Land management practices associated with house loss in wildfires

Losses to life and property from unplanned fires (wildfires) are forecast to increase because of population growth in peri-urban areas and climate change. In response, there have been moves to increase fuel reduction—clearing, prescribed burning, biomass removal and grazing—to afford greater protection to peri-urban communities in fire-prone regions. But how effective are these measures? Severe wildfires in southern Australia in 2009 presented a rare opportunity to address this question empirically. We predicted that modifying several fuels could theoretically reduce house loss by 76%-97%, which would translate to considerably fewer wildfire-related deaths. However, maximum levels of fuel reduction are unlikely to be feasible at every house for logistical and environmental reasons. Significant fuel variables in a logistic regression model we selected to predict house loss were (in order of decreasing effect): (1) the cover of trees and shrubs within 40m of houses, (2) whether trees and ...

由于城郊区域人口增长及气候变化，非计划性火灾（野火）造成的生命与财产损失预计将有所增加。为此，各方已采取措施加强可燃物削减——包括清理、计划烧除、生物质移除及放牧——以更好地保护火灾易发区域的城郊社区。但这些措施的效果究竟如何？2009年澳大利亚南部发生的严重野火为实证研究这一问题提供了难得的契机。我们预测，从理论上讲，调整多种可燃物状况可使房屋损失减少76%-97%，这将大幅降低野火相关的死亡人数。然而，由于后勤与环境因素，在每一处房屋都实施最高程度的可燃物削减措施并不现实。在我们选定的用于预测房屋损失的逻辑回归模型中，显著的可燃物变量（按影响程度递减排序）包括：（1）房屋周边40米范围内树木与灌木的覆盖度；（2）树木是否……