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Cost of Suppression

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

Synonyms

Firefighting expenditure; Wildfire control cost; Wildfire perimeter containment expenditure

Definition

Cost of suppression is defined as the money spent in suppression activities. Suppression is defined as the activities aimed at restricting the spread of a wildfire after its detection. The term suppression is broadly defined to encompass all activities aimed at putting the fire out and minimizing the area burned.

Introduction

Suppression, or firefighting, is a fire agency’s response to a wildfire using a range of resources to limit its spread. Other expenditures incurred prior to the start of the fire (e.g., land management planning, fuel treatments, prepositioning of firefighting resources, detection systems, etc.) are considered to be part of the presuppression stage (Gebert et al. 2008). The type of resources needed for suppressing a wildfire and how long they are used for depend on where the fire occurs (e.g., close or far away from human habitations), what assets are...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia

    Veronique Florec

  2. U.S.D.A. Forest Service (Rocky Mountain Research Station), Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Matthew P. Thompson

  3. Forest Engineering Department, Forest Fire Laboratory, University of Cordoba, Córdoba, Spain

    Francisco Rodríguez y Silva

Authors
  1. Veronique Florec
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  2. Matthew P. Thompson
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  3. Francisco Rodríguez y Silva
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Veronique Florec .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. United States Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA

    Samuel L. Manzello

Section Editor information

  1. Land & Water, CSIRO, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Raphaele Blanchi PhD

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Florec, V., Thompson, M.P., Rodríguez y Silva, F. (2019). Cost of Suppression. In: Manzello, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51727-8_96-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51727-8_96-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51727-8

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