Evacuation is a crucial policy to mitigate wildfire impacts. Understanding traffic dynamics during a wildfire evacuation can help authorities to improve in improving emergency management plans, thus improving life safety.
Sagebrush ecosystems of western North America are experiencing widespread loss and degradation by invasive annual grasses. Positive feedbacks between fire and annual grasses are often invoked to explain the rapid pace of these changes, yet annual grasses also appear capable of achieving dominance among vegetation communities that have not burned for many decades.
The increasing frequency and size of wildfires across the U.S. motivates the growing need to identify how affected communities can rebuild sustainably and resiliently. This study examines the jurisdictional decision-making process surrounding one important class of sustainability and resiliency decisions, focusing on energy and wildfire building codes for housing reconstruction.
Increasing area burned across western North America raises questions about the precedence and magnitude of changes in fire activity, relative to the historical range of variability (HRV) that ecosystems experienced over recent centuries and millennia.
Assessing the effectiveness and measuring the performance of fuel treatments and other wildfire risk mitigation efforts are challenging endeavors. Perhaps the most complicated is quantifying avoided impacts. In this study, we show how probabilistic counterfactual analysis can help with performance evaluation.
Yellow pine and mixed-conifer (YPMC) forests of California’s Sierra Nevada have experienced widespread fire suppression for over a century, resulting in ingrowth and densification of trees, heavy fuel accumulation, and shifts in species composition.
The increasing frequency of severe wildfires demands a shift in landscape management to mitigate their consequences. The role of managed, low-intensity fire as a driver of beneficial fuel treatment in fire-adapted ecosystems has drawn interest in both scientific and policy venues.
As wildfires are increasingly causing negative impacts to communities and their livelihoods, many communities are demanding more proactive and locally driven approaches to address wildfire risk. This marks a shift away from centralized governance models where decision-making is concentrated in government agencies that prioritize reactive wildfire suppression.
While increased length and intensity of wildfire seasons in many places have led to more concern about wildland firefighter safety, we believe ethnography has been underutilized as a method within this domain. In response, we begin building a shared idiom for ethnographic engagement with wildland firefighter safety and similar occupations.
Media provide crucial information about wildfires and can be key messengers about fire’s role in our landscapes and communities. This summer, the Oregon State University Extension Fire Program and University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication collaboratively published a new resource guide to support effective media coverage of wildfires and related topics. Although developed for Oregon, the guide’s insights and suggestions are applicable across the Northwest. Join the authors to learn more about how media in all forms can report diverse stories of fire, including strategies for physical and mental preparedness, engaging with incident personnel, and using scientific knowledge.