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Table 9-The 10 costliest fires for BAER Vestment spending. All amounts are in 1999 dollars
<br />
<br />Fire Nama National
<br />Forest
<br />Year NFS
<br />(ac)
<br />(ha) Total
<br />(ac) (ha) NFS
<br />($) Total
<br />($)
<br />Rabbit Creek Boise 1994 94880 38425 94880 38425 8,420,000 8,420,000
<br />Foothills Boise 1993 139955 56680 257600 104330 8,251,500 8,346,000
<br />Tyee Creek Complex Wenatchee 1994 105600 42770 140195 56780 6,156,100 8,978,000
<br />Lowman Complex Boise 1989 95000 38475 95000 38475 3,215,500 3,215,500
<br />Sianislaus Complex Stanislaus 1987 117980 47780 139980 56690 2,109,450 2,609,450
<br />Fork Mendocino 1997 61930 25080 82993 33610 1,839,100 1,888,000
<br />Buffalo Creek Pike-San Isabel 1998 11320 4585 11900 4820 1,800,200 2,146,400
<br />Clover Mist Shoshone 1988 194000 78570 387000 156735 1,393,500 1,393,500
<br />Eighth Street Boise 1997 3160 1260 15193 66155 1,207,000 8,562,400
<br />Ciarks Incident Plumas 1988 30000 12,150 40000 16,200 1,024,000 1,289,000
<br />teams actually evaluate burn severity, not intensity
<br />(DeBano and others 1998), and hereafter we use the
<br />term "severity" instead of intensity. The Burned Area
<br />Report form burn severity information was used to
<br />calculate the total acreage in the Western United
<br />States of wildfire-burned lands, by National Forest
<br />System Region, in high, moderate, and low bum
<br />severity classes over the last three decades. Total
<br />reportedburn area (National Forest System plus other
<br />ownerships) was greatest in Region 5 (1,800,000 ac;
<br />730,000 ha), followed by Regions 6, 4, 2, 3, and 1(fig. 5),
<br />The total burned and treated areas of high severity
<br />(National Forest System plus other ownerships) in
<br />Region 6 (702,000 ac, 284,000 ha) exceeded that of all
<br />Intermountain
<br />Region 4
<br />33°h
<br />other Regions combined (670,000 ac, 271,300 ha) (fig. 6).
<br />For Region 5, the high severity areas (39 percent ofthe
<br />total reported wildfire-burned area) exceeded the
<br />moderate (29 percent) and low severity categories
<br />(33 percent); this is due to the large amount chapar-
<br />ral vegetation in Region 5 which generally bum at
<br />high severity conditions. In all the other Regions, the
<br />acreage of burned land in the low severity class ex-
<br />ceeded the high severity class.
<br />In terms of expenditures for BAER treatments on
<br />high fire severity areas, the Regions segregated into
<br />two groups (fig. 7). Both Regions 4 and 5 incurred BAER
<br />treatment expenses of over $27 million, and Region 6
<br />exceeded $17 million. However, the expenditures for
<br />Southwestem_ J
<br />Region 3 Rocky Mountain
<br />4 /o Pacific North
<br />Region 2 Northam Region 6
<br />6°~' Region 1 21%
<br />4%
<br />Pacific Southwest
<br />r Region 5
<br />32%
<br />Figure 2-National Forest BAER spending by Region in 1999 dollars, 1973-1998 from Bumed Area Reports.
<br />The insert shows the Western Forest Service Regions used in this study.
<br />24 USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-63.2000
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