Fuel breaks need more regime-scale empirical research: insights from a rapid evidence review

Background Fuel breaks are a linear form of fuel modification designed to modify fire behaviour and facilitate management objectives such as suppression and asset protection. Aims This study aimed to rapidly review published evidence concerning the effectiveness of fuel breaks, including contributing factors, to understand their potential for achieving management objectives. Methods We progressively refined selections of journal articles until we arrived at studies that took empirical, quantitative approaches to determining the influence of multiple predictors on the effectiveness of fuel breaks at the regime scale i.e. multiple fires over multiple years. We conducted a parallel, non-reproducible review of technical documents. Key results From an initial pool of 1585 scientific journal articles, only six articles took an empirical, quantitative approach to assessing fuel break effectiveness at the regime scale. Conclusions The six selected studies suggest that fuel breaks can modify fire behaviour and support suppression efforts. However, this effectiveness depends on many factors including weather, fire behaviour, suppression resource availability, vegetation type and condition, and fuel break width, accessibility and maintenance. Importantly, fuel break performance declines substantially under extreme weather conditions. Implications More regime-scale empirical research is needed to support fuel break use for fire management across diverse fire regimes.