Award fuels collaboration to explore prescribed burns and managed fires as wildfire mitigation options

As the western U.S. can attest, an untamed wildfire can cause massive devastation. Decades of extremely restrictive and risk-averse wildfire policies have only exacerbated these fires by creating a wealth of accumulated fuels that are waiting for the next spark.

Fortunately, a multi-disciplinary team from Idaho, New Mexico and Oklahoma are determined to discover how prescribed burns and managed wildfires could be the solutions needed to empower the nation to enter into a new, and healthier, relationship with wildfire.

Prescribed fires or burns are the planned use of fire by a team of fire experts under specified weather conditions to restore health to ecosystems that depend on fire, according to the United States Forest Service. Managed wildfires are not started prescriptively, but can be managed to burn in specific ways that will also restore health to ecosystems and ideally pose the least risk to communities.

With the support of a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Research Infrastructure Improvement Program, Boise State will lead the effort in partnership with the University of New Mexico, Navajo Technical University, Northwest Nazarene University and the University of Oklahoma, as well as the US Forest Service, US Geological Survey, and the Fire Science Exchange Network, in addition to other EPSCoR states, including Nevada.

For Boise State principal investigator and associate professor of civil engineering Mojtaba Sadegh, leading this multi-institution research team is a thrilling opportunity to impact many things he, and his colleagues, hold dear: creating student opportunities, advancing early career faculty, serving communities, fueling impactful research and expanding collaborations with fellow institutions of higher education.

"When I learned we got the grant, I was stoked, not just because it's a huge grant that enables us to do a lot of good science, but also because it allows us to hire and mentor 14 students and two post-docs across the institutions, and create a workforce for this nationally critical area. It gives us the opportunity to deepen collaborations with forest and fire managers and expand collaborations among institutions. There are great synergies between the states and I'm looking forward to building that further," Sadegh said.

A mountainside following the 2024 Wapiti Fire, photo by Sean Evans

A united response to an urgent need

"Of the 20 worst fire seasons, 19 have been since 2000," said Dale Hamilton, a research collaborator and chair of the computer science department at Northwest Nazarene University. "If we are to adequately manage our wildlands, we need to better understand the role that prescribed fire needs to play in order to restore resiliency to our ecosystems, mimicking the effects that more frequent low-severity fires used to have on the environment."

This award represents not only the advancement of a critical area of research, but also a united response from multiple states to link arms and fight wildfire with the most powerful tool of all: collaboration.

To understand how managed fires could shape landscapes, communities, ecology, water resources and economic impact, each institution on the grant will work together to advance knowledge and create tools to support prescribed burns and managed wildfire use to address the wildfire crisis.

Mojtaba Sadegh (far right) and his students in the Hydroclimate Modeling and Analysis Lab, photo by Priscilla Grover

In Idaho, researchers from Boise State, including Sadegh and geosciences faculty Anna Bergstrom, will tackle the hydrologic side of this ambitious project by using computer modeling to test and model where prescribed burns can do the most good for an environment, and for downstream water flow. The team will also conduct social science research using mixed-methods and participatory research to identify and address the barriers to adoption of this wildfire mitigation tool both for fire managers and communities.

A team at Northwest Nazarene University will be working alongside Boise State to develop methods and tools for evaluating the effects of both wildfire and prescribed fire on the burned area as well as on the associated streams and rivers.

"Northwest Nazarene University Computer Science has conducted wildfire related research for the past decade. From programming assignments to senior projects, all computer science majors have had an opportunity to be exposed to our computational fire ecology research. This collaboration will increase those opportunities to apply cutting edge computer science concepts and remote sensing technologies through our synergistic collaboration with Boise State, New Mexico and Oklahoma," said Hamilton.

Two students at Northwest Nazarene University conduct pre-fire fuel assessments at three different treatment units. Photo provided by Dale Hamilton.

In New Mexico, faculty and students from the University of New Mexico and Navajo Technical University will improve scientific computing and run simulations of the effects of prescribed fire at the watershed scale to better understand how managed fire can influence forest conditions and, ultimately, water. They will also train students in building and deploying microclimate data loggers to better measure microclimate as it relates to fire.

"This research is important to the western U.S. because more than half of our water comes from forested watersheds, and the structure and function of these forests is central to the provision of water for society," said Matthew Hurteau, a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico. "Many of the communities that are located in forested watershed areas in the western U.S. have significant risk from wildfire. This project will improve our understanding of how managed fire influences that risk."

At the University of Oklahoma, assistant professor of economics Jayash Paudel and a doctoral student will provide pioneering economic assessments of managed fires and integrate these data in cost-benefit analyses to improve decision making.

"Last March, wildfires destroyed over 300 homes, burning over 170,000 acres of land in Oklahoma," said Paudel. "Because this project focuses on multi-dimensional, multi-sector impacts of managed fires, I believe findings from this research have direct implications to the whole nation. This work will create engaging opportunities for students to use their training in economics in solving one of the major challenges in the western U.S. Findings from student research can be disseminated to relevant stakeholders, which creates newer opportunities for students to be effective leaders in the real world."

By synthesizing economic, social, hydrological and ecological insights, the project will create transformative tools to optimize the timing, extent and frequency of managed fires. This integrated approach will equip fire managers with strategies to enhance wildfire resilience, protect communities and prevent long-term ecological disruptions across the western U.S.

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under award number 2521103.

"Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation."

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