Research Database
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6
Innovation to support wildfire risk-based decision-making: examining the incident strategic alignment process
Year: 2025
BackgroundIn the face of increased complexity, the USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) is emphasizing the use of risk-based spatial analytics and expert coaching of fire managers through consistent processes and practices to inform safer, effective, and strategic decision-making during incident management. The Incident Strategic Alignment Process (ISAP) integrates collaborative dialogue with risk management assistance (RMA) and other spatial analytics to develop and deploy a consistent, science-based strategic planning model for incident management. An important challenge is…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Insights into how Community Wildfire Protection Plans act as drivers of wildfire preparedness
Year: 2025
Wildfire poses an increasing threat to communities in the Western US, driven by climate change and rising human settlement in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). It is imperative that communities in fire-prone areas become “fire-adapted” to safely manage their risk. Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) constitute an approach by the federal government to enable communities to collaboratively plan for, and adapt to, wildfire. How well these plans have enabled at-risk rural Colorado communities to become “fire-adapted” since their development is still debated. Through interviews with key…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A fire deficit persists across diverse North American forests despite recent increases in area burned
Year: 2025
Rapid increases in wildfire area burned across North American forests pose novel challenges for managers and society. Increasing area burned raises questions about whether, and to what degree, contemporary fire regimes (1984–2022) are still departed from historical fire regimes (pre-1880). We use the North American tree-ring fire-scar network (NAFSN), a multi-century record comprising >1800 fire-scar sites spanning diverse forest types, and contemporary fire perimeters to ask whether there is a contemporary fire surplus or fire deficit, and whether recent fire years are unprecedented…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Contextualizing recent increases in Canadian boreal wildfire activity: decadal burn rates still within historical variability of the two past centuries
Year: 2025
With approximately 15 million hectares burned, the 2023 wildfire season in Canada was exceptional. However, it remains unclear whether such recent increases in burned areas exceed the range of variability observed over past centuries. The objective of this study was to leverage available dendrochronological reconstructions of decadal burn rates to contextualize their recent increase within their historical variability over the past two centuries. We compared decadal burn rate reconstructions based on dendrochronological data (1800s–2023) for five large eastern and western Canadian boreal…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Resource objective wildfires shifted forest structure and fuels toward pre-fire-exclusion conditions in a remote Arizona wilderness
Year: 2025
BackgroundLarge, severe fires are increasing throughout frequent-fire forests of the western United States due to warming climatic conditions, as well as legacies of early twentieth century land-use practices and anthropogenic fire exclusion. Resource objective (RO) wildfires—where naturally ignited wildfires are allowed to burn to accomplish management objectives—are increasingly accepted due to relatively low cost and flexibility on lands where mechanical treatments are not allowed (e.g., designated wilderness) or economically feasible. We previously implemented a field…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Spatiotemporal Synchrony of Climate and Fire Occurrence Across North American Forests (1750–1880)
Year: 2025
Aim: Increasing aridity has driven widespread synchronous fire occurrence in recent decades across North America. The lack of historical (pre-1880) fire records limits our ability to understand long-term continental fire-climate dynamics. The goal of this study is to use tree-ring reconstructions to determine the relationships between spatiotemporal patterns in historical climate and widespread fire occurrence in North American forests, and whether they are stable through time. This information will address a major knowledge gap required to inform projections of future fire.Location: North…
Publication Type: Journal Article