Abstract: |
Fire use enables fire managers to take advantage of the beneficial effects that natural ignitions may have on the landscape. Under the right circumstances, fire managers may choose to forgo initial attack in favor of monitoring and managing natural ignitions in ways that improve the condition of the ecosystem. As our knowledge and techniques for managing fires have advanced, so has fire policy and fire use. With increasing interest in fire use, comes a greater need for improved programmatic approaches and analysis. Here we explain how program management and planning efforts can integrate fire use into the initial attack planning and budgeting. We show how an integrated programmatic framework can take advantage of the important relationships that fire use has with initial attack. For example, because many of the fire management resources that are employed for initial attack are also those employed on use fires, an integrated program can take advantage of joint costs to realize potentially significant cost savings. We show how an integrated program can improve the efficiency of both initial attack and fire use while better informing the budgeting process. Such an integrated programmatic approach is currently in the developmental stages for the Fire Program Analysis (FPA) system currently under construction. |
