human dimensions

Background

Background

Wildland firefighting requires exposure to long shifts and poor sleep, which may pose a risk to worker safety due to impaired cognitive function.

Aims

We investigated the associations between sleep, shift characteristics, and cognitive function in wildland firefighters.

Methods

Climate change and decades of fire suppression are increasing the risk of wildfire in many rural and remote communities across Canada. Yet limited research has been done to better understand how these communities experience wildfire risk.

Highlights

• Introduced an integrated housing-economic recovery framework that links post-wildfire housing stability to local employment conditions and economic diversity.
• Demonstrated how traditional vulnerability tools like SoVI overlook hidden and dynamic vulnerabilities, especially among renters, seasonal workers, and undocumented residents.

Smoke from extreme wildfires in Canada adversely affected air quality in many regions in 2023^1,2.

Communities can face significant risk from wildfire, often compounded by climate change and legacies of industrial forest management.

Effective interventions to prevent human-caused ignitions on public lands play a critical role in social and ecological adaption to wildfire. While wildfire prevention spending generates a high return on investment, funding and capacity to support such programing within federal, state, and local land and fire management agencies remains limited.

Firebrands or embers are a crucial phenomenon in wildfire behaviour. Firebrands – small, burning or smouldering pieces of wood or other flammable materials – can be carried by wind considerable distances, leading to ignition of new fires ahead of the main fire front.

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.

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.