Journal article
Factors influencing large wildland fire suppression expenditures
International Journal of Wildland Fire, Vol.17(5), pp.650-659
2008
Abstract
There is an urgent and immediate need to address the excessive cost of large fires. Here, we studied large wildland fire suppression expenditures by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Among 16 potential non-managerial factors, which represented fire size and shape, private properties, public land attributes, forest and fuel conditions, and geographic settings, we found only fire size and private land had a strong effect on suppression expenditures. When both were accounted for, all the other variables had no significant effect. A parsimonious model to predict suppression expenditures was suggested, in which fire size and private land explained 58% of variation in expenditures. Other things being equal, suppression expenditures monotonically increased with fire size. For the average fire size, expenditures first increased with the percentage of private land within burned area, but as the percentage exceeded 20%, expenditures slowly declined until they stabilised when private land reached 50% of burned area. The results suggested that efforts to contain federal suppression expenditures need to focus on the highly complex, politically sensitive topic of wildfires on private land. © IAWF 2008.
Details
- Title
- Factors influencing large wildland fire suppression expenditures
- Authors
- J Liang (Author) - University of Alaska, United StatesD E Calkin (Author) - USDA Forestry Sciences Laboratory, United StatesK M Gebert (Author) - USDA Forestry Sciences Laboratory, United StatesTyron J Venn (Author) - University of Montana, United StatesR P Silverstein (Author) - University of Montana, United States
- Publication details
- International Journal of Wildland Fire, Vol.17(5), pp.650-659
- Publisher
- C S I R O Publishing
- Date published
- 2008
- DOI
- 10.1071/WF07010
- ISSN
- 1049-8001
- Organisation Unit
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99449948402621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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