ALASKA: Researcher receives NSF funding for wildfire risk reduction
A team headed by Alaska EPSCoR Fire & Ice researcher Jen Schmidt has been funded by the NSF for a Navigating the New Arctic proposal entitled “Socio-ecological considerations for sustainAble Fuel treatments to Reduce wildfire Risk (SAFRR).” The team will work with agencies, Indigenous organizations and communities to co-produce an integrated framework to evaluate fuel treatments; assess treatments’ short-term and long-term ecological effects and influence on wildfire behavior; examine how likely treatments are to be acceptable to residents; and evaluate the ability of alternative fuel treatment designs.
“This project will help us understand more about the effectiveness and social acceptance of fuel treatments like prescribed burns and thinning of vegetation in reducing wildfire risk,” Schmidt said. “Since the 1990s there’s been a dramatic increase in the amount of boreal forest burned each year in Alaska and western Canada. This area has experienced some of the most deadly and costly wildfire events in the last decade.”