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Nat Hazards (2012) 64:707728
DOI 10.1007/s11069-012-0265-7
ORIGINAL PAPER
Joe Scott Don Helmbrecht Matthew P. Thompson David E. Calkin
Kate Marcille
Received: 5 April 2012 / Accepted: 20 June 2012 / Published online: 12 July 2012 US Government 2012
Abstract The occurrence of wildres within municipal watersheds can result in significant impacts to water quality and ultimately human health and safety. In this paper, we illustrate the application of geospatial analysis and burn probability modeling to assess the exposure of municipal watersheds to wildre. Our assessment of wildre exposure consists of two primary components: (1) wildre hazard, which we characterize with burn probability, reline intensity, and a composite index, and (2) geospatial intersection of watershed polygons with spatially resolved wildre hazard metrics. This effort enhances investigation into spatial patterns of re occurrence and behavior and enables quantitative comparisons of exposure across watersheds on the basis of a novel, integrated measure of wildre hazard. As a case study, we consider the municipal watersheds located on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest (BDNF) in Montana, United States. We present simulation results to highlight exposure across watersheds and generally demonstrate vast differences in re likelihood, re behavior, and expected area burned among the analyzed municipal watersheds. We describe how this information can be incorporated into risk-based strategic fuels management planning and across the broader wildre management spectrum. To conclude, we discuss strengths and limitations of our approach and offer potential future expansions.
Keywords Wildre Hazard analysis Exposure analysis Fire modeling
Municipal watersheds
J. Scott
Pyrologix LLC, Missoula, MT 59801, USA
D. Helmbrecht
TEAMS Enterprise Unit, US Forest Service, Missoula, MT 59807, USA
M. P. Thompson (&) D. E. Calkin
Rocky Mountain Research Station, US Forest Service, Missoula, MT 59807, USA e-mail: [email protected]
K. Marcille
Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
Probabilistic assessment of wildre hazard and municipal watershed exposure
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1 Introduction
In this paper, we illustrate the application of geospatial analysis and burn probability modeling to assess wildre hazard and exposure of municipal watersheds (i.e., drinking water supplies) to wildre. Wildres can have profound effects on watersheds (Parise and Cannon 2012), and sediment loads from burned watersheds have resulted in shutdowns of municipal water supply facilities due to water quality (Ryan and Samuels 2010)....