Wildfires in Alaska: Shifting landscapes and fire management strategies

In Alaska, federal policy called for suppression of wildfires from about 1940 to the mid-eighties. Alaska tried to suppress fires, but it quickly became apparent that you can't get them all - total fire suppression doesn't work. Recognizing that fire is a natural part of forest ecosystems, what they did was divide the state of Alaska into four different initial attack options: Critical, Full, Modified, and Limited depending on risk to values. Initial attack is when action is taken to control a fire within around 72 hours after ignition; this time frame has the best chance for successful suppression.

Critical areas occur around communities and villages where life and property are at risk. Full suppression areas tend to be adjacent to communities or areas with human and cultural value around them, and it's not quite as critical to get the fire out quickly, but you still get there as soon as possible. In Limited management areas, fires are allowed to play their ecological role, but they are monitored and specific sites will be protected as needed but there is generally not an attempt for more widespread control of the fire. Most of the state is in Limited management. Modified management is treated like Full suppression early in the season until around mid-July in interior Alaska, when it's treated as Limited because there's less chance of a fire getting really big after that time period.

As fire occurrence increases, some land managers are rethinking this fire management approach for their area. While fire is a natural part of the ecosystem in Alaska, at what point might fire be detrimental?

One example is a pilot project that was instigated in 2023. The refuge manager of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska changed the fire management option on some areas of the refuge due to human health and carbon sequestration concerns. There are quite a few villages within that area where people are exposed to a lot of smoke, and it's a remote region with no roads so they can't easily escape poor air quality. But we're also looking at it from a climate change standpoint. The smoke and greenhouse gas emissions from the fires themselves can be massive. But in this area, we also have a lot of Yedoma permafrost - around 4 million acres - which stores very old organic matter from the Pleistocene epoch and it's also ice rich, meaning it's more susceptible to rapid thaw. So, looking at these different factors, we changed some of the Yedoma areas from the Limited to the Modified management option to protect permafrost. This region is about 1.6 million acres, so it's a very large area.

Implementing fire suppression as a climate solution is a novel concept for our modern fire management. Before, fire in this region would only be suppressed if it posed a threat to humans or property. There were stipulations involved in enacting this change. First is recognizing that life and property are always going to come first for fire protection. Also, we don't want to send firefighters to really remote locations where it would be hard to extract them if they were injured, so these areas were excluded. We only looked at areas that hadn't burned since about 1989, so fairly mature forests with a thick organic mat. Another stipulation is that only fires ignited in the Yedoma would be initial attacks; fires moving into the area would not be suppressed. This is still an experiment now - we're looking to see how it works. We have limited resources, and it's expensive to respond to remote fires. But if you look at the emissions saved, the expense may not be so different from climate measures being taken in other places.

Ultimately, people are thinking about boreal fire management differently. The idea is that this wouldn't be a permanent change, but that it will play a role in reducing carbon emissions and essentially buys us time while we aim to reach our climate goals.