Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 117
Prenatal Exposure to Wildfire and Autism in Children
Year: 2026
Chronic health effects of wildfire PM2.5 on neurodevelopmental outcomes are largely unknown. Therefore, the effects of wildfire PM2.5 on autism were assessed in a southern California-based pregnancy cohort using Cox proportional hazard models. Exposure was estimated from 2006 to 2014 at maternal addresses across pregnancy and individual trimesters using three metrics: (1) mean wildfire PM2.5 concentration, (2) number of days of smoke exposure, and (3) number of waves of smoke exposure. Analysis was restricted to days over specific PM2.5 concentration thresholds (3 and 5 μg/m3). Nonmovers…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Environmental health hazards and wildland firefighting: a qualitative analysis
Year: 2026
BackgroundDespite growing attention to wildland firefighter safety, little is known about the full scope of environmental health hazards experienced occupationally. Previous research has documented exposures to carcinogens and combustion byproducts from smoke, dust, ash, engine exhaust, ignition devices, and location-specific chemical and radiological hazards. With growing attention to firefighters’ health outcomes, more research is needed on the environmental health hazards that they experience routinely and non-routinely. Qualitative research is well suited for exploratory…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A historical analysis of factors driving the daily prioritization of wildland fires in California
Year: 2026
During periods of heightened wildland fire activity in the United States, multiagency coordinating groups must prioritize among multiple on-going fires to allocate scarce suppression resources. While many studies have explored factors that influence wildfire suppression expenditures and personnel allocation, understanding the specific factors that affect daily wildfire prioritization has remained unexplored. In this study, we first examine wildfire reporting and ranking processes across different regions of the United States to provide insight into criteria used for fire ranking. We then…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Understanding unmet needs during community wildfire recovery: A case study of smoke damage impacts after the 2021 Marshall Fire
Year: 2026
Efforts to understand, assess, and address diversifying recovery needs have growing relevance as wildfires continue to impact communities. However, little is known about social experiences navigating gaps in assistance funding and support or “unmet needs” in post-fire spaces, particularly for indirect impacts like smoke damage. Determining how affected residents access available information and make decisions related to unmet needs can aid the development of resources and programs that support rapid identification of, and response to, emergent or undocumented impacts during recovery processes…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Understanding rural adaptation to smoke from wildfires and forest management: insights for aligning approaches with community contexts
Year: 2026
BackgroundRural communities are increasingly impacted by smoke produced by wildfires and forest management activties. Understanding local influences on smoke adaptation and mitigation is critical to social adaptation as fire risk continues to rise.AimsWe sought to determine the role of local social context in smoke adaptation and gauge interest in adaptation strategies that might reduce exposure.MethodsWe conducted 46 semi-structured interviews with 56 residents and professionals in Parks, Arizona, USA, a rural community adjacent to public…
Publication Type: Journal Article
An Assessment of Aerial Firefighting Response Times Between Agencies During the 2020 Fire Season in California
Year: 2026
Rapid, well‑coordinated aerial response can be an effective way to limit wildfire growth during the initial‑response period. To date, most studies of wildland fire aviation effectiveness have relied on data from aircraft provided by the United States Forest Service, while other agencies aircraft have received less attention. This study leverages open ADS‑B data to reconstruct second‑by‑second aircraft movements for both the CAL FIRE and USFS aircraft during the 2020 California fire season, allowing a comparison between use of different agency aircraft for the first time. This study…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Three-decade record of contiguous-U.S. national forest wildfires indicates increased density of ignitions near roads
Year: 2026
BackgroundRoads play an important role in managing fire on the national forests. But roads also are known to increase ignitions and damage ecosystems. Roads may limit the size of wildfires, which may be viewed as desirable where fires endanger human life and property or undesirable if roadlessness allows more land to experience the ecological benefits of fire. In this paper, we examine a large, nationwide dataset to determine whether roads on the national forests are associated with higher ignition density, and we examine patterns of fire size to see whether wilderness and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A collaborative, cloud-based decision support system for structured wildfire risk mitigation planning
Year: 2026
Multi-stakeholder planning and prioritization for ecosystem management and wildfire risk mitigation are complicated by the need to balance a multitude of values, goals, viewpoints, and interests across large landscapes. Doing so requires quantifying current conditions, defining management feasibility constraints, modeling complex system responses under different management and disturbance scenarios, quantifying outcomes in terms of social values, weighing and assessing tradeoffs, and identifying optimal strategies. Beginning in the 2010s, structured wildfire risk assessment tools were…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Health Impact Analysis of Wildfire Smoke-PM2.5 in Canada (2019–2023)
Year: 2026
Wildfires are a source of air pollution, including PM2.5. Exposure to PM2.5 from wildfire smoke is associated with adverse health effects including premature death and respiratory morbidity. Air quality modeling was performed to quantify seasonal wildfire-PM2.5 exposure across Canada for 2019–2023, and the annual acute and chronic health impacts and economic valuation due to wildfire-PM2.5 exposure were estimated. Exposure to wildfire-PM2.5 varied geospatially and temporally. For 2019–2023, the annual premature deaths attributable to wildfire-PM2.5 ranged from 49 (95% CI: 0–73) to 400 (95% CI…
Publication Type: Journal Article
COVID‐19 Fueled an Elevated Number of Human‐Caused Ignitions in the Western United States During the 2020 Wildfire Season
Year: 2025
The area burned in the western United States during the 2020 fire season was the greatest in the modern era. Here we show that the number of human-caused fires in 2020 also was elevated, nearly 20% higher than the 1992–2019 average. Although anomalously dry conditions enabled ignitions to spread and contributed to record area burned, these conditions alone do not explain the surge in the number of human-caused ignitions. We argue that behavioral shifts aimed at curtailing the spread of COVID-19 altered human-environment interactions to favor increased ignitions. For example, the number of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Compounding effects of climate change and WUI expansion quadruple the likelihood of extreme-impact wildfires in California
Year: 2025
Previous research has examined individual factors contributing to wildfire risk, but the compounding effects of these factors remain underexplored. Here, we introduce the “Integrated Human-centric Wildfire Risk Index (IHWRI)” to quantify the compounding effects of fire-weather intensification and anthropogenic factors—including ignitions and human settlement into wildland—on wildfire risk. While climatic trends increased the frequency of high-risk fire-weather by 2.5-fold, the combination of this trend with wildland-urban interface expansion led to a 4.1-fold increase in the frequency of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exploring Wildfire Preparedness, Perceptions, and Responses in Western Canada: Insights from Valemount, British Columbia
Year: 2025
Climate change and decades of fire suppression are increasing the risk of wildfire in many rural and remote communities across Canada. Yet limited research has been done to better understand how these communities experience wildfire risk. For this research, conducted prior to the catastrophic wildfire season of 2023 in British Columbia, we interviewed 20 key informants living in the village of Valemount in the Robson Valley, British Columbia, about their perceptions of wildfire risk, lived experiences, and management approaches. We further explored barriers to and opportunities for future…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire recovery in Pacific Northwest Latine communities: how community capitals shape disaster resilience
Year: 2025
Wildfires are increasingly affecting people’s lives in the Pacific Northwest. Latine populations, in particular, often face unique challenges in their recovery process. This study examines individual Latine wildfire recovery experiences to understand the strengths and barriers in the community’s post-fire recovery process in two wildfire-affected areas in Oregon and Washington. Perceptions of recovery of Latine community members and community-based organizations that serve these populations were collected through focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation at…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Trajectories of community fire adaptation: Social diversity, social fragmentation and the temporal evolution of wildfire action
Year: 2025
There is increasing acknowledgement that the unique characteristics (i.e., social contexts) of human communities influence variable means for adapting to the growing risks posed by wildland fire. However, there has been less work documenting how community social contexts evolve over time, and the ways they might influence collective mitigations pursued in partnership with professionals when addressing wildfire planning. We conducted 73 semi-structured interviews with 112 residents, emergency management professionals, government officials and members of community organizations in two Nevada…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Review of thermal behaviour of firebrands and their role in fuel bed and structure ignition
Year: 2025
Firebrands or embers are a crucial phenomenon in wildfire behaviour. Firebrands – small, burning or smouldering pieces of wood or other flammable materials – can be carried by wind considerable distances, leading to ignition of new fires ahead of the main fire front. This process, called spotting, significantly contributes to the rapid spread of fires, particularly in wildland–urban interface (WUI) areas. Spot fires pose a severe threat to people and properties. Better understanding the thermal behaviour of firebrands and their ability to ignite various natural fuel beds and structural…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Insights into how Community Wildfire Protection Plans act as drivers of wildfire preparedness
Year: 2025
Wildfire poses an increasing threat to communities in the Western US, driven by climate change and rising human settlement in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). It is imperative that communities in fire-prone areas become “fire-adapted” to safely manage their risk. Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) constitute an approach by the federal government to enable communities to collaboratively plan for, and adapt to, wildfire. How well these plans have enabled at-risk rural Colorado communities to become “fire-adapted” since their development is still debated. Through interviews with key…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Yosemite’s Merced Grove of giant sequoias: critical restoration continues despite legal challenges
Year: 2025
BackgroundGiant sequoias are the most massive individual trees on earth, and among the longest-lived. They also have a limited distribution, covering ~10,000 ha across ~70 distinct groves. Severe wildfires in 2020 and 2021 impacted 82% of the range, killing roughly 13-19% of the entire population of these irreplaceable trees. Within the giant sequoia range, the Merced Grove is one of the most at risk of burning at high severity. Located in Yosemite National Park, it has no recorded wildfire history and has received minimal restoration treatment, most of which occurred…
Public Perceptions of Fire and Smoke, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
Publication Type: Journal Article
Understanding rural adaptation to smoke from wildfires and forest management: insights for aligning approaches with community contexts
Year: 2025
Background: Rural communities are increasingly impacted by smoke produced by wildfires and forest management activties. Understanding local influences on smoke adaptation and mitigation is critical to social adaptation as fire risk continues to rise.Aims: We sought to determine the role of local social context in smoke adaptation and gauge interest in adaptation strategies that might reduce exposure.Methods: We conducted 46 semi-structured interviews with 56 residents and professionals in Parks, Arizona, USA, a rural community adjacent to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fine Particulate Matter From 2020 California Wildfires and Mental Health–Related Emergency Department Visits
Year: 2025
Importance: A growing body of research suggests that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5; particle size 2.5 microns or smaller) may be associated with mental health outcomes. However, the potential impact of wildfire-specific PM2.5 exposure on mental health remains underexplored.Objective: To investigate whether wildfire-specific PM2.5 exposure may be associated with emergency department (ED) visits for mental health conditions, including all-cause and for psychoactive substance use, nonmood psychotic disorders, anxiety, depression, and other mood-affective disorders during the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Patterns and trends of heat and wildfire smoke indicators across rural–urban and social vulnerability gradients in Idaho
Year: 2025
Climate change poses a grave threat to human health with disparate impacts across society. While populations with high social vulnerability generally bear a larger burden of exposure to and impact from environmental hazards; such patterns and trends are less explored at the confluence of social vulnerability and rural–urban gradients. We show that in rural regions in Idaho, low vulnerability populations had both the highest long-term average and the highest increase rate of exposure to heatwaves from 2002–2020, coincident with a higher population density in low—as compared to high—…
Publication Type: Journal Article