WildfiresLearning to live with wildfires: how communities can become “fire-adapted”

By Susan J. Prichard

Published 8 July 2016

In recent years wildfire seasons in the western United States have become so intense that many of us who make our home in dry, fire-prone areas are grappling with how to live with fire. We know that fuel reduction in dry forests can mitigate the effects of wildfires. After decades of fire exclusion, dense and dry forests with heavy accumulations of fuel and understory vegetation often need to be treated with a combination of thinning and prescribed burning. Native peoples, less than 150 years ago, proactively burned the landscapes we currently inhabit – for personal safety, food production, and enhanced forage for deer and elk. In some places, people still maintain and use traditional fire knowledge. As we too learn to be more fire-adapted, we need to embrace fire not only as an ongoing problem but an essential part of the solution.

In recent years wildfire seasons in the western United States have become so intense that many of us who make our home in dry, fire-prone areas are grappling with how to live with fire.

When I moved to a small town in eastern Washington in 2004, I thought I was prepared for the reality of wildfires. As a fire ecologist, I had studied climate change and knew the predictions of hotter, drier and longer fire seasons.

But the severity and massive size of recent wildfires in our area have highlighted the importance of making our communities more resilient to fire.

In addition to better preparing for the inevitability of fire, my research and related studies have shown that prescribed burns and proactive thinning can make our neighboring forests less susceptible to large fire events.

A history of frequent fire
The valley where I live in eastern Washington is so special that I hesitate to share its name. In spite of record-breaking wildfire seasons in recent years, many people are still moving here to build cabins in the woods.

The Methow Valley is stunningly beautiful, with shrub steppe and ponderosa pine lowlands grading into mixed conifer forests at higher elevations, topped by high mountain peaks. Our valley was named by Native Americans for the balsamroot sunflower blossoms that wash the springtime hillsides in brilliant gold.

The native plants here depend on fire for growing space and regeneration. The arrowleaf balsamroot, for example, is deeply rooted and easily resprouts following fire. Ponderosa pine trees have thick, deeply grooved bark, and can shed their lower branches. If surface fires burn them, thick bark insulates their living tissue, and the lack of lower branches can prevent fires from spreading to crowns.

Historically, most semi-arid landscapes of western North America evolved with frequent fire. Ever-changing patterns of forest and rangeland vegetation were created by past burns. Grasslands, shrublands, open-grown and closed-canopy forests were all part of the patchwork.

Prior wildfire patterns constrained future fire spread through a mosaic of forest and nonforest vegetation that, in general, did not let fire burn contagiously across vast areas. While fires burned frequently, they were small to medium in size. Large fires, those of more than 10,000 acres, were infrequent by comparison and occurred during prolonged droughts, often under hot and windy conditions.