Description

During the next few decades, a considerable portion of the productive boreal forest in Canada will be harvested and there is an excellent opportunity to use forest management activities (e.g., harvesting, regeneration, stand tending) to alter the forest fuels for fire management purposes. This process, known as fire-smart forest management, has the potential to reduce the number and size of wildfires and the risk associated with the use of prescribed fire. We describe a landscape-level fire-smart technique in which strategically located fuel treatments, primarily species conversion, are incorporated into a long-term forest management planning model. Using a mechanistic-based fire simulation model, a comparative analysis of projected landscapes in central Alberta showed that fuel treatments could have a considerable impact on fire size. These findings have important implications for sustainable forest management in crown fire-dominated boreal forest ecosystems now and in the future. © Tall Timbers Research, Inc.