Russian Disarray
Successful management of active wildfires can be improved by the use of fire behavior prediction systems that predict fire spread across the landscape. Simple fire behavior prediction systems were created in the mid-20th century and have undergone continued development in the United States and Canada. Australia, too, has developed and deployed a fire behavior prediction system.
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As fire researchers, we believe that Russian fire management could be improved by applying good fuels and fire behavior prediction systems to the planning and implementation of fuels treatment and fire suppression. This belief was the reason why members of our research team chose to pursue scientific training at Alberta University in Canada, and at the Woods Hole Research Center and Missoula Fire Sciences Lab in the United States.
Unfortunately, Russia has no such system yet. There are only the 1995 "Guidelines for forest fire detection and suppression," which reproduce similar guidelines dating back to 1976 and include approximate indices of forest fire development and spread. Moreover, data is provided for only seven forest types in western Russia and four forest types in the east. The vast area of Siberia, including the Krasnoyarsk Territory with hundreds of forest types, is left uncovered.
Of course, anecdotal evidence suggests that mere adoption of available foreign fire behavior prediction systems cannot resolve problems in other countries with differing environments. However, the Federal Forestry Agency does not include creation of a Russian fire behavior prediction system in its policy. Another hampering factor is the current sociopolitical climate, which is not favorable to research and development and the implementation of new management ideas.
Before the trials of today, Russia had a long and rich tradition of fire science research. Much of this research has centered on the Sukachev Institute of Forest in Krasnoyarsk, the Tomsk State University in Tomsk, and the Scientific Research Institute of Forestry in St. Petersburg. However, there have been many obstacles to implementing fire behavior prediction systems for Russian forests:
Reduced funding. Research has been fragmented due to a lack of strong direction and funding from the Federal Forestry Agency. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, funding for fundamental research was drastically reduced, causing Russia to lag behind other developed countries in R&D and the implementation of new fire management systems. In 2008-09, the Forestry Agency of the Krasnoyarsk Territory contracted with scientists at the Sukachev Institute to create a geographic information system describing fuels for the purpose of predicting fire behavior on test areas. However, efforts to map fuels for large areas of the country have not been undertaken yet, so deployment of a national system is still a long way off.
Poor coordination. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, there has been a lack of coordination between management and research. Before the breakup, academic institutions were responsible for R&D. Managers implemented new theories and models, usually following joint research-management testing in pilot areas. Now, management agencies introduce their own elaborations, which often lack scientific foundation or validation. This has coincided with a decline in the number of highly qualified wildland fire experts within the federal fire agency. Marginal funding has resulted in the loss and non-replacement of key fire management expertise.
Secretive research. Within Russia, as is common in other developed countries, there are different "schools of thought" — in this case, literally along academic institutional lines. However, the intense competition for funds provided by international projects has resulted in the development of a highly secretive research environment. Rather than share ideas in open scientific literature, the various scientific groups guard their secrets. This closed research approach engenders inbreeding of ideas, which are "sold" to local managers without adequate scientific vetting, thus creating a haphazard and piecemeal system of fire management applications.
Shortsighted decisions. Early in the breakup of the Soviet Union, when funding for Russian R&D was in a state of freefall, decisions were made to explore the use of the Canadian fire behavior prediction system in lieu of developing a system designed to meet Russian needs. The decision to adopt the Canadian Fire Weather Index was based on the perceived general similarity between the two countries' circumpolar boreal forests. The thinking at the time was that the Canadian system could be tried on an interim basis while Russian R&D got back on track.
Unfortunately, this stop-gap decision effectively sidetracked the development of a Russian fuels and fire danger rating system. The Canadian FWI has been used by the international scientific community concerned with climate change issues because of its computational ease from readily available weather data. However, fire managers have not implemented it. In one test of the Canadian Fire Danger Rating in the southern Lake Baikal region (Pribaikalie), the Canadian FDR did not consistently perform better than the proposed Russian FDR system or the Nestrov Index traditionally used in Russian fire danger rating.
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