Both ecological disruption of natural fire regimes and in situ conditions of high hazard systems create support for land management policy using active treatment to reduce fuel hazards. We will evaluate recent fuel treatment activities by type of treatment and fuel type to evaluate whether this policy is effectively addressing both ecological and social concerns of adverse impacts from wildfire

Evaluate changing conditions in fire activity as they might relate to changes in fire hazard as a result of fuel dynamics, climate influences, and land-use patterns. This will be reported as acres burned by bioregion/fuel type by decade. Past analyses have indicated recent significant trends in increased amount of wildfire.

Climate change is likely to have many effects on natural, fire-prone systems. Some effects include: warming that leads to faster and more prolonged drying, shorter and/or more variable wet seasons, and increased tree mortality (and thus fuel load) due to stress from drought and warming.

Patterns and types of fires can depend on the type of dominant vegetation in an area. Fire frequency is an important characteristic of fire regimes for particular vegetation types. If a fires normally occur frequently for a particular type of vegetation in an area, but now occur infrequently, this can lead to increased risk of fire and fire severity in the future. The degree of departure of fire regimes from a normal range indicates risk from wildfire.

Fires naturally vary in size, depending on climatic conditions, material available to burn, and artificial control. In a healthy fire-adapted ecosystem, fire extent can frequently be small (a few hectares) and less frequently be large (thousands of hectares). In a less healthy system, for example one which has had fire suppression, small fires may be more common due to suppression, but may eventually escape control and become very large due to buildup of vegetation.

Fires naturally vary in length, with larger fires tending to burn longer. Longer-burning fires may generally emit more smoke and consume more vegetation, as well as potentially consuming more resources for fire control.

Fires naturally vary in intensity, with low-intensity fires burning the underbrush and forest-floor surface and high-intensity fires burning tree stems and crowns. Although crown fires naturally occur and are not necessarily harmful to forest ecology, they cause more change in forest structure than low-intensity fires.

Each vegetation type will have a range of fire recurrence interval, which will be determined by the dominant pant species, geographic location and other factors. If fire recurrence in a place falls outside this range, then the vegetation type may change in type or structure, which may also cause other secondary changes in geomorphology and habitat quality.

Evaluate the broad ecosystem-level impacts of disruption of pre-European fire regimes associated with fire suppression, land-use change, and long-term ecosystem dynamics. FRID measures the current era (1906 to present) fire frequency patterns against reference conditions that occurred during the pre-European Settlement period. It reflects modern-era difference in fire frequency and potential ecological instability that this divergence might cause. FRID can exist both as a positive (more fire than reference conditions) and negative (less fire than reference conditions) values, and carries some inference regarding ecosystem stability and dynamics of vegetation under current fire management policy.

Fires can be tracked using various metrics that can tell us whether or not fires are occurring naturally, or if they are becoming more (or less) severe, larger (or msaller0, or if they are significantly affected by vegetation "treatment".