Integrated Fire Management:

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Integrated Fire Management Basic Concepts
Fire management technologies
Communities Society
Ecology
Ronald Myers The Nature Conservancy Global Fire
Initiative
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• Objectives
• Introduce the concepts of Fire Management,
  Integrated Fire Management, Community based
  Fire Management.
• Define fire-dependent, fire-influenced, and fire
  independent ecosystems.
• Indentify the strategies of Intergrated Fire
  Management.
• Explain the importance of understanding the
  ecological, economic, social and cultural
  contexts of fire problems.

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General concepts

• Fire Management
• Integrated Fire Mangement
• Fire Regime

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What is Fire Management?
Fire Management is the full range of technical
strategies, decisions and actions directed toward
the prevention, prediction, detection,
suppression, manipulation and use of fire to
obtain objectives and reach goals at a specific
place.
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The Fire Management Triangle
Fire Management
Prevention
Suppression
Fire Use
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What is Integrated Fire Management?
IFM is an approach to addressing the problems and
issues posed by both unwanted and desirable fires
within the context of the natural environments
and socio-economic systems in which they occur,
by evaluating and balancing the relative risks
posed by fire with the beneficial or necessary
ecological and economic roles that it may play in
a given conservation area, landscape or region.

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Integrated Fire Management.

• looks for cost-effective approaches to
  preventing unwanted fires and managing desired
  fires. When unplanned fires do occur, it
  provides a process for
• 1. evaluating whether the effects will be
  detrimental, beneficial or benign
• 2. weighing relative benefits and risks
  and
• 3. responding appropriately and effectively.
• (Managing beneficial fires and preventing
  undesirable ones may involve various forms
  of fire use prescribed burning).

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Community-based Fire Management (CBFiM)

• Integral is the involvement of local
  communities in decisions and actions regarding
  the management and use of fire for ecologically
  sustainable products and services.

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Community-based fire management assumes that
local fire problems and issues are best resolved
at the local or community-level, but those
resolutions must be linked to, and supported by,
appropriate national policies and technologies.
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Integrated Fire Management
Communities Fire Use Culture Socio-economic
Impacts Benefits
Fire Management Prevention, Suppression, Use
Fire Ecology Ecology, Fuels/Fire Behavior
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The Ecological Component of Integrated Fire
Management
Integrated Fire Management
Ecological Context
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The Role of Fire in Ecosystems

• Fire-dependent require fire

• Fire-influenced fire usually damaging, i.e.
  generally fire-sensitive, but biodiversity may
  depend on some fire disturbances.

Fire-independent fuels not available and/or
limited ignitions
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• Fire-Dependent Ecosystems

• Ecosystems where fire is essential. If fire is
  removed, or if the fire regime is altered beyond
  its normal range of variability, the ecosystem
  changes to something else habitats and species
  are lost.
• Plants and animals have adaptations that allow
  them to survive fire, and reproduction and growth
  may be stimulated by fire.
• Fire-prone, highly flammable.
• Ecosystem structure plant architecture
  facilitate fires spread.

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• Fire-influenced Ecosystems

• Ecosystem structure composition tend to inhibit
  ignition fires spread.
• Species lack adaptations to respond to fire.
• Fire can influence ecosystem structure,
  relative abundance of species, and/or limit
  ecosystem extent.
• Fire may create habitats by initiating or
  affecting succession.
• If fires are too frequent or too large, they
  can be damaging and cause ecosystem shifts to
  more fire-prone vegetation.

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• Fire-independent Ecosystems

• Ecosystems where fire plays little or no role.
• Too cold, too dry, or too wet to burn.

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Predominant vegetation response to fire by
ecoregion
At least ½ of the worlds terrestrial ecosystems
depend on fire to maintain their character and
biodiversity.
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The Social Component of Fire
Integrated Fire Management
Socioeconomic- Cultural Issues
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Socio-cultural-economic aspects of fire involve

• Fire use needs and conflicts.
• Perceptions of fire by various segments of
  society.

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Escaped milpa burn in Belize
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Crops damaged by fire in the Peruvian Amazon
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Loss of house in Peruvian Amazon
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Local and regional smoke/health impacts
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Grassland burns for range improvement and cattle
rotation in Paraguay
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Loss of forage for livestock
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Key questions when evaluating and understanding
social/cultural aspects of fire

• Who is burning?
• Why are they burning?
• Do they have to burn?
• How are they burning? Do they know how to burn?
• What are they burning?
• When are they burning?
• What are the socio-economic benefits of this
  burning?
• What are the socio-economic negatives of this
  burning?
• What are the ecological benefits of these fires?
• What are the ecological negatives of these fires?

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What role, if any, do human-ignited fires play in
maintaining desired ecosystems?
Indigenous fire in pine savannas of eastern
Honduras
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Agriculture fires in the Peten,
Guatemala. Tropical Moist Forest
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The Fire Management Component

Lack of technical capacity training in fire
behavior, fire planning, setting fire management
objectives, fire use.
Integrated Fire Management
Fire Management
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Integrated Fire Management
Supporting Policies
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What is a Fire Regime?

• A set of recurring conditions of fire that
  characterize a given ecosystem.

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Components of a Fire Regime

• Fire type ground, surface, crowning
• Frequency how often on average fire returns
  to a given location
• Fire Behavior intensity and rate of spread
• Burn Severity impact on the biota and soils
• Timing season or in relation to
  meteorological events
• Size and Pattern, i.e. across the landscape

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Season of burn in Belizean savannas
February
Intensity differences?
Late March-early April
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Variation

• Variation in each component may be more important
  ecologically than its average property.
• Managing fire through prescribed burning, or
  through suppression and prevention, can lead to
  less variation and ecosystem changes.
• Change one fire regime component invariably
  affects others.

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The Role of Human Activities on Fire Regimes

• Human intervention in fire regimes is not at
  question.
• On any landscape, we are looking at the result of
  a historic fire regime, not a natural fire
  regime.

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What is an altered fire regime?

• A fire regime that has been altered by human
  activities through fire suppression and
  prevention, or excessive burning/inappropriate
  burning, or habitat fragmentation, that stress
  the ecological integrity of ecosystems,
  communities, and conservation or resource targets
  or objectives.

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What is a prescribed fire regime?
A repeated pattern of burning designed to produce
a desired or predicted outcome.
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Problems and Pitfalls

• Failure to understand and appreciate the role of
  fire in ecosystems.
• Failure to understand and address the
  socio-economic contexts in which many fires
  occur.
• Failure to understand the role of human burning
  in maintaining or manipulating desired ecosystem
  states.
• Failure to distinguish between detrimental
  beneficial fires.
• Over-constraining fire regimes.
• Problems of scale.
• Coping with non-native invasives.

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Questions? Comments?