Iversen, J. A Fuel Treatment Planning Decision Support Tool. MASc thesis proposal, University of British Columbia.
Project
Jamie Iversen MASc thesis
An active MASc thesis project developing a fuel-treatment planning decision-support tool for optimizing wildfire-risk-reduction treatments in British Columbia.
Jamie Iversen's MASc thesis, working-titled A Fuel Treatment Planning Decision Support Tool, develops modelling workflows for landscape-level wildfire fuel-treatment planning in British Columbia.
The project responds to the difficulty of choosing where, when, and how intensively to apply fuel treatments across large forest landscapes when managers must consider wildfire risk, treatment cost, forest structure, and budget constraints over long time horizons.
The first thesis component is a BC fuel-treatment decision support guide. The guide is designed as a flowchart that characterizes stands by fire weather zone, biogeoclimatic zone, leading species, stand structure, fuel conditions, and management goals before assigning treatment logic for modelling use.
The second component applies that treatment logic in a spatially explicit forest estate model using Patchworks. The model is intended to optimize the timing, placement, and intensity of fuel treatments at the landscape level under budgetary constraints.
The case study focuses on the 100 Mile House Timber Supply Area, a south-central British Columbia landscape with wildfire exposure, multiple communities, important evacuation corridors, and forest conditions where fuel-treatment planning is directly relevant.
The planned modelling workflow uses VRI-derived forest attributes, analysis-unit treatment curves, and wildfire-behaviour or human-fire-interaction metrics such as suppression effectiveness, suppression cost, expected damages, crown-fire potential, rate of spread, intensity, and severity.
Status
- Ongoing MASc thesis
People And Roles
- Jamie Iversen: MASc student
- Gregory Paradis: supervisor
Outputs
- MASc thesis proposal and thesis materials
- BC fuel-treatment decision support guide for modelling use
- Fuel-treatment curves for analysis units in the 100 Mile House Timber Supply Area
- Patchworks landscape-level fuel-treatment optimization model
- Scenario outputs for treatment timing, placement, intensity, and budget-constrained tradeoffs
- Thesis, code, and publication links when publicly available