Chugach All-Lands Wildfire Risk Assessment: Method and Results
The purpose of the Chugach All-Lands Wildfire Risk Assessment (hereafter called ARRA1 ) is to provide foundational information about wildfire hazard and risk to highly valued resources and assets for the Chugach National Forest and surrounding areas in Southcentral Alaska. Such information supports wildfire response, fuel management planning, and revisions to land and resource management plans. A wildfire risk assessment is a quantitative analysis of the assets and resources across a specific landscape and how they are potentially impacted by wildfire. The ARRA analysis considers several different components, each resolved spatially across the region, including:
- likelihood of a fire burning
- the intensity of a fire if one should occur
- the exposure of assets and resources based on their locations
- the susceptibility of those assets and resources to wildfire.
Assets are human-made features, such as commercial structures, critical facilities, housing, etc., that have specific importance or value. Resources are natural features, such as wildlife habitat, vegetation type, or water, etc. These also have specific importance or value. Generally, the term “values at risk” has been used to describe both assets and resources. For the ARRA assessment, the term Highly Valued Resources and Assets (HVRA) is used to describe what has previously been labeled values at risk. There are two reasons for this change in terminology. First, resources and assets are not themselves “values” in any way that term is conventionally defined—they have value (importance). Second, while resources and assets may be exposed to wildfire, they are not necessarily “at-risk”—that is the purpose of the assessment.
