Research Database
Displaying 21 - 40 of 149
Farming and ranching through wildfire: Producers’ critical role in fire risk management and emergency response
Year: 2025
Wildfires increasingly threaten California’s agricultural sector, posing serious risks to farming, ranching, and food systems. We conducted a survey of 505 California farmers and ranchers affected by wildfires between 2017 and 2023. Main findings show that wildfires’ impacts on producers are extensive and range from mild to catastrophic, with both short and long-term repercussions, regardless of their exposure level. Producers play a central role in community emergency wildfire risk response and management by reducing fuel loads, creating defensible space, and leveraging their fire management…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Long-range PM2.5 pollution and health impacts from the 2023 Canadian wildfires
Year: 2025
Smoke from extreme wildfires in Canada adversely affected air quality in many regions in 20231,2. Here we use satellite observations, machine learning and a chemical transport model to quantify global and regional PM2.5 (particulate matter less than 2.5 μm in diameter) exposure and human health impacts related to the 2023 Canadian wildfires. We find that the fires increased annual PM2.5 exposure worldwide by 0.17 μg m–3 (95% confidence interval, 0.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evolution and change in wildfire mitigation approaches: Social fragmentation and recreational development in rural contexts
Year: 2025
The social diversity of human populations living in or near wildfire-prone lands are an important influence on the scale at which wildfire mitigation action can occur among residential populations at increasing risk from wildfire. The research presented in this paper explores how fire adaptation programs or strategies designed to foster private landowners’ mitigation action proliferate across a landscape through in-depth case study of interacting contexts operating in neighboring human “communities.” We utilize and expand existing concepts for gauging the local social context influencing…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Roof renewal disparities widen the equity gap in residential wildfire protection
Year: 2025
Wildfires are having disproportionate impacts on U.S. households. Notably, in California, over half of wildfire-destroyed homes (54%) are in low-income areas. We investigate the relationship between social vulnerability and wildfire community preparedness using building permits from 16 counties in California with 2.9 million buildings (2013–2021) and the U.S. government’s designation of disadvantaged communities (DACs), which classifies a census tract as a DAC if it meets a threshold for certain burdens, such as climate, environmental, and socio-economic. Homes located in DACs are 29% more…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Burning from the ground up: the structure and impact of Prescribed Burn Associations in the United States
Year: 2025
Background: To combat losses and threats from fire exclusion and extreme wildfire events, communities in the United States are increasingly self-organizing through locally led Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) to plan and implement prescribed burns on private lands.Aim: Our study aimed to document the expansion of PBAs and provide insight into their structure, function, and impacts.Methods: Leaders from 135 known PBAs across the United States were invited to participate in an online survey.Key results: Survey results demonstrate a widespread emergence of PBAs in the United States,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Effects of long-term ecological research and cognitive biases on the evaluation of scientific information by public land managers in Oregon and Washington, USA
Year: 2025
Natural resource managers (managers) value and use scientific information to inform their decision-making process in a variety of ways. The scientific information managers use depends on a variety of factors, including the source of the information and ease of access. Barriers, such as paywalls, insufficient capacity, and information overload play an important role in determining what scientific information managers have access and attend to. Additionally, characteristics of managers themselves also influence what scientific information they prioritize and implement. Specific factors likely…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Role of Forensic Anthropology in the Search and Recovery of Fatal Wildland Fire Victims
Year: 2025
The search and recovery process of fatal fire victims is one of the greatest challenges in forensic anthropology, especially in large-scale wildland fire disasters. Burned human remains can exhibit significant variation in their degree of preservation depending on the temperature of the fire, the length of exposure to the heat source, and intrinsic characteristics of the victim (e.g., body size, age, and bone density). Wildland fire victims typically exhibit characteristics of the final stages of burning (i.e., nearly complete to complete calcination). The search for burned human remains is…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland Fire–Related Smoke PM2.5 and Cardiovascular Disease Emergency Department Visits in the Western United States
Year: 2025
BackgroundThe impact of short‐term exposure to fine particulate matter with a diameter ≤2.5 μm (PM2.5) due to wildland fire smoke on the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains unclear. We investigated the association between short‐term exposure to wildfire smoke PM2.5 and emergency department visits for acute CVD in the western United States from 2007 to 2018.MethodsWe analyzed 49 759 958 emergency department visits for primary or secondary diagnoses of atrial fibrillation (AF), acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, stroke, and total CVD across 5…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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
High fire hazard Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) residences in California lack voluntary and mandated wildfire risk mitigation compliance in Home Ignition Zones
Year: 2025
Wildfire structure losses are increasing globally and particularly in California, USA. Losses can be mitigated in part by changes to the Home Ignition Zone (HIZ), including both home hardening and defensible space. In the United States, there are local, nation-wide, and industry-based home mitigation standards that are enforced or recommended. We explore the standards implementation (California code and two voluntary standards) at 176 participating residences in three Santa Cruz Mountains and two Sierra Nevada Mountains sites. Overall most residences had little compulsory or recommended…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mapping Community Capacity to Reduce Vulnerability to Wildfire in Colorado, USA
Year: 2025
Communities can face significant risk from wildfire, often compounded by climate change and legacies of industrial forest management. Policies and collaborative approaches for managing wildfire risk have evolved to include greater roles and responsibilities for these communities, yet local communities often lack the capacity to plan and implement actions to reduce risk of, respond to, and recover from wildfire. In this paper, we explore spatial patterns of local capacity relative to wildfire risk across the state of Colorado, USA, with the aim of informing efforts to reduce vulnerability.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A horizon scan to inform research priorities on post-wildfire forest restoration and recovery in the western United States
Year: 2025
The frequency, severity, and scale of extreme wildfire events is increasing globally, with certain regions such as the western United States disproportionately impacted. As attention shifts toward understanding how to adapt to and recover from extreme wildfire, there is a need to prioritize where additional research and evidence are needed to inform decision-making. In this paper, we use a horizon-scanning approach to identify key topics that could guide post-wildfire forest restoration and recovery efforts in the western United States over the next few decades. Horizon scanning is a method…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mental health risk for wildland firefighters: a review and future directions
Year: 2025
Wildland fire is increasingly a consequence of the climate crisis, with growing impacts on communities and individuals. Wildland firefighters are critical to the successful management of wildland fire, yet very limited research has considered mental health in this population. Although a wealth of research in mental health risk and associated risk and protective factors exists for structural firefighters, unique demands of wildland firefighting such as the seasonal nature of work, the length and intensity of shifts, and the often geographically isolated working conditions, among other factors…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exploring spatial heterogeneity in synergistic effects of compound climate hazards: Extreme heat and wildfire smoke on cardiorespiratory hospitalizations in California
Year: 2024
Extreme heat and wildfire smoke events are increasingly co-occurring in the context of climate change, especially in California. Extreme heat and wildfire smoke may have synergistic effects on population health that vary over space. We leveraged high-resolution satellite and monitoring data to quantify spatially varying compound exposures to extreme heat and wildfire smoke in California (2006–2019) at ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) level. We found synergistic effects between extreme heat and wildfire smoke on daily cardiorespiratory hospitalizations at the state level. We also found spatial…
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
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
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
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