Together with other stressors, interactions between fire and climate change are expressing their potential to drive ecosystem shifts and losses in biodiversity. Closely linked to human well-being in most regions of the globe, fires and their consequences should no longer be regarded as repeated surprise events.
Smoke from forest fires is a serious and increasing land management concern. However, a paucity of information exists that is specific to public perceptions of smoke.
Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America’s wildland areas.
Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire.
Forty-four percent (44%) of voters see uncontrollable wildfires as a serious problem. Equal numbers of voters say wildfires in the country are worse than they were five years ago as say they are about the same. On a personal level, a majority of voters are either more worried about wildfires affecting their own personal safety than they were five years ago, or worried the same amount.
Development owing to population increases over the last 30 years has greatly affected forested lands in the United States. To assess and compare increases in development, we counted changes in the number of structures on a systematic grid of photointerpreted points around public forest land in Washington and Oregon.
Public land management agencies have incorporated the concept of vulnerability into protocols for assessing and planning for climate change impacts on public forests and grasslands. However, resource managers and planners have little guidance for how to address the social aspects of vulnerability in these assessments and plans.
We examined the effect of large wildfires on economic growth and volatility in the western United States. We matched wildfire data with quarterly employment and earnings growth data to assess the specific effect of wildfire on employment and wage growth in western US counties.
As a result of the increasing environmental and social costs of wildfire, fire management agencies face ever-growing complexity in their management decisions and interactions with the public.
Managing natural processes at the landscape scale to promote forest health is important, especially in the case of wildfire, where the ability of a landowner to protect his or her individual parcel is constrained by conditions on neighboring ownerships.