Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 114
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
Short-term impacts of operational fuel treatments on modelled fire behaviour and effects in seasonally dry forests of British Columbia, Canada
Year: 2025
Background: In response to increasing risk of extreme wildfire across western North America, forest managers are proactively implementing fuel treatments.Aims: We assessed the efficacy of alternative combinations of thinning, pruning and residue fuel management to mitigate potential fire behaviour and effects in seasonally dry forests of interior British Columbia, Canada.Methods: Across five community forests, we measured stand attributes before and after fuel treatments in 2021 and 2022, then modelled fire behaviour and effects using the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Temporal and spatial pattern analysis of escaped prescribed fires in California from 1991 to 2020
Year: 2025
Background: Prescribed fires play a critical role in reducing the intensity and severity of future wildfires by systematically and widely consuming accumulated vegetation fuel. While the current probability of prescribed fire escape in the United States stands very low, their consequential impact, particularly the large wildfires they cause, raises substantial concerns. The most direct way of understanding this trade-off between wildfire risk reduction and prescribed fire escapes is to explore patterns in the historical prescribed fire records. This study investigates the spatiotemporal…
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
Methods to assess fire-induced tree mortality: review of fire behaviour proxy and real fire experiments
Year: 2025
Background: The increased interest in why and how trees die from fire has led to several syntheses of the potential mechanisms of fire-induced tree mortality. However, these generally neglect to consider experimental methods used to simulate fire behaviour conditions.Aims: To describe, evaluate the appropriateness of and provide a historical timeline of the different approaches that have been used to simulate fire behaviour in fire-induced tree mortality studies.Methods: We conducted a historical review of the different actual and fire proxy methods that have been used to…
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
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
Global Synthesis of Quantification of Fire Behaviour Characteristics in Forests and Shrublands: Recent Progress
Year: 2025
Purpose of ReviewThe behaviour of wildland fires, namely their free spreading nature, destructive energy fluxes and hazardous environment, make it a phenomenon difficult to study. Field experimental studies and occasional wildfire observations underpin our understanding of fire behaviour. We aim to present a global synthesis of field-based studies in forest and shrublands fuel types published since 2003 with a focus on the most commonly measured fire behaviour attributes, namely rate of fire spread, ignition and spread sustainability, flame characteristics, fuel consumption…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Influence of Time‐Averaging of Climate Data on Estimates of Atmospheric Vapor Pressure Deficit and Inferred Relationships With Wildfire Area in the Western United States
Year: 2025
Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is a driver of evaporative demand and correlates strongly with wildfire extent in the western United States (WUS). Vapor pressure deficit is the difference between saturation vapor pressure (es) and actual vapor pressure (ea). Because es increases nonlinearly with temperature, calculations of time‐averaged VPD vary depending on the frequency of temperature measurements and how ea is calculated, potentially limiting our understanding of fire‐climate relationships. We calculate eight versions of monthly VPD across the WUS and assess their differences. Monthly VPDs…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Perspectives: Six opportunities to improve understanding of fuel treatment longevity in historically frequent-fire forests
Year: 2025
Fuel-reduction and restoration treatments (“treatments”) are conducted extensively in dry and historically frequent-fire forests of interior western North America (“dry forests”) to reduce potential for uncharacteristically severe wildfire. However, limited understanding of treatment longevity and long-term treatment effects creates potential for inefficient treatment maintenance and inaccurate forecasting of wildfire behavior. In this perspectives paper, we briefly summarize current understanding of long-term effects of three common treatment types (burn-only, thin-only, and thin-plus-burn)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland fire entrainment: The missing link between wildland fire and its environment
Year: 2025
Wildfires are growing in destructive power, and accurately predicting the spread and intensity of wildland fire is essential for managing ecological and societal impacts. No current operational models used for fire behavior prediction resolve critical fire-atmospheric coupling or nonlocal influences of the fire environment, rendering them inadequate in accounting for the range of wildland fire behavior scenarios under increasingly novel fuel and climate conditions. Here, we present a new perspective on a dominant fire-atmospheric feedback mechanism, which we term wildland fire entrainment (…
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
Backfire: the settler-colonial logic and legacy of Smokey Bear
Year: 2024
Since the 1940s, the United States Forest Service’s (USFS) national fire suppression efforts have been bolstered by a public-facing ad campaign led by the Ad Council, most notably through the iconic rise of Smokey Bear. The consequences of decades of strict fire suppression, promulgated and solidified by this highly successful campaign, have been ecologically disastrous, and especially detrimental for fire-dependent Indigenous communities and ecosystems. Scholars have examined the Smokey campaign’s racialized, nationalist discourse, yet none have grappled with the campaign’s settler colonial…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Indigenous Peoples' Rights Discourse: Toward Hemispheric Indigenous Climate and Environmental Justice
Year: 2024
In the face of global climate change, Indigenous communities around the world have increasingly gained recognition as significant actors in the fight for environmental justice and sustainability. This paper endeavors to explore the intersection of Indigenous Peoples’ worldviews and environmental stewardship, while gesturing toward international policies rooted in both state apparatus and in indigenous grassroots efforts. Collectively, this work seeks to illuminate the action, implementation, and community work done by Indigenous Peoples that Hernandez [Binnizá & Maya Ch’orti’] (2022…
Publication Type: Journal Article
How are long-term stand structure, fuel profiles, and potential fire behavior affected by fuel treatment type and intensity in Interior Pacific Northwest forests?
Year: 2024
Fuel treatments are commonly applied to increase resilience to wildfire in dry and historically frequent-fire forests of western North America. The long-term effects of fuel treatments on forest structure, fuel profiles (amount and configuration of fuels), and potential wildfire behavior are not well known relative to short-term effects. Additionally, long-term treatment effects on the development of stand structure and fuel profiles have rarely been compared to the long-term effects of pre-treatment conditions, treatment intensity, and site productivity. In this study, we addressed these…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Drivers and Impacts of the Record-Breaking 2023 Wildfire Season in Canada
Year: 2024
The 2023 wildfire season in Canada was unprecedented in its scale and intensity, spanning from mid-April to late October and across much of the forested regions of Canada. Here, we summarize the main causes and impacts of this exceptional season. The record-breaking total area burned (~15 Mha)can be attributed to several environmental factors that converged early in the season: early snowmelt, multi annual drought conditions in western Canada, and the rapid transition to drought in eastern Canada. Anthropogenic climate change enabled sustained extreme fire weather conditions, as the meanMay–…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Untrammeling the wilderness: restoring natural conditions through the return of human-ignited fire
Year: 2024
Historical and contemporary policies and practices, including the suppression of lightning-ignited fires and the removal of intentional fires ignited by Indigenous peoples, have resulted in over a century of fire exclusion across many of the USA’s landscapes. Within many designated wilderness areas, this intentional exclusion of fire has clearly altered ecological processes and thus constitutes a fundamental and ubiquitous act of trammeling. Through a framework that recognizes four orders of trammeling, we demonstrate the substantial, long-term, and negative effects of fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Review of fuel treatment effects on fuels, fire behavior and ecological resilience in sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems in the Western U.S.
Year: 2024
BackgroundSagebrush ecosystems are experiencing increases in wildfire extent and severity. Most research on vegetation treatments that reduce fuels and fire risk has been short term (2–3 years) and focused on ecological responses. We review causes of altered fire regimes and summarize literature on the longer-term effects of treatments that modify (1) shrub fuels, (2) pinyon and juniper canopy fuels, and (3) fine herbaceous fuels. We describe treatment effects on fuels, fire behavior, ecological resilience, and resistance to invasive annual grasses.ResultsOur review revealed tradeoffs in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Hydrometeorology-wildfire relationship analysis based on a wildfire bivariate probabilistic framework in different ecoregions of the continental United States
Year: 2024
Wildfires are a natural part of the ecosystem in the U.S.. It is vital to classify wildfires using a comprehensive approach that simultaneously considers wildfire activity (the number of wildfires) and burned area. On this basis, the influence of hydrometeorological variables on wildfires can be further analyzed. Therefore, this study first classified wildfire types using a wildfire bivariate probability framework. Then, by considering six hydrometeorological variables, the dominant hydrometeorological variables for different wildfire types in 17 ecoregions of the United States were…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Strategic fire zones are essential to wildfire risk reduction in the Western United States
Year: 2024
BackgroundOver the last four decades, wildfires in forests of the continental western United States have significantly increased in both size and severity after more than a century of fire suppression and exclusion. Many of these forests historically experienced frequent fire and were fuel limited. To date, fuel reduction treatments have been small and too widely dispersed to have impacted this trend. Currently new land management plans are being developed on most of the 154 National Forests that will guide and support on the ground management practices for the next 15–20 years.…
Publication Type: Journal Article