JFSP Projects in Progress

You may search JFSP Project Information by the following: Project Number, Title, Principal Investigator, Cooperators or key words contained in a brief description of the project.

Social and Economic Impacts

FY 2005 Projects
05-3-2-04: Minority Landowner Response to State-Sponsored Wildfire Mitigation Policy in the Southern Black Belt
Cassandra Johnson USFS, SRS, Forestry Sciences Lab, 320 Green Street, Athens, GA 30602 Ph: 706-559-4270 Fax: 706-559-4266 E-mail: cjohnson09@fs.fed.us	Other Cooperators: Ken Cordell J.M. Bowker - USFS, SRS Jianbang Gan - Texas A&M Univ.
This project focuses on African American forestland owners in the Black Belt region of the South to assess their awareness and responsiveness to state-level wildfire mitigation policies and incentives. This is an underserved landowner group that federal and state agencies are striving to contact with outreach programs; but little information exists on these constituents. Personal interviews will be collected in contiguous Black Belt counties spanning nine states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Specific data elicited will be landowner knowledge of wildfire mitigation tactics, implementation of mitigation practices, and source of information about wildfire mitigation. Project findings will be delivered to both federal and state forestry agencies, local and regional grassroots organizations advocating for black land retention and environmental justice, and to congressional representatives investigating black land loss.
05-3-2-05: Individual response to voluntary and involuntary incentives to mitigate fire hazard: What works and what doesn't?
Sarah McCaffrey USFS, NCRS 1033 University Place, Ste 360 Evanston, IL 60201 Ph: 847-866-9311 ext. 20 E-mail: smccaffrey@fs.fed.us	Other Cooperators: Christine Vogt - Michigan State University Gregory Winter - Cornerstone Strategies, Inc. Paul Reitzel - USFS, NCRS
Effective wildland urban interface (WUI) risk management requires action by local communities and individual property owners. Recently enacted federal and state policies provide some strong incentives for local jurisdictions to manage the risks associated with wildland fire. This has led to an array of policies, laws, and programs targeted at local communities and their residents. Attention needs to be paid to assessing the effectiveness of these different policies and programs in order to help communities better choose, monitor and support among structural responses. This project will employ a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to answer several research questions including: “To what extent are WUI residents motivated to comply with voluntary versus involuntary policies? and To what extent are incentives necessary to ensure compliance?” This project will develop a matrix of policy options that local policy makers can use as a decision support tool as they develop their own local programs. Such a matrix will include the following dimensions: voluntary/involuntary; incentives; success factors; barriers to successful implementation; public perceptions; compliance factors; and key public messages to encourage compliance. The results are intended to assist policy makers, resource managers, community officials, and residents in determining and initiating the most effective and efficient wildland fire abatement programs for their jurisdictions.
FY 2004 Projects
04-4-2-01: An Investigation into why "useable" Fire Science Research Products Go Unused by Agency Managers
Vita Wright USFS RMRS Leopold Wilderness Research Institute P.O. Box 8089 Missoula, MT 59807 Phone: 406-542-4194 E-mail: vwright@fs.fed.us	Other Cooperators: Michael Patterson, Univ. of MT John Lundquist, RMRS Wayne Sheppard, RMRS
This proposal will use case study interviews and a survey questionanaire to understand socail barriers to effective science delivery and application by fire managers and decision makers. We will develop mechanistic science delivery models, based on structual equation modeling, to test hypotheses concerning the effectiveness of different marketing tools and metrics to science delivery.
FY 2001 Projects
01-1-2-03: In-woods Decision Making of Utilization Opportunities to lower costs of Fire Hazard Reduction Treatments
Eini Lowell USFS, PNW P.O. Box 3890 Portland, OR 97208 Phone: 503-808-2072 E-mail: elowell@fs.fed.us	Other Cooperators: Steven Steed, Utah Forest Products Carl Edminster, RMRS Marlin Johnson, Region 3 Jamie Barbour, PNW
Fuels reduction treatments generate a large amount of biomass - most of it small in diameter. While this material may be suited for wood products, opportunities to process this material are few in the southwestern U.S. Harvesting and transportation costs are often limiting factors. Scientists plan to examine innovative ways to lower costs of harvesting and transporting this material by evaluating in-woods decision-making regarding tree selection, residuals left on site, product suitability, and market opportunity. Options for in woods processing such as chipping or rough sawing will also be examined as ways to reduce transportation costs. Resulting information will be used to produce a field guide to help planners in developing cost effective fuels management prescriptions.
01-1-2-09: A national study of the economic impacts of biomass removals to mitigate wildfire damages on federal, state, and private lands
Jeffrey Prestemon USFS, Southern Research Station P.O. Box 12254 3041 E. Cornwallis Road Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 Phone: 919-549-4033 E-mail jprestemon@fs.fed.us	Other Cooperators: Jamie Barbour, USFS PNW Roger Fight, USFS PNW Peter Ince, USFS Forest Products Lab Fred Cubbage, North Carolina State University
Large-scale biomass removal programs done to lower wildfire risks and associated damages on public and private lands may have short-term and long-term economic impacts on local, regional, and national forest product markets. These kinds of market, timber growing, and land use economic effects should be a central part of any economic analysis of the trade-offs of using alternative fuel treatments to reduce fire risk. Researchers will evaluate the economic consequences of introducing biomass removals into wood products markets. The information will be used to project effects of various scales of biomass removal programs on prices and economic surplus of private and public producers and the timber demand sector.
01-1-3-30: A social assessment of public knowledge, attitudes, and values related to wildland fire, fire risk, and fire recovery
J.M. Bowker USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station 320 Green Street Athens, GA 30602-2044 Phone: 706- 559-4271 E-mail: mbowker@fs.fed.us	Other Cooperators: Cassandra Johnson , USFS, SRS Ken Cordell, USFS, SRS
Public attitudes toward fire result from a combination of factors including the long history of public agencies advocating fire suppression, people’s lack of information and understanding about the role of fire in wildland ecosystems, and negative publicity about fire. At the same time, management solutions to the growing fire problem include intentional application of fire to wildlands and the wildland-urban interface areas to reduce fuel levels. To successfully implement these fuel reduction programs will require developing education and outreach programs to garner public support for these programs. As a starting point for developing effective education programs researchers will gather information on public attitudes, knowledge and preferences regarding fire, fire risk and fire management alternatives.
FY 1999 Projects
99-1-1-01: Assessing the need, costs, and potential benefits of prescribed fire and mechanical treatments to reduce fire hazard
Jamie Barbour USDA Forest Service, PNW Research Station 1221 SW Yamhill St., Suite 200 Portland, OR 97205 Phone: (503) 808-2074 E-mail: jbarbour@fs.fed.us	Additional Cooperators: Carl Fiedler - University of Montana Chuck Keegan - University of Montana
Forests with high fire hazard dominate the American landscape. Ecologists and public officials have called for broadscale hazard reduction treatments, however efforts to date have mostly been undertaken at a project level. This research is focused on determining the needs, costs, and benefits of hazard reduction treatments in Montana and New Mexico. Outputs from this project will provide managers from different agencies, ownerships, and regions with methods to synthesize and share information to facilitate planning and scheduling fuel treatments. Results from the study suggest that by considering a variety of silvicultural prescriptions managers can find ways to treat many stands to reduce fire hazard and improve ecological conditions without the need for financial subsidies. Projections of stand growth suggest that prescriptions that do not remove sufficient basal area or allow basal area to accumulate on larger trees may put stands on trajectories that could lead to high insect and disease hazard in the coming decades.
99-1-1-05: Integrated fuels treatment assessment: Ecological, Economic and Financial impacts
Hayley Hesseln School of Forestry University of Montana Missoula, MT 59812 Phone: (406) 243-4285 E-mail: hayley@forestry.umt.edu	Additional Cooperators: John B. Loomis - Colorado State University Douglas B. Rideout - Colorado State University Armando González-Cabán - USDA Forest Service
High forest fuels levels with accompanying threats of catastrophic wildfire have required fire management officers to increasingly employ fuel management techniques. Selecting a fuel management treatment among the array of alternative treatments available involves evaluation of tradeoffs. Research is geared to providing fire managers with information to better evaluate and compare alternatives with respect to costs and benefits of implementing treatments, ecological impacts, and effects on local economies.
99-1-2-08: Evaluating Public Responses to Wildland Fuels Management: Factors that Influence Acceptance of Practices and Decision Processes
Bruce Shindler Department of Forest Resources Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331 Phone: (541) 737-3299 E-mail: Bruce.Shindler@orst.edu	Additional Cooperators: Edward Starkey - USGS-BRD Mark Brunson - Utah State University Christina Kakoyannis - Oregon State University
The increasing use of vegetation treatments (such as prescribed fire) to reduce fire danger in wildland areas, puts these management treatments more frequently in the public eye. The long-term acceptance of these programs may be determined by how well managers translate public responses into supportable policies that fulfill a range of forest and rangeland values. Research is gathering information on the factors that influence public acceptance of fuel management treatments at the local, regional and national levels. This information has the potential to help reduce conflict between resource management professionals and various stakeholders and increase the effectiveness of the decision making process.
99-1-2-10: Demographic and geographic approaches to predicting public acceptance of fuel management at the wildland-urban interface
Jeremy S. Fried, Ph.D. Forest Inventory and Analysis USFS - PNW Research Center P.O. Box 3890 Portland, OR 97208 Phone: (503) 808-2058 E-mail: Jeremy_Fried@fs.fed.us	Additional Cooperators: Christine Vogt Armando González-Cabán - USDA Forest Service Gregory J. Winter - Paul Schissler Assoc. J. Keith Gilless - University of CA at Berkely
A combination of fire suppression, urban sprawl, and migration to rural areas has created an extensive and still expanding wildland-urban interface where wildfire poses a serious threat to people, property, and resources. Achieving fuel reduction in such ecosystems, either by re-establishing fire or conducting mechanical treatments is critical to reducing the likelihood of catastrophic fires. People’s acceptance of fuel management on public lands is likely to vary based on their knowledge and attitudes but also may be related to demographic characteristics and home location with respect to vegetation fuels and past fire events. Scientists plan to use information gathered from focus groups and surveys to use as a basis for development of a conceptual model of the process by which people evaluate the acceptability of fuel management treatments. Deliverables will include protocols for fire manager-directed surveys of fuel treatment program acceptance by wildland urban interface residents and predictive models of acceptance.
FY 1998 Projects
98-S-3: Ecological and economic consequences of the 1998 Florida wildfires
Sue Grace Fire Ecologist USFWS 61389 Highway 434 Lacombe, LA 70445 E-mail: sue_grace@fws.gov	Additional Cooperators: Dale Wade - USDA Forest Service (retired)
The 1998 wildfire season in Florida was a particularly severe one due to a variety of interrelated factors including: high rainfall totals partly attributable to El Nino, more than usual plant growth, and high moisture levels through the dormant season that prohibited prescribed burning of vegetation. Over a period of 6 weeks starting in early June 1998 more than 2,500 fires burned over 500,000 acres in Florida. This situation provided a rare opportunity to study the ecological and economic impacts of such an extreme event on southeastern forests. Results of this work will be summarized in publications and presentations and developed into educational tools and pamphlets accessible to resource managers and the public
98-S-4: A survey of public attitudes and behavior toward fuel treatment policies: The 1998 Florida Fire Complex
Armando González-Cabán USDA Forest Service, PSW Research Station 4955 Canyon Crest Dr. Riverside, CA 92507 Phone: (706) 559-4307 E-mail: agonzalez@fs.fed.us	Additional Cooperators: Douglas B. Rideout - Colorado State University John B. Loomis - Colorado State University
Public perception of fire hazards may strongly affect the willingness of society to make sacrifices, such as accepting smoke from prescribed fires and removing vegetation from around their homes, to create defensible space. People having little prior experience with wildlfire may be less likely to support prescribed fire treatments than people with more experience. Researchers plan to survey Florida residents to determine their attitudes and behavior toward fire and how this changes with direct experience with fire as well as by race/ethnicity. Information gained from this study can help managers and planners better understand the likelihood for support for fuels treatment alternatives among different groups.