Wildfire hazards, risks and disasters PDF
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Hazards and Disasters Series Wildfire Hazards, Risks, and Disasters Volume Editor Douglas Paton School of Medicine (Psychology) University of Tasmania Launceston Tasmania Australia Associate Editors Petra T. Buergelt, Sarah McCaffrey and Fantina Tedim Series Editor John F. Shroder Emeritus Professor of Geography and Geology Department of Geography and Geology University of Nebraska at Omaha Omaha, NE AMSTERDAMlBOSTONlHEIDELBERGlLONDONlNEWYORKlOXFORD PARISlSANDIEGOlSANFRANCISCOlSINGAPORElSYDNEYlTOKYO Elsevier Radarweg29,POBox211,1000AEAmsterdam,Netherlands TheBoulevard,LangfordLane,Kidlington,OxfordOX51GB,UK 225WymanStreet,Waltham,MA02451,USA Copyright(cid:1)2015ElsevierInc.Allrightsreserved. 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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Applicationsubmitted BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary ISBN:978-0-12-410434-1 ForinformationonallElsevierpublications visitourwebsiteathttp://store.elsevier.com ThisbookhasbeenmanufacturedusingPrintonDemandtechnology.Eachcopyisproducedto orderandislimitedtoblackink.Theonlineversionofthisbookwillshowcolorfigureswhere appropriate. Contributors J.AntonioAlloza,CEAM,ParqueTecnolo´gico, Ch.Darwin14,Paterna,Spain Petra T. Buergelt, Charles Darwin University, School of Psychological & Clinical Sciences, Darwin, Australia, University of Western Australia, Centre for Social Impact and Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia, Australia & Joint CentreforDisasterResearch,MasseyUniversity,MtCook,Wellington,NewZealand Jan-Chang Chen, Assistant Professor, Department of Forestry, National Pingtung UniversityofScience andTechnology,Pingtung,Taiwan Chaur-TzuhnChen,Professor,DepartmentofForestry,NationalPingtungUniversity ofScience andTechnology,Pingtung,Taiwan WilliamJ.deGroot,NaturalResourcesCanadaeCanadianForestService,SaultSte. Marie, ON,Canada Michael D. Flannigan, Dept. of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB,Canada MichaelFlannigan,FacultyofForestry,UniversityofToronto,Toronto,ON,Canada ValeriIvanov,SiberianStateTechnologicalUniversity,pr.Mira,Krasnoyarsk,Russia GuillermoJulio-Alvear,ForestFireLaboratory,UniversityofChile,Santiago,Chile NikolayKorshunov,RussianInstituteofContinuousEducationinForestry,Pushkino, Moscowobl.,Russia Daniel Kraus, European Forest Institute (EFI), EFICENT Regional Office, Freiburg, Germany Vittorio Leone, University of Basilicata (retired), Department of Crop Systems, ForestryandEnvironmentalSciences, Potenza,Italy Sarah McCaffrey, Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Evanston, IL, USA Bonita McFarlane, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern ForestryCentre,Edmonton,AB,Canada TaraMcGee, Department ofEarth and AtmosphericSciences, Universityof Alberta, Edmonton, AB,Canada Douglas Paton, School of Medicine (Psychology), University of Tasmania, Launces- ton,Tasmania, Australia Evgeni I.Ponomarev, V.N. Sukachev Institute of Forest, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, Akademgorodok, Krasnoyarsk, Russia; Siberian Federal University,pr.Svobodnyi,Krasnoyarsk, Russia ix x Contributors V.RamonVallejo,CEAM,ParqueTecnolo´gico,Ch.Darwin14,Paterna,Spain;Dept. BiologiaVegetal,UniversitatdeBarcelona,Diagonal 643,Barcelona, Spain Saut Sagala, School of Architecture, Planning, and Policy Development, ITB, Indonesia RobertoGarfiasSalinas,ForestFireLaboratory,UniversityofChile,Santiago,Chile Joachim Schmerbeck, TERI University Department of Natural Resources, Vasant Kunj,NewDelhi,India Bruce Shindler, Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State University,Corvallis,OR,USA EfraimSitinjak,ResilienceDevelopment Initiative,Bandung,Indonesia RalphSmith,DepartmentofFire&EmergencyServices,CockburnCentral,Western Australia,Australia MiguelCastilloSoto,Forest FireLaboratory,UniversityofChile,Santiago,Chile Melanie Stidham, School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State University,Columbus,OH,USA Fantina Tedim, Faculty of Arts, University of Porto, Geography Department, Porto, Portugal Eric Toman, School of Environment and Natural Resources, The Ohio State Univer- sity,Columbus,OH,USA Cordy Tymstra, Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, Forestry and Emergency Response Division, Wildfire Management Branch, Edmonton,AB,Canada B.MichaelWotton,FacultyofForestry,UniversityofToronto,Toronto,ON,Canada Gavriil Xanthopoulos, Hellenic Agricultural Organization “Demeter”, Institute of MediterraneanForestEcosystemsandForestProductsTechnology,Athens,Greece DodonYamin,ResilienceDevelopmentInitiative,Bandung,Indonesia Editorial Foreword General hazards, risks, and disasters: In general, hazards are processes that produce danger to human life and infrastructure. Risks are the potential or possibilities that something bad will happen because of the hazards. Disasters arethatquiteunpleasantresultofthehazardoccurrencethatcauseddestruction oflivesandinfrastructure.Hazards,risks,anddisastershavebeencomingunder increasing strong scientific scrutiny in recent decades as a result of a combi- nationofnumerousunfortunatefactors,manyofwhicharequiteoutofcontrol asaresultofhumanactions.Atthetopofthelistofexacerbatingfactorstoany hazard,ofcourse,isthetragicexponentialpopulationgrowththatisclearlynot possibletomaintainindefinitelyonafiniteEarth.Asourplanetiscoveredever morewithhumans,anynaturalorhuman-caused(unnatural)hazardousprocess is increasingly likely to adversely impact life and construction systems. The volumesonhazards,risks,anddisastersthatwepresentherearethusanattempt to increase understandings about how to best deal with these problems, even whileweallrecognize the inherentdifficultiesofevenslowing downthe rates ofsuchprocessesasothercompoundingsituationsspiralonoutofcontrol,such as exploding population growth and rampant environmental degradation. Some natural hazardous processes such as volcanoes and earthquakes that emanatefromdeepwithintheEarth’sinteriorareinnowayaffectedbyhuman actions, but a number of others are closely related to factors affected or controlled by humanity, even if however unwitting. Chief among these, of course, are climate-controlling factors, and no small measure of these can be exacerbatedbythenowobviousongoingclimatechangeathand(Hay,2013). Pervasive range fires and forest fires caused by human-enhanced or -induced droughts and fuel loadings, megaflooding into sprawling urban complexes on floodplainsandcoastalcities,biologicalthreatsfromlocustplagues,andother ecological disasters gone awry; all of these and many others are but a small part of the potentials for catastrophic risk that loom at many different scales, from the local to planet girdling. In fact, the denial of possible planetwide catastrophic risk (Rees, 2013) as exaggerated jeremiads in media landscapes saturated with sensational science stories and end-of-the-world, Hollywood productions is perhaps quite under- standable, even if simplistically shortsighted. The “end-of-days” tropes pro- motedbytheshaggy-mindedprophetsofdoomhavebeenwithusforcenturies, mainlybecauseofBiblicalversewrittenintheearlyIronAgeduringremarkably pacific times of only limited environmental change. Nowadays, however, the xi xii EditorialForeword Armageddonenthusiastsappeartowanttheworsttovalidatetheirdeathdesires andprovetheirholybooks.Unfortunatelyweareallenteringtimeswhenjusta few individuals couldactually trigger societal breakdown by error or terror, if MotherNaturedoesnotdoitforusfirst.Thusweentercontemporaneoustimes ofconsiderableperilthatpresentneedsforcloseattention. Thesevolumes we address here about hazards, risks, and disasters are not exhaustivedissertationsaboutallthedangerouspossibilitiesfacedbytheever- burgeoninghumanpopulations,buttheydoaddressthemorecommonnatural perilsthatpeopleface,evenwhileweleaveaside(fornow)thethinkingabout higher-level existential threats from such things as bio- or cybertechnologies, artificial intelligence gone awry, ecological collapse, or runaway climate catastrophes. In contemplating existential risk (Rossbacher, 2013), we have lately come to realize that the new existentialist philosophy is no longer the old sense of disorientation or confusion at the apparently meaninglessness or hopelessly absurd worlds of the past, but instead an increasing realization that serious changesbyhumansappeartobeafootthateventhreatenalllifeontheplanet (Kolbert,2014;Newitz,2013).InthegeologicaltimesoftheLateCretaceous, anasteroidcollisionwithEarthwipedoutthedinosaursandmuchotherlife;at the present time, in contrast, humanity itself appears to be the asteroid. Misanthropicviewpointsaside,however,anincreasedunderstandingofall levels and types of the more common natural hazards would seem a useful endeavortoenhanceknowledgeaccessibility,evenwhileweattempttofigure out how to extract ourselves and other life from the perils produced by the strongclimatechangesoobviouslyunderway.Ourintentinthesevolumesisto show the latest good thinking about the more common endogenetic and exo- genetic processes and their roles as threats to everyday human existence. In this fashion, the chapter authors and volume editors have undertaken to show you overviews and more focused assessments of many of the chief obvious threats at hand that have been repeatedly shown on screen and print media in recent years. As this century develops, we may come to wish that these ex- amples of hazards, risks, and disasters are not somehow eclipsed by truly existential threats of a more pervasive nature. The future always hangs in the balance of opposing forces; the ever-lurking, but mindless threats from an implacablenature,ortheheedlessbureaucraciescounteredonlysometimesin small ways by the clumsy and often feeble attempts by individual humans to improve our little lots in life. Only through improved education and under- standingwillanyofushaveachanceagainstsuch strongodds;perhaps these volumes will add some small measure of assistance in this regard. Wildfire hazards, risks, and disasters: As a specific hazard, wildfires in rangeland, bushlands, taiga-tundra, and temperate and tropical forests world- wide are a great threat, especially where humans have built homes out into them, as well as in these times of recurrent drought brought upon by climate change. The results can be the horrendous near-annual fire events in places EditorialForeword xiii such as the Australian bushlands, in the southern California maquis (shrub- land)vegetationinthevastsuburbs,andwhereverelseintheworldaregionis extensively built up by human constructions into a seasonably flammable environment. As human populations increase inexorably worldwide and the needforevermorelanduponwhichtoliveleadsdirectlytoencroachmentinto areas that have burned repeatedly in the past, so this wildfire hazard increas- ingly looms ever larger to more and more people. As Mockenhaupt (2014) has observed, the firefighters’ conundrum is how besttobalanceriskinthegrowingwildlandeurbaninterface.Facedaswearein thenaturalhazardlandscapewithvolcanoes,floods,tsunamis,orhurricanes,we candolittlebuttoletnaturerunitscourse,trytolimitthedamage,andcleanup theaftermath.Butwhenitcomestowildfire,wethinkthatwecanfightit,rather than allowing small fires back into the landscape as they have existed forever until natural human hubris imagined that wildfire could be banished forever. Youngfirefightersdieeveryyear,eventhoughwerealizethatfiresuppressionis abattlethatcanneverreallybewon,andthatinsomecasesshouldnotevenbe fought. Instead our valiant firefighters battle ever-larger wildfires to protect increasingnumbersofhomes.Theresultisacycleoftragicinevitability. Because wildfire hazards have apparently increased so much in recent yearsasthecombinedresultsoftheever-largerdroughts,increasedvulnerable populations, and more pervasive reporting, so too have been the increased numberofremedialmethodsindealingwithfires.Volumesonpreventionand warning, remediation and revegetation, establishment of new procedures and assessment processes provide assessments of fire hazard in many geographic areas across the world. If people are concerned about the area in which they live,areadingofthisvolumewillatleastgivethemenoughbasicinformation andideasgermanetoassessingtheirownsituation,orinseekingtolearnmore. The result might be an increase in their own factors of safety, which is a potentially valuable addition to knowledge thereby. The reader is encouraged to seek greater knowledge of their own local fire hazards. John (Jack) Shroder Editor-in-Chief July 14, 2014 REFERENCES Hay,W.W.,2013.ExperimentingonaSmallPlanet:AScholarlyEntertainment.Springer-Verlag, Berlin,983p. Kolbert, E., 2014. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. Henry Holt & Company, NY, 319p. Mockenhaupt,B.,June2014.Fireonthemountain.TheAtlantic,72e86. Newitz,A.,2013.Scatter,Adapt,andRemember.Doubleday,NY,305p. Rees,M.,2013.Denialofcatastrophicrisks.Science339(6124),1123. Rossbacher,L.A.,October2013.Contemplatingexistentialrisk.Earth,GeologicColumn58(10),64. Chapter 1 Wildfires: International Perspectives on Their e Social Ecological Implications Douglas Paton SchoolofMedicine(Psychology),UniversityofTasmania,Launceston,Tasmania,Australia Petra T. Buergelt CharlesDarwinUniversity,SchoolofPsychological&ClinicalSciences,Darwin,Australia, UniversityofWesternAustralia,CentreforSocialImpactandOceansInstitute,Universityof WesternAustralia,Australia&JointCentreforDisasterResearch,MasseyUniversity,MtCook, Wellington,NewZealand Fantina Tedim FacultyofArts,UniversityofPorto,GeographyDepartment,Porto,Portugal Sarah McCaffrey NorthernResearchStation,USDAForestService,Evanston,IL,USA ABSTRACT Thischapterintroducesthefactthatoftheseveralnaturalhazardscontemporarycom- munitiesmayencounter,thecomplexinterdependenciesthatexistbetweenpeopleand theforestsourcesofwildfirehazardsmakewildfireauniquehazard.Itthenproceedsto provideanoverviewofhowhistoricalpatternsofinterdependencebetweenpeopleand forestscoupledwithrecenttrendsinpopulationgrowthandtheirencroachmentonforest environments forlifestyleandrecreation areincreasing risk. Next,itoutlinesasocial- eecological approach to framing and managing wildfire risk and discusses environ- mental,ecological,andsocialfactorsthatplaycomplementaryrolesinthedevelopment and thus the management of wildfire risk. The chapter introduces international case studiesthatdiscussthehistorical,social,cultural,andecologicalaspectsofwildfirerisk management in countries with a long history of dealing with this hazard (e.g., United StatesandAustralia)andincountries(e.g.,Taiwan)wherewildfirehazardsrepresenta newandgrowingthreattothesocialandecologicallandscape. 1.1 INTRODUCTION Amongthevarious natural hazards thatcontemporarycommunities mayhave tocontendwith,wildfiresareunique.Wildfireattainsthisuniquecharacteristic WildfireHazards,Risks,andDisasters.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-410434-1.00001-4 Copyright©2015ElsevierInc.Allrightsreserved. 1 2 WildfireHazards,Risks,andDisasters asaresultofthecomplexinterdependenciesthatexistbetweenpeopleandthe forest sources of wildfire hazards. For millennia, forests have delivered fuel andbuildingmaterialstopeople,providedcontextsforagricultural,livelihood and hunting, and they are increasingly sought out for their lifestyle and amenity values as people choose to live in close proximity to forests or use themforrecreationalpurposes. Further,forestandothernaturalenvironments also play crucial roles in sustaining human well-being (Clayton and Opotow, 2003). These factors have influenced how people think about and act toward thesourceofthehazard.Thisrelationshiphasalsoresultedinpeople’sactions, increasingtheirrisk.Consequently,peoplehavearelationshipwiththesource of the hazard that is not generally shared with any other natural hazard. This long-standing interdependence between people and forests (as ame- nity and hazard) has resulted in many populations, particularly indigenous peoples, developing sustainable ways of relating to forests and the hazards they periodically create. Fire has been a prominent part of ecosystems for millennia, and ecosystems have evolved through people working with fire ratherthanagainstit(seeChapters2,3,5,and7).Thus,asignificantpointof departurebetweenwildfireandothernaturalhazardsisthatfireservesasboth a development tool and a hazard. This interdependence has implications for developing comprehensive conceptualizations of wildfire risk. A comprehensive conceptualization of wildfire risk requires two inputs: Thefirstrelatestoforestecology.Thesecondisconcernedwithunderstanding thedeterminantsoftheabilityofpeople,communities,andsocietiestobeable to coexist harmoniously with all facets of the amenity and hazardous aspects oftheforestenvironment.Thatis,itisimportanttobringasocialeecological perspectivetobearonthetaskofunderstandingandmanagingwildfirerisk.It is thus becoming increasingly important to consider the contributions to risk emanating from environmental, ecological, and social domains as well as the interdependencies between them (Buergelt and Paton, 2014; Paton, 2006; Paton et al., 2006). The contents of this volume focus primarily on the socialeecological contributions to wildfire as a hazard. Before proceeding to introduce the content and its socialeecological implications,abriefnoteonnomenclatureiswarranted.Thetermwildfirewill beusedpredominantlyinthisvolume.However,whilethistermpredominates in North America, the terms bushfire and forest fire are used in Australia and Europe, respectively. The terms bushfire and forest fire are used where appropriate. Whatever the term used to describe the phenomenon, the risk wildfire poses is increasing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. 1.2 CHANGES IN THE WILDFIRE HAZARD SCAPE It is undeniable that wildfire presents a growing risk to many countries. The contributionstothisvolumeillustratethiswithrespecttowhatishappeningin Chapter j1 Wildfires: International Perspectives 3 Northand South America, Australasia, India, Europe, and Russia. In addition to this increased risk emanating from the ubiquitous influence of climate change on the fundamental environmental and ecological sources of wildfire risk(e.g.,hottertemperaturesoverlongerperiodsoftime),socialchange(e.g., population growth in the wildlandeurban interface (WUI)) is making a contemporaneous contribution to increasing the scale, consequences, and duration of the ecological, economic, and social consequences that will continue to arise from wildfire events. These factors, in turn, interact to conspire to create ever-more complex disaster risk reduction (DRR), disaster recovery, and restoration challenges in countries susceptible to experiencing wildfire hazards. While wildfire risk management issues are most immediately apparent in North America, Southern Europe, and Australia, wildfires are increasingly makingtheirpresencefeltinmanyothercountries.Societiesandcommunities susceptibletoexperiencingwildfirehazardscanexpectnotonlymorefrequent large-scale, damagingwildfire hazard eventsbutalsofires ofgreater intensity and duration. The potential scale of this emerging threat is reflected in the increasing occurrence of megafires (Adams, 2013). Megafires deserve special attentioninbothfiremanagementandpostfirerestoration(seeChapters5and 12).Thepotentialoccurrenceofmegafireshighlightsthepotentialforwildfire to create global impacts through the emissions of greenhouse gases and particles to the atmosphere. Climate change will influence the patterns of wildfire risk and their distribution(e.g.,NichollsandLucas,2007).Countrieswherethishazardwas infrequentcanexpectmore,andsomecountrieswillfindthemselveshavingto add wildfire to their national hazard scapes for the first time. Even if not directly affected, wildfire hazard consequences can readily transcend national borders and create impacts on a global scale. Locally, wildfire consequences affect air quality, ecosystems and land- scapes,andthebuiltenvironment.Secondaryconsequencescanbecreatedby the impact of fire hazards on soil and water quality. These, in turn, can affect food and water insecurities. Globally, wildfires create large-scale problems through their contribution to atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases and particles. These can create direct damage to vegetation and fauna, direct and indirect impacts on soils through heat release and ash deposition, and contribute to postfire environmental degradation (see Chapter 12). Global impactsareincreasinglyevidentfromthewaysinwhichwildfiresmoke(e.g., from Indonesian firesdsee Chapter 6) transcends national borders and can affect whole regions. The contents of this book review the findings of substantive research programs on the socialeecological dimensions of wildfire risk. The contrib- utorsbringtheirconsiderableexpertiseandexperienceofresearchingwildfire to discuss the personal, social, societal, environmental, and ecological factors that need to be accommodated in wildfire risk management. By drawing on
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