Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 112
Assessing wildland fire suppression effectiveness with infrared imaging on experimental fires
Year: 2025
Background: Suppression effectiveness is often evaluated by measuring the extent to which it slows fire spread and reduces fireline intensity. Although studies have used infrared (IR) imaging methods to explore suppression effectiveness, most do not measure or assess the influence of water application on energy release.Aims: This preliminary analysis uses IR imagery to quantify the impact of suppression on fire behaviour and the reduction in energy released from a flaming fire.Methods: We conducted a series of small-scale experimental burns…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Can ‘‘Fire Safe’’ Cigarettes (FSCs) Start Wildfires?
Year: 2025
Over the last 20 years, all states within the US have required all cigarettes sold to be ‘‘fire safe’’ or ‘‘fire standards compliant’’ meaning that they must pass ASTM standard E2187. Though these cigarettes are designed to self-extinguish, there have been recent studies suggesting that these ‘‘fire safe’’ cigarettes (FSCs) can still ignite mattresses and other furnishings, but there has been no guidance for fire investigators whether FSCs can ignite natural fuels, such as duff and needles, that can be the source of a wildland fire. This work sets out to investigate whether FSCs can indeed be…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire Intensity and spRead forecAst (FIRA): A Machine Learning Based Fire Spread Prediction Model for Air Quality Forecasting Application
Year: 2025
Fire activities introduce hazardous impacts on the environment and public health by emitting various chemical species into the atmosphere. Most operational air quality forecast (AQF) models estimate smoke emissions based on the latest available satellite fire products, which may not represent real-time fire behaviors without considering fire spread. Hence, a novel machine learning (ML) based fire spread forecast model, the Fire Intensity and spRead forecAst (FIRA), is developed for AQF model applications. FIRA aims to improve the performance of AQF models by providing realistic, dynamic fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Understanding household experiences with flooding in post-fire environments: risk perceptions, perceived drivers, and mitigation actions
Year: 2025
Flood events in post-fire environments produce cascading social and ecological consequences that are challenging to anticipate, mitigate, and manage. Engaging private property owners in mitigation is complex, and the drivers that motivate action or inaction are not yet well defined. We analyse household survey data collected after multiple rainfall events that triggered flooding on and adjacent to the 2019 Museum Fire burn scar in Flagstaff, AZ, USA, to explore relationships between risk perceptions, drivers of flood risk, and mitigation actions in post-fire environments. We received 623…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modeling the probability of bark beetle-caused tree mortality as a function of watershed-scale host species presence and basal area
Year: 2025
In recent decades, bark beetle outbreaks have caused mass tree mortality in western US forests, which has led to altered wildfire characteristics, hydrological processes, and forest carbon dynamics. Understanding spatial variability in forest susceptibility to bark beetle outbreaks in the western US could inform strategic forest management to reduce wildfire risk, manage forest carbon, and plan for altered hydrology. The susceptibility of a forest stand to mortality by bark beetles depends on the availability and characteristics of trees of the host tree species. For multiple bark beetle…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mapping Delayed Canopy Loss and Durable Fire Refugia for the 2020 Wildfires in Washington State Using Multiple Sensors
Year: 2025
Fire refugia are unburned and low severity patches within wildfires that contribute heterogeneity that is important to retaining biodiversity and regenerating forest following fire. With increasingly intense and frequent wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, fire refugia are important for re-establishing populations sensitive to fire and maintaining resilience to future disturbances. Mapping fire refugia and delayed canopy loss is useful for understanding patterns in their distribution. The increasing abundance of satellite data and advanced analysis platforms offer the potential to map fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Governance of Indigenous data in open earth systems science
Year: 2025
In the age of big data and open science, what processes are needed to follow open science protocols while upholding Indigenous Peoples’ rights? The Earth Data Relations Working Group (EDRWG), convened to address this question and envision a research landscape that acknowledges the legacy of extractive practices and embraces new norms across Earth science institutions and open science research. Using the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) as an example, the EDRWG recommends actions, applicable across all phases of the data lifecycle, that recognize the sovereign rights of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Enhancing fire emissions inventories for acute health effects studies: integrating high spatial and temporal resolution data
Year: 2025
Background: Daily fire progression information is crucial for public health studies that examine the relationship between population-level smoke exposures and subsequent health events. Issues with remote sensing used in fire emissions inventories (FEI) lead to the possibility of missed exposures that impact the results of acute health effects studies.Aims: This paper provides a method for improving an FEI dataset with readily available information to create a more robust dataset with daily fire progression.Methods: High temporal and spatial resolution burned area information from two FEI…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Do natural hazard events and disasters trigger political and legislative change? A systematic scoping review of the impacts on commodity production.
Year: 2025
Food and fibre commodity production is fundamental to global food security and economic development. However, these commodities are vulnerable to different natural hazards. In this systematic scoping review, we assess the natural hazards literature to determine if and how specific natural hazard events that impact food and fibre commodity production have triggered political or legislative change. Bibliometric and thematic analysis methods were used to identify recurrent patterns and themes in the dataset. Bibliometric analysis confirmed robust international cooperation on hazards and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Reliability of satellite-based vegetation maps for planning wildfire-fuel treatments in shrub steppe: Inferences from two contrasting national parks
Year: 2025
Protecting habitat threatened by increasing wildfire size and frequency requires identifying the spatial intersection of wildfire behavior and ecological conditions that favor positive management outcomes. In the perennial sagebrush steppe of Western North America, invasions by fire-prone annual grasses are a key concern, and management of them requires reliable maps of vegetation cover, fuels, and wildfire behavior. We compared commonly used, publicly available vegetation cover and fuels maps, specifically the Rangeland Analysis Platform (RAP) and LANDFIRE, with field-based assessments at…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Extreme Fire Spread Events Burn More Severely and Homogenize Postfire Landscapes in the Southwestern United States
Year: 2025
Extreme fire spread events rapidly burn large areas with disproportionate impacts on people and ecosystems. Such events are associated with warmer and drier fire seasons and are expected to increase in the future. Our understanding of the landscape outcomes of extreme events is limited, particularly regarding whether they burn more severely or produce spatial patterns less conducive to ecosystem recovery. To assess relationships between fire spread rates and landscape burn severity patterns, we used satellite fire detections to create day‐of‐burning maps for 623 fires comprising 4267 single‐…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Multifactor Change in Western U.S. Nighttime Fire Weather
Year: 2025
Reports from western U.S. firefighters that nighttime fire activity has been increasing during the spans of many of their careers have recently been confirmed by satellite measurements over the 2003–20 period. The hypothesis that increasing nighttime fire activity has been caused by increased nighttime vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is consistent with recent documentation of positive, 40-yr trends in nighttime VPD over the western United States. However, other meteorological conditions such as near-surface wind speed and planetary boundary layer depth also impact fire behavior and exhibit…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mobile radar provides insights into hydrologic responses in burn areas
Year: 2025
Background. Wildfires often occur in mountainous terrain, regions that pose substantial challenges to operational meteorological and hydrologic observing networks. Aims. A mobile, postfire hydrometeorological observatory comprising remote-sensing and in situ instrumentation was developed and deployed in a burnt area to provide unique insights into rainfall-induced post-fire hazards. Methods. Mobile radar-based rainfall estimates were produced throughout the burn area at 75-m resolution and compared with rain gauge accumulations and basin response variables. Key results. The mobile radar was…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Enhancing fire emissions inventories for acute health effects studies: integrating high spatial and temporal resolution data
Year: 2025
Background: Daily fire progression information is crucial for public health studies that examine the relationship between population-level smoke exposures and subsequent health events. Issues with remote sensing used in fire emissions inventories (FEI) lead to the possibility of missed exposures that impact the results of acute health effects studies.Aims: This paper provides a method for improving an FEI dataset with readily available information to create a more robust dataset with daily fire progression.Methods: High temporal and spatial…
Publication Type: Journal Article
High fire hazard Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) residences in California lack voluntary and mandated wildfire risk mitigation compliance in Home Ignition Zones
Year: 2025
Wildfire structure losses are increasing globally and particularly in California, USA. Losses can be mitigated in part by changes to the Home Ignition Zone (HIZ), including both home hardening and defensible space. In the United States, there are local, nation-wide, and industry-based home mitigation standards that are enforced or recommended. We explore the standards implementation (California code and two voluntary standards) at 176 participating residences in three Santa Cruz Mountains and two Sierra Nevada Mountains sites. Overall most residences had little compulsory or recommended…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Post-fire delayed tree mortality in mesic coniferous forests reduces fire refugia and seed sources
Year: 2025
Context: Ecological functions provided by fire refugia are critical for supporting conifer forest resiliency under increased fire activity across the western United States. The spatial distribution and persistence of fire refugia over time are uncertain as fire-injured trees continue to die over subsequent years post-fire.Objectives: We examined how post-fire delayed tree mortality affects the spatial distribution and attributes of fire refugia at patch and landscape scales following high-severity wildfires.Methods: To explore changes in fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Leveraging the next generation of spaceborne Earth observations for fuel monitoring and wildland fire management
Year: 2024
Managing fuels is a key strategy for mitigating the negative impacts of wildfires on people and the environment. The use of satellite-based Earth observation data has become an important tool for managers to optimize fuel treatment planning at regional scales. Fortunately, several new sensors have been launched in the last few years, providing novel opportunities to enhance fuel characterization. Herein, we summarize the potential improvements in fuel characterization at large scale (i.e., hundreds to thousands of km2) with high spatial and spectral resolution arising from the use of new…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exploring spatial heterogeneity in synergistic effects of compound climate hazards: Extreme heat and wildfire smoke on cardiorespiratory hospitalizations in California
Year: 2024
Extreme heat and wildfire smoke events are increasingly co-occurring in the context of climate change, especially in California. Extreme heat and wildfire smoke may have synergistic effects on population health that vary over space. We leveraged high-resolution satellite and monitoring data to quantify spatially varying compound exposures to extreme heat and wildfire smoke in California (2006–2019) at ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) level. We found synergistic effects between extreme heat and wildfire smoke on daily cardiorespiratory hospitalizations at the state level. We also found spatial…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Snow-cover remote sensing of conifer tree recovery in high-severity burn patches
Year: 2024
The number of large, high-severity wildfires has been increasing across the western United States over the last several decades. It is not fully understood how changes in the frequency of large, severe wildfires may impact the resilience of conifer forests, due to alterations in regeneration success or failure. Our research investigates 30 years of conifer recovery patterns within 34 high-severity wildfire complexes (1988–1991) of the Northern Rocky Mountains. We evaluate the capability of snow-cover Landsat to characterize conifer tree recolonization of high-severity burn patches. Snow-…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Before the fire: predicting burn severity and potential post-fire debris-flow hazards to conservation populations of the Colorado River Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii pleuriticus)
Year: 2024
Background: Colorado River Cutthroat Trout (CRCT; Oncorhynchus clarkii pleuriticus) conservation populations may be at risk from wildfire and post-fire debris flows hazards. Aim: To predict burn severity and potential post-fire debris flow hazard classifications to CRCT conservation populations before wildfires occur. Methods: We used remote sensing, spatial analyses, and machine learning to model 28 wildfire incidents (2016–2020) and spatially predict burn severity from pre-wildfire environmental factors to evaluate the likelihood…
Publication Type: Journal Article