Research Database
Displaying 21 - 40 of 112
Compounding effects of climate change and WUI expansion quadruple the likelihood of extreme-impact wildfires in California
Year: 2025
Previous research has examined individual factors contributing to wildfire risk, but the compounding effects of these factors remain underexplored. Here, we introduce the “Integrated Human-centric Wildfire Risk Index (IHWRI)” to quantify the compounding effects of fire-weather intensification and anthropogenic factors—including ignitions and human settlement into wildland—on wildfire risk. While climatic trends increased the frequency of high-risk fire-weather by 2.5-fold, the combination of this trend with wildland-urban interface expansion led to a 4.1-fold increase in the frequency of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fine Particulate Matter From 2020 California Wildfires and Mental Health–Related Emergency Department Visits
Year: 2025
Importance: A growing body of research suggests that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5; particle size 2.5 microns or smaller) may be associated with mental health outcomes. However, the potential impact of wildfire-specific PM2.5 exposure on mental health remains underexplored.Objective: To investigate whether wildfire-specific PM2.5 exposure may be associated with emergency department (ED) visits for mental health conditions, including all-cause and for psychoactive substance use, nonmood psychotic disorders, anxiety, depression, and other mood-affective disorders during the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Trajectories of community fire adaptation: Social diversity, social fragmentation and the temporal evolution of wildfire action
Year: 2025
There is increasing acknowledgement that the unique characteristics (i.e., social contexts) of human communities influence variable means for adapting to the growing risks posed by wildland fire. However, there has been less work documenting how community social contexts evolve over time, and the ways they might influence collective mitigations pursued in partnership with professionals when addressing wildfire planning. We conducted 73 semi-structured interviews with 112 residents, emergency management professionals, government officials and members of community organizations in two Nevada…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Can ‘‘Fire Safe’’ Cigarettes (FSCs) Start Wildfires?
Year: 2025
Over the last 20 years, all states within the US have required all cigarettes sold to be ‘‘fire safe’’ or ‘‘fire standards compliant’’ meaning that they must pass ASTM standard E2187. Though these cigarettes are designed to self-extinguish, there have been recent studies suggesting that these ‘‘fire safe’’ cigarettes (FSCs) can still ignite mattresses and other furnishings, but there has been no guidance for fire investigators whether FSCs can ignite natural fuels, such as duff and needles, that can be the source of a wildland fire. This work sets out to investigate whether FSCs can indeed be…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Integrating fire-smart fuels management with bioenergy benefits remote and Indigenous communities in Canada
Year: 2025
The global urgency of more damaging wildfires calls for proactive solutions. Integrating fire-smart fuels management with bioenergy could reduce wildfire risk while providing feedstock for bioenergy. We explore this strategy in off-grid communities in Canada who are heavily dependent on diesel for their energy needs, many of which are home to Indigenous peoples. Combining national remote sensing data and community-based information, we identify 33 diesel-dependent communities at high wildfire risk due to a large accumulation of undisturbed flammable forest. We demonstrate that 30 of these 33…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Assessing Conservation Readiness: The Where, Who, and How of Strategic Conservation in the Sagebrush Biome
Year: 2024
The sagebrush biome is rapidly deteriorating largely due to the ecosystem threats of conifer expansion, more frequent and larger wildfires, and proliferation of invasive annual grasses. Reversing the impacts of these threats is a formidable challenge. The Sagebrush Conservation Design (SCD) emphasized that limited conservation resources should first be used to maintain Core Sagebrush Areas (CSA), and then to grow such areas where possible. The SCD heightens the ecological importance of maintaining and strategically growing CSAs. However, the fact that these areas have been identified does not…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Road fragment edges enhance wildfire incidence and intensity, while suppressing global burned area
Year: 2024
Landscape fragmentation is statistically correlated with both increases and decreases in wildfire burned area (BA). These different directions-of-impact are not mechanistically understood. Here, road density, a land fragmentation proxy, is implemented in a CMIP6 coupled land-fire model, to represent fragmentation edge effects on fire-relevant environmental variables. Fragmentation caused modelled BA changes of over ±10% in 16% of [0.5°] grid-cells. On average, more fragmentation decreased net BA globally (−1.5%), as estimated empirically. However, in recently-deforested tropical areas,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
How bureaucracies interact with Indigenous Fire Stewardship (IFS): a conceptual framework
Year: 2024
BackgroundIndigenous Fire Stewardship (IFS) is contested within settler-colonial contexts, where its development is shaped by complex and dynamic socio-cultural, legal, and political factors. This manuscript draws from the policy sciences to sketch out a “zone of interaction” between IFS and the state’s wildfire policy system. Drawing from the strategies of bureaucracies, our goal is to illustrate the patterns in this “zone of interaction,” and to identify the implications for IFS, as well as for Indigenous Peoples and landscapes.ResultsDrawing insights from the Australian and Canadian…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The influence of wildfire risk reduction programs and practices on recreation visitation
Year: 2024
Background: The increasing extent and severity of uncharacteristic wildfire has prompted numerous policies and programs promoting landscape-scale fuels reduction. Aims: We used novel data sources to measure how recreation was influenced by fuels reduction efforts under the US Forest Service Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Program. Methods: We used posts to four social media platforms to estimate the number of social media user-days within CFLR landscapes and asked: (1) did visitation within CFLR Program landscapes between…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Coexisting with wildfire: strengthening collective capacity by changing the status quo
Year: 2024
This article is the fuller written version of the invited closing plenary given by the author at the 10th International Fire Ecology and Management Congress. The article provides a consideration of our capacity to cope, care, and coexist in a fiery world from a social and structural point of view. It focuses on privilege as the root cause of a long and troublesome history within the wildfire profession of not valuing all generational knowledge equally, not treating all cultures with the same respect, not embracing diversity and inclusion, and not affording the same status to all…
Publication Type: Conference Proceedings
Developing reliable and valid measures for evaluating collaborative governance and adaptability: An example from the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program
Year: 2024
In recent decades, there has been an increased emphasis on, and application of, collaborative and adaptive forms of environmental governance as a means to address complex social-ecological problems that cannot be achieved alone and support sustainable resource management. However, the majority of research in the collaborative governance and adaptability arena has relied on individual or small-n case studies. This has led to a multitude of definitions, indicators, and indices, which limits our ability to make inferences across cases and contexts. Relatedly, most research lacks formal tests of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Socially vulnerable US Pacific Northwest communities are more likely to experience wildfires
Year: 2024
Quantitative wildfire risk assessments increasingly are used to prioritize areas for investments in wildfire risk mitigation actions. However, current assessments of wildfire risk derived from fire models built primarily on biophysical data do not account for socioeconomic contexts that influence community vulnerability to wildfire. Research indicates that despite accounting for only a small proportion of high wildfire hazard areas, communities with fewer socioeconomic resources to devote to wildfire prevention and response may experience outsized exposure and impacts. We examined the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Efficacy of Red Flag Warnings in Mitigating Human-Caused Wildfires across the Western United States
Year: 2024
Red flag warnings (RFWs) are issued by the U.S. National Weather Service to alert fire and emergency response agencies of weather conditions that are conducive to extreme wildfire growth. Distinct from most weather warnings that aim to reduce exposure to anticipated hazards, RFWs may also mitigate hazards by reducing the occurrence of new ignitions. We examined the efficacy of RFWs as a means of limiting human-caused wildfire ignitions. From 2006 to 2020, approximately 8% of wildfires across the western United States and 19% of large wildfires (≥40 ha) occurred on days with RFWs. Although the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire branding: Why do new residents make a burn scar their home?
Year: 2024
Researchers have sought to understand why wildland urban interface areas continue to expand in the United States despite increasing riskand loss to those areas. Using the case of the Camp Fire in northern California, which destroyed the town of Paradise and surrounding communities in the fall of 2018, this article explores how new arrivals to this area interact with rebuild institutions to evaluate their risk of future wildfires. The paper builds off of concepts of “disaster machine” (Pais and Elliott in Soc Forces 86(4):1415–1453, 2008) and “resilience gentrification” (Gould and Lewis, 2021…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate change mitigation-adaptation relationships in forest management: perspectives from the fire-prone American West
Year: 2024
Minimizing negative impacts of climate change on human and natural systems requires mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to new climate conditions. Forestry provides grounds to study the relationship between these two concepts: carbon flux and storage are ecosystem services of forests, while forests are growing increasingly vulnerable to climate-driven disturbances. We examined the practice and interplay of mitigation and adaptation in the American West, which is a testbed for the conceptual balance between carbon cycling and growing climate-related risk given its abundance…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Informing proactive wildfire management that benefits vulnerable communities and ecological values
Year: 2024
- In response to mounting wildfire risks, land managers across the country will need to dramatically increase proactive wildfire management (e.g. fuel and forest health treatments). While human communities vary widely in their vulnerability to the impacts of fire, these discrepancies have rarely informed prioritizations for wildfire mitigation treatments. The ecological values and ecosystem services provided by forests have also typically been secondary considerations.
- To identify locations across the conterminous US where proactive wildfire management is likely to be effective…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exploring How Community Context Informs Variations in Local Perceptions of Forest Disturbance and Land Management in Colorado Over Time
Year: 2024
Placed-based socio-economic and biophysical context has been viewed as an essential driver in shaping perceptions of forest risks and land management. Growing evidence of the importance of diverse community context in forested landscapes sets the stage to further consider how people’s understandings of their local environment influence natural resource management preferences. However, research to date largely lacks considerations of how community context informs social responses to long-term environmental change over time. Using the mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreak in Colorado, we analyze…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Indigenous Fire Data Sovereignty: Applying Indigenous Data Sovereignty Principles to Fire Research
Year: 2024
Indigenous Peoples have been stewarding lands with fire for ecosystem improvement since time immemorial. These stewardship practices are part and parcel of the ways in which Indigenous Peoples have long recorded and protected knowledge through our cultural transmission practices, such as oral histories. In short, our Peoples have always been data gatherers, and as this article presents, we are also fire data gatherers and stewards. Given the growing interest in fire research with Indigenous communities, there is an opportunity for guidance on data collection conducted equitably and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evacuation decisions of tourists in wildfire scenarios
Year: 2024
This paper investigates the factors affecting evacuation behaviour of tourists in wildfire scenarios by conducting a scoping review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis approach - here using only its extension for scoping reviews. A total of 524 scientific papers were identified in the Web of Science and Scopus and 23 studies were fully reviewed. Key variables affecting the evacuation behaviour of tourists included property attachment, past experience and preparedness, safety culture, risk perception, individual and group socio-demographics, interaction…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Untrammeling the wilderness: restoring natural conditions through the return of human-ignited fire
Year: 2024
Historical and contemporary policies and practices, including the suppression of lightning-ignited fires and the removal of intentional fires ignited by Indigenous peoples, have resulted in over a century of fire exclusion across many of the USA’s landscapes. Within many designated wilderness areas, this intentional exclusion of fire has clearly altered ecological processes and thus constitutes a fundamental and ubiquitous act of trammeling. Through a framework that recognizes four orders of trammeling, we demonstrate the substantial, long-term, and negative effects of fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article