Planning: FIRE-PLAN: Social-Ecological Engineering and Design of Sustainable (SEEDS) Boreal Forest Fuel Breaks

Wildfire is part of northern forest ecosystems, but fire activity is increasing as the summer climate gets hotter and drier. Communities in the boreal forests of the Arctic are under pressure to adapt to increasing risk from wildfires, and many are creating fuel breaks to stop fires from burning from forest lands into communities. Fuel breaks use forest harvest or thinning of trees and branches to reduce the amount of fuel in a treated area.

After cutting, forests will naturally regrow fuels and repeated thinning is needed to maintain the fuel break. As an alternative, planting treatments or other management of vegetation could convert forest stands to plant communities that reduce wildfire risk over the long term. Careful planning and investment in revegetation could also create plant types that support other benefits.

To identify solutions that reduce fire risk, sharing knowledge and identifying local needs and opportunities are needed. This project will use scientific and Indigenous and local knowledge to map new local solutions to reduce fire risk that also meet other community needs. Management scenarios and analysis of costs and benefits will assist communities and managers in developing customized local solutions.

The project will support new innovations and planning to develop proactive and adaptive wildfire solutions for the North.

The planning project will connect scientists, managers, and local people to create a network for sharing knowledge on fuel break management in northern boreal forests. Because boreal forests in the North have had little commercial forestry or agriculture, there are few resources to support local vegetation management. Efforts to manage revegetation with native plants are hindered by practical challenges related to a) local availability of native seeds for revegetation, b) identification of desired outcomes and appropriate strategies to achieve them, and c) local capacity for plant propagation.

A series of network meetings will gather participants to share experiences and perspectives for fuel management, revegetation, and reduction of wildfire risk around northern communities across Alaska and Canada. The network will incorporate perspectives from science, Indigenous knowledge, and applied management to identify and communicate visions, needs, and barriers related to alternative fuel break management in the North.

Core network members will summarize the shared knowledge into a public report and website that identifies common needs, resources, and benefits that can used by northern communities to meet objectives for fire risk reduction while providing other benefits.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.