Wildfire mitigation scenarios for the Thompson-Okanagan region of British Columbia : assessing social-ecological trade-offs
department or school: Science, Irving K. Barber Faculty of (Okanagan)
department or school: Earth, Environmental and Geographic Sciences, Department of (Okanagan)
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCO
creator: Larsen, Renee
issued: 2024-12-12T17:01:27Z
issued: 2024
related degree: Master of Science - MSc
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: With unprecedented wildfire seasons in British Columbia during the past five years, the importance of accommodating fire in landscape management strategies has recently been recognized. Wildfire management strategies, such as prescribed burns and mechanical thinning, often do not consider the complex feedbacks and interactions among the numerous social and ecological components of wildfire-prone landscapes and the potential impacts of landscape alterations. As such, there is growing impetus to develop wildfire management strategies that balance ecological processes with social objectives. We examined how different scales of wildfire mitigation will impact social and ecological values in the Thompson-Okanagan region of British Columbia. Collaborating with local experts including Indigenous governments, municipal and regional governments, industry, and environmental organizations, we identified and mapped a range of important social (e.g., cultural, recreation, and infrastructure) and ecological (e.g., wildlife habitat, species at risk, and biodiversity) values within the Okanagan. We simulated wildfire management scenarios using Burn-P3, by incrementally increasing the proportion of mitigation applied from 0-100% in both the wildland urban interface (WUI) and entirety of the study area. The resulting outputs of Burn-P3 (burn probability and fuel consumption) were integrated into two novel spatial models that estimated wildfire severity and impacts to social and ecological values on the landscape. Wildfire mitigation at a landscape-level that treated 20 to 50% of the landscape and restored a mosaic of heterogeneous fuel compositions had the lowest burn-probability and the least social and ecological trade-offs. While there is considerable spatial variation in the impacts to the examined social and ecological values, the application of mitigation in areas extending beyond the WUI resulted in a shift to a low to mid severity wildfire regime, which, if allowed to burn, m…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/89854
note: WILDFIRE MITIGATION SCENARIOS FOR THE THOMPSON-OKANAGAN REGION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA: ASSESSING SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL TRADE-OFFS by Renée Larsen B.Sc. (Honours), The University of British Columbia (Okanagan), 2020 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE in THE COLLEGE OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Earth and Environmental Sciences) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Okanagan) December 2024 © Renée Larsen, 2024 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the College of Graduate Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Wildfire Mitigation Scenarios for the Thompson-Okanagan Region of British Columbia: Assessing Social-Ecological Trade-Offs submitted by Renée Larsen in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Examining Committee: Dr. Mathieu Bourbonnais, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science Co-Supervisor Dr. Lael Parrott, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science Co-Supervisor Dr. Hillary Ward, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Kevin Hanna, Irving K. Barber of Faculty of Science Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Chris Stockdale, Canadian Forest Service University Examiner iii Abstract With unprecedented wildfire seasons in British Columbia during the past five years, the importance of accommodating fire in landscape management strategies has recently been recognized. Wildfire management strategies, such as prescribed burns and mechanical thinning, often do not consider the complex feedbacks and interactions among the numerous social and ecological components of wildfire-prone landscapes and the potential impacts of landscape alterations. As such, there is growing impetus to develop wildfire management strategies that balance ecological processes with social objectives. We examined how different scales of wildfire mitigation will impact social and ecological values in the Thompson-Okanagan region of British Columbia. Collaborating wi…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2025-02
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0447487
language: eng
degree discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Bourbonnais, Mathieu
contributor: Parrott, Lael
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89854