Here in the American West, a new generation of wildfires has become part of daily life. As the climate continues to warm and drought becomes more prolonged, our wildfire risk will continue to increase.  This Fire Facts guide was created to provide basic wildfire information, background, terminology, and resources to increase your knowledge and understanding of wildland fire and the ways we can all contribute to better fire outcomes.

Wildfire involves a diversity of land managers, owners, and stakeholders with their own roles and resources. Strategic coordination across this diversity of actors can be challenging. Social science research about collaboration recognizes the importance of building trust, but that can be hard to foster at large scales. To sustain necessary collective action, we find that a number of “boundary spanning features” may be key. These “BSFs” create ways for different actors to understand each other, share resources and responsibilities, and implement their visions.

With exposure to wildland fire smoke projectedto further increase (Barbero et al. 2015) there is aclear need for efforts to better mitigate or adapt tosmoke impacts in high-risk areas. Such efforts relyon an understanding of how people perceive, planfor, and respond to smoke. This synthesis compilespublished scholarly literature on how individualsperceive wildland fire smoke to offer an overviewof current knowledge on wildland fire smoke perceptions.It is intended to serve as a documentationof the scope, parameters, and gaps of researchto date in this field.

The Oregon State University Forestry & Natural Resources Extension Fire Program created a StoryMap to aid in wildfire recovery. The StoryMap describes the events that caused the Labor Day wildfires, contains a map showing relevant spatial data (e.g. burn severity), and lists resources covering a variety of post-fire topics.

People living in the Pacific Northwest confrontrisks associated with environmental hazards such as wildfire. Vulnerability to wildfire hazard is commonly recognized as being spatially distributed according to geographic conditions that collectively determine the probability of exposure. For example, exposure to wildfire hazard is higher for people living in rural, forested settings than in a strictly urban neighborhood because rural housing is built in close proximity to the threat source, e.g., flammable landscapes such as forests and chaparral. Yet, even if levels of exposure are held constant, not all people are equally susceptible to wildfire events. In other words, some people are more vulnerable to harm than others.

In order to meet preidentified objectives, prescribed burns are lit under specific conditions to produce desirable results such as favorable plant response, healthy forest and rangeland conditions for grazing and wildlife habitat, silvicultural treatments, indigenous cultural practices, and reduced wildfire hazard.

Prescribed fire liability from escaped fire in the United States falls under one of three Standards of Care: strict liability, simple negligence, or gross negligence.

Among the values at risk from wildfire are community drinking water supplies, as forested watersheds on public land are often a primary or significant source of drinking water. In some places across the West, watershed protection partnerships have formed to address this threat by bringing together the stakeholders of these watersheds for collaborative planning and investment in source water protection. This webinar will explore the concept of watershed protection partnerships and how they span organizational boundaries for collective action to address wildfire and other risks. We will offer lessons learned from how these partnerships have been implemented in Colorado and New Mexico, and direct implications and applications for communities in Oregon.