Climate change is impacting wildfires in the contiguous United States; thus, projections of fire danger under climate change have the potential to inform responses to changing wildfire risks.
Changing climate is altering the amount of carbon that can be sustained in forest ecosystems. Increasing heat and drought is already causing increased mortality and decreased regeneration in some locations. These changes have implications for landscape carbon storage with ongoing climate change.
A key tenet of contemporary management in dry, fire-adapted forests of western North America is the reintroduction of a frequent and low- to moderate-severity fire regime.
This technical paper describes wildfire risk analysis products commonly used in the Pacific Northwest. It compares and explains key differences in the technical information behind commonly used risk products, such as the values at risk, purpose of the assessment, fire modeling methods, data sources, and data vintages; and it articulates considerations for informed selection and use of risk products by potential users.
Wild and intentionally ignited fires are not new to North American landscapes or to the Indigenous cultures whose ancestral places encompass them. For millennia, Indigenous fire stewardship has been regionally and locally distributed across North American ecosystems.
Join us for the first-ever Women in Forest Management Conference, a gathering designed to advance, connect, and inspire professionals across forestry and natural resources.
This event will include:
Join us for the California Forest Science Symposium (CFSS) in Sacramento, CA on February 18th – 20th, 2026. This joint event—organized by the California Society of American Foresters, California Fire Science Consortium, California Forest Pest Council, and UCANR Cooperative Extension —will spotlight the latest science and practical applications driving forest management across California.
The purpose of this symposium is to once again convene air quality, fire professionals, health scientists, and smoke specialists from the research community, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), local/state/federal government agencies and tribes to discuss the state-of-the-science and state-of-the-applied-science for smoke management and addressing the air quality and public health impacts of
Wildfires present an increasing challenge to humanity and the ecosystems and atmosphere we depend on. The ability of societies to respond to larger and more destructive wildfire events and mitigate against further climate impacts is also increasingly challenged.