Introduction

Forest management decisions are often difficult because ecosystems are inherently complex, and the system’s response to management is uncertain. Management tradeoffs typically involve very different objectives that can be difficult to compare or model across spatial and temporal scales. In addition, future conditions are often dependent on stochastic variation in the system that can be difficult to predict. One way for managers to address this complexity is to consider outcomes as conditioned on a range of influential factors that are assessed in terms of how likely they are to occur. This approach is more comprehensive than the single-scenario analyses that are commonly used in forest planning today, and it provides key information for decision makers and stakeholders.

Traditional risk assessment approaches were developed to reduce the likelihood of catastrophe such as engineering failures, insurance-related loss, or environmental contamination. These approaches may provide a poor model for forest risk assessments because management activities and nonactivities may influence a wide array of values across space and time. When something could happen that is unambiguously bad, such as a nuclear plant meltdown, the failure of a critical aircraft part, or a toxic spill, prevention is a clear and high-priority objective. In forest management, disturbances may be both a threat to the system and a critical requirement for the long-term viability of the system. For example, frequent fires may reduce surface fuels and increase the resilience of old trees, yet they may also spread invasive species, reduce air quality, and threaten homes in the surrounding wildland urban interface. Rather than decide how to prevent fire, forest managers increasingly must decide where, when, and how to conduct fire and fuel management to balance competing tradeoffs and diverse stakeholder values. Unlike risks associated with an unambiguous catastrophe, the risks and tradeoffs associated with forest management are better viewed comparatively. In this analysis, we introduce a comparative risk assessments framework called CRAFT that was developed to address the tradeoffs associated with forest management decisions. A more detailed discussion of CRAFT can be found at: http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/topics/fire_science/craft/.