Informing Forest Treatment Placement to Mitigate High-Severity Wildfire Risk

Large, hot, fast-moving wildfires are an increasing threat to communities and to the watersheds they rely upon. Forest managers work to reduce the risk from these fires using forest thinning and prescribed burning to reduce the amount of fuel in the forest. However, these activities are expensive, and it can be challenging to identify which acres of forest should be targeted with thinning and burning treatments. The goal of this research is to improve an existing modeling tool that helps forest managers find the ‘right acres’ to target with treatments to help to reduce wildfire risk. Focusing on the Santa Fe Fireshed, researchers will first use different numbers of forest inventory plots to estimate how the forest vegetation changes [...]