Analyzing Trade-Offs Between Fuels Management, Suppression, and Damages from Wildfire

Abstract

With expenditures to suppress wildfires in the United States increasing rapidly during the past couple of decades, fire managers, scientists, and policy makers have begun an intense effort to develop alternative approaches to managing wildfire. One alternative is "fuels management" which typically uses prescribed fire or mechanical methods (or both) to reduce fuel loads in dense, overstocked forests. Despite meeting strong resistance from many wildland policy makers and resource managers