Most people living in Northern Arizona are within the wildland-urban Interface, an ÃÂÃÂ area where structures and other human development meet or intermingle with undeveloped wild land or vegetative fuelsÃÂ (NIFC, 2000). A residential wilderness inhabited by homes and lives where the vegetation is overgrown and flammable litter levels are high ready for the ominous, looming threat of catastrophic wildfires.
The fear about the potential for uncontrollable wildfires within the wildland-urban interface has seriously limited the ability of wildland fires to play their natural roles in maintaining the functionality and vital balance of most ecosystems, thereby reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfires by removing much of the flammable surface litter and overgrown vegetation. Public opposition to fuel management treatments, like prescribed burning and thinning, hinder the effective implementation of these methods to areas in need of fuel reductions within the wildland-urban interface. More education and information needs to be presented to the public in order to gain the trust in the ability of fuel management professionals to reduce the threat of wildfire within their residential wilderness without burning it down or forever altering the aesthetics.
English: Igniting a controlled bun in South Caroli...
English: "Forest development on the Bitterroot Nat...
English: Ponderosa pine identifying characteristic...BackgroundOur 10,000-hectare area of ponderosa pine ecosystem in northern Arizona is particularly susceptible to health problems and major wildfires. Before European-American settlement, this forest ecosystem consisted of large diameter, widely spaced trees visited frequently by low-intensity, surface fires. ÃÂThe ponderosa pines have developed evolutionary traits such as: thick bark, prolific seed production, rapid seedling growth, long resinous needles that drop to the ground and produce highly flammable litter, and longevity, all of which are interpreted as adaptations to frequent, low-intensity, surface fires. However, as wildfires began to be artificially suppressed and excluded on a widespread basis about one hundred years ago, the role fire played in maintaining the health of the forest was practically...