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Identifying linked disturbances and associated management interventions to prevent tipping points

Importance: Using the ICS database we are identifying whether ecological disturbances have overlapped in the U.S. and if there are intervention strategies that can mitigate the impacts of linked disturbances.

Day 1 — Define & Explore

Focus: Exploring the relevance of linked disturbances in tipping points

Our product 📣

  • A synthesis manuscript and high level dataset of forest management actions

Our question(s) 📣

  • What management actions take place after drought, windstorm, wildfire, and insect/pathogen disturbances to prevent future catastrophic wildfires?
  • ie. how are managers purposefully or inadvertently breaking disturbance links in order to prevent future catastrophic disturbances and tipping points?

Hypotheses / intentions 📣

  • Forest management interventions implemented within 1-3 years following drought, windstorm, or insect/pathogen disturbances significantly reduce the probability of subsequent catastrophic wildfire events, effectively breaking disturbance-linkage cascades that could lead to ecosystem tipping points.
  • Proactive management following non-fire disturbances reduces total fire management costs compared to reactive fire management strategies.

Why this matters (the “upshot”) 📣

  • Disturbances can facilitate others. As disturbances are becoming more common with climate change, we might be able to intervene once a disturbance occurs to prevent further loss of ecosystem and life.

Inspirations (papers, datasets, tools)

Publication: - Dataset portal: St. Denis, L.A., Mietkiewicz, N.P., Short, K.C., Buckland, M. and Balch, J.K., 2020. All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999–2014. Scientific data, 7(1), p.64.

Day 2 — Data & Methods

*Focus: Compiling incident reports within 20 km area to identify potential linked and compound effects

Data sources we’re exploring 📣

  1. US_National_Incident_Management_System
    • Fire incident data
  2. USFS Aerial Detection Survey
    • Aerial survey of the health of forested areas affected by insects and diseases
  3. ECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5)
    • Precipitation (for drought modeling)
  4. Blowdown data of wind events

Methods / technologies we’re testing 📣

  • Compiling data via R
  • Mapping overlapping incidents throughout the US

Challenges identified

  • Data gaps / quality issues
  • Method limitations / compute constraints
  • Open questions we need to decide on

Final Share Out — Insights & Sharing

Focus: synthesis; highlight 2–3 visuals that tell the story; keep text crisp. Practice a 2-minute walkthrough of the homepage 📣: Why → Questions → Data/Methods → Findings → Next.

Findings at a glance 📣

  • There are multiple disturbance events that greatly increase the likelihood of a future fire.
  • What types of actions may be effective in breaking the link between disturbances?
  • Can preemptive action reduce the costs of fire resources in the context of multiple disturbances?

Visuals

Map of overlapping incidents

Figure 1. Total Incidents by Hex Cell (1999-2020).

Figure 2. Incident Type Diversity by Hex Cell (1999-2020).

Figure 3. Average Time Between Incident Types.

What’s next? 📣

  • Immediate follow-ups
  • What we would do with one more week/month
  • Who should see this next

Team

Name Role Contact
Megan Oldfather Researcher moldfather@usgs.gov
Max Stiefel Researcher maximilian.stiefel@kcl.ac.uk
Cullen Molitor Researcher cmolitor@berkeley.edu
Sam Reed Researcher reed0632@umn.edu
Brian Miller Researcher bwmiller@usgs.gov
Stefan Tangen Researcher stangen@usgs.gov
Joan Dudney Science Advisor dudney@bren.ucsb.edu

Storage

Code

Keep shared scripts, notebooks, and utilities in the code/ directory. Document how to run them in a README or within the files so teammates and visitors can reproduce your workflow.

Documentation

Use the docs/ folder to publish project updates on this site. Longer internal notes can live in documentation/; summarize key takeaways here so the public story stays current.

Cite & reuse

If you use these materials, please cite:

Oldfather, M., Stiefel, M., Molitor, C., Reed, S., Miller, B., Tangen, S., Dudney, J. (2025). [Title of Work] — Innovation Summit 2025 (Group [Number]). [URL if available]

License: CC-BY-4.0 unless noted. See dataset licenses on the Data page.