View thesis.
Preventative fuel treatment is an effort such as thinning of brush and young trees, herbicidal treatment of invasive grasses, controlled fires to reduce fuel loads, and other actions to reduce the probability that a wildland fire will be a catastrophic wildfire that results in further expansion of invasive grasses, losses to ecological integrity, and more frequent wildfires. The trade-off between preventative fuel treatment efforts and wildfire fighting expenditures is generally well understood in principle. However, in practice, the feedback that continues to result in increasing wildfire costs continues. At this time there is little information about the benefits of preventative fuel treatment efforts. One category of benefits is in reducing the expected value of wildfire suppression expenditures. The purpose of this research is to develop a model to estimate the wildfire suppression cost savings from management actions intended to reduce fuel loadings from invasive plants in the Great Basin. Wildfire suppression cost is estimated using historical data from the US Forest Service regarding the costs of large wildfires on Great Basin lands managed by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management between 1995 and 2007.