

publication access with no paywall

Check to see if this document is available for free in the USDA Forest Service Treesearch collection of publications. The collection includes peer reviewed publications in scientific journals, books, conference proceedings, and reports produced by Forest Service employees, as well as science synthesis publications and other products from Forest Service Research Stations.