Costs Of Fire Suppression Forces Based On Cost Aggregation Approach

A cost-aggregation approach has been developed for determining the cost of Fire Management Inputs (FMls)-the direct fireline production units (personnel and equipment) used in initial attack and large-fire suppression activities. All components contributing to an FMI are identified, computed, and summed to estimate hourly costs. This approach can be applied to any FMI by any organization with fire protection responsibility. Significant cost differences were found not only among the three State fire organizations studied, but among the three administrative regions within the Forest Service. Hourly suppression cost estimates ranged from $40 per hour for a small engine and 2-person crew in the Southwestern Region to $595 per hour for a 20-person Category II crew in the Pacific Northwest Region. The overhead, basic training, facilities, and equipment cost components were responsible for most of the cost variations.

In a 1964-1967 study on the Challenge Experimental Forest, seedfall was evaluated in 2-, 5-, and 10-acre circular clearcuttings. During the 4 years, 10 seed crops, ranging from light to bumper, were produced by ponderosa pine. white fir, Douglas-fir, and incense cedar. Seedfall ranged from 76 to 40,691 sound seed per acre (188 to 100,547/ha) for a single species in a given year. From 89 to 100 percent of each species' seed fell within an area 1 1/2 times the height of the average dominant tree. Overall, seed distribution was highly variable.

February issue includes Appendix entitled Directory of United States Government periodicals and subscription publications; September issue includes List of depository libraries; June and December issues include semiannual index

Provides a general overview of recent research related to wildland fire economics and decision support systems. After an introduction, section two describes the general evolution of concepts and approaches relative to wildfire economics in its historical context. Section three summarizes a major state of the art review of wildland fire management by Baumgartner and Simard, 1982. Section four updates that work with an overview of selected research and analysis conducted since 1982. Section five synthesizes the material discussed in the previous sections, and section six is an annotated bibliography of 26 studies and reports selected to represent the spectrum of issues in fire economics which have been provided in the literature since 1982. The final section contains a more complete listing of citations obtained through an electronic search of the TREE CD database.