area burned
Proportion of forest area burned at high-severity increases with increasing forest cover and connectivity in western US watersheds
Context In western US forests, the increasing frequency of large high-severity fires presents challenges for society. Quantifying how fuel conditions influence high-severity area is important for managing risks of large high-severity fires and understanding how they are changing with climate change.
Does large area burned mean a bad fire year? Comparing contemporary wildfire years to historical fire regimes informs the restoration task in fire-dependent forests
Wildfires and fire seasons are commonly rated largely on the simple metric of area burned (more hectares: bad). A seemingly paradoxical narrative frames large fire seasons as a symptom of a forest health problem (too much fire), while simultaneously stating that fire-dependent forests lack sufficient fire to maintain system resilience (too little fire).
Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world
Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth's surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence. Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses.
The relationship of large fire occurrence with drought and fire danger indices in the western USA, 1984-2008: the role of temporal scale
The relationship between large fire occurrence and drought has important implications for fire prediction under current and future climates.