Wildfire

In pursuit of lifestyle change, affordable property, and proximity to nature, people from all walks of life are moving to the wildland-urban interface. Tragic wildfires and a predicted increase in high fire danger weather with climate change have triggered concern for the safety of such amenity-led migrants in wildfire-prone landscapes. This book examines wildfire awareness and preparedness amongst women, men, households, communities and agencies at the interface between city and beyond. It does so through an examination of two regions where wildfires are common and disastrous, and where how to deal with them is a major political issue: southeast Australia and the west coast United States. It follows women’s and men’s stories of surviving, fighting, evacuating, living and working with wildfire to reveal the intimate inner workings of wildfire response – and especially the culturally and historically distinct gender relations that underpin wildfire resilience. Wildfire is revealed as much more than a "natural" hazard – it is far from gender-neutral. Rather, wildfire is an important means through which traditional gender roles and power relations are maintained despite changing social circumstances. Women’s and men’s subjectivities are shaped by varying senses of inclusion, exclusion, engagement and disengagement with wildfire management. This leads to the reproduction of gender identities with clear ramifications for if, how and to what extent women and men prepare for wildfire.

Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with natural processes involving fire in an ecosystem and the ecological effects, the interactions between fire and the abiotic and biotic components of an ecosystem, and the role of fire as an ecosystem process.

Wildfires represent a growing threat to environments, to people, communities, and to societies worldwide, particularly in the United States, Southern Europe, and Australia. Recognition of this growing risk has highlighted a need to develop people's capacity to adapt to annually occurring events that could increase in frequency and severity over the coming years and decades. The goal of ensuring sustained levels of protective measures in communities susceptible to wildfire hazard consequences has proved to be elusive. This book examines why this is so and identifies ways in which sustained levels of preparedness can be facilitated. Major topics include: wildfire preparedness and resiliency in community contexts; socially disastrous landscape fires in southeastern Australia; landscape typology of residential wildfire risk; proactive human response to wildfires outbreak; forest fires in wildland-urban interface, wildfire risk management; “stay or go” policy in the line of fire; social dimensions of forest fire; the influence of community diversity; evaluating a community engagement initiative; response to fire threats; social media and resiliency; and building on lessons learned. Additional information includes the landscape fires in southeastern Australia, wildfire risk management in Portugal; fire preparedness in Greece, Cyprus, and the Pine Barrens in the northeastern United States. The findings of research programs being conducted in the United States, Australia, Europe, India and South America are presented. The book includes case studies on the analysis and proposed actions of the wildland-urban interface being faced by Central Chile and South America. This book will provide a comprehensive and systematic review of the wildfire preparedness research and its application to the development of risk communications and public education programs.

This book will draw attention to the residuals in pan-borealforest fires and synthesize the state of knowledge. It willdo so by: (a) Examining the concept of fire residuals fromdifferent perspectives, (b) Reviewing the growing body ofscientific literature on the topic, (c) Conceptualizing theprocess of residual formation in relation to scale of firedisturbance, (d) Discussing the roles of fire residuals inecological processes, (e) Describing approaches and methods ofstudying fire residuals, (f) Compiling and summarizing what isknown about fire residual vegetation with respect to their extent,spatial patterns, and temporal changes, (g) Discussing howthe knowledge of fire residuals is applied in forest management,including social perspective, and (h) Synthesizing the state ofknowledge, identifying its uncertainties and gaps, and proposingresearch hypotheses. The authors use pan-borealscientific literature on boreal fire residuals as well as firebehaviour, fire ecology, habitat ecology, and geochemicalprocesses. For readers this book will be a reference forknowledge to date and a meta-analysis of research trends during thepast few decades. In addition, the authors judiciouslyinclude views constructed from their observations and researchexperience, from boreal Canada, when they synthesize andconceptualize the knowledge. They also incorporateinformation extracted from their discussions and interactions withNorth American and European ecologists, forest managers, andconservationists to provide insight to different views andperspectives on the fire residuals of the boreal forest system. This book will inform researchers and students who studyboreal forest ecology, as well as policymakers and forest managerswho apply forest ecological knowledge in forest management. This book provides a review and coalescence of the currentknowledge of boreal forest fire residuals, which at present issporadic and has not been unified or synthesized. Moreover,these are presently viewed myopically and parochially, rather thanholistically. The intent of the synthesis is to identifyknowledge uncertainties and gaps and propose topics for futureresearch. Most importantly, it brings together fire behaviour,ecological scale, vegetation ecology, and conservation biology toconceptualize forest fire residuals. Although focused onboreal forests, the contents and principles presented are also bepertinent to other large-scale fire driven forest systems, such asdry montane forests in North America and Australian eucalyptforests. This book will add to the current knowledge base byproviding a source of significant literature to-date, an in-depthexamination of baseline concepts of forest fire residuals, as wellas questions and research ideas to address the identified gaps. Thetiming is ideal because the knowledge base is beginning to expandand the interest in the topic is increasing: such a synthesis wouldprovide an important foundation for future advances in this veryrelevant topical area. The book is a compact, yet comprehensive,dissertation of remnant vegetation in boreal forest fires withrespect to their formation, role in ecological processes, appliedimportance, and a synthesis of state-of-the-knowledge and futureresearch directions. The scope is boreal forests worldwide,including North America, Europe, and Asia. Brief TOC: Why theinterest in boreal fire residuals; what are fire residuals; how arefire residuals formed; what are the ecological roles of the fireresiduals; what is the role of residuals in forest managementapplications; synthesis, knowledge, uncertainties and researchneeds.