Research Database
Displaying 21 - 40 of 143
Rare and highly destructive wildfires drive human migration in the U.S.
Year: 2024
The scale of wildfire impacts to the built environment is growing and will likely continue under rising average global temperatures. We investigate whether and at what destruction threshold wildfires have influenced human mobility patterns by examining the migration effects of the most destructive wildfires in the contiguous U.S. between 1999 and 2020. We find that only the most extreme wildfires (258+ structures destroyed) influenced migration patterns. In contrast, the majority of wildfires examined were less destructive and did not cause significant changes to out- or in-migration. These…
Economic Impacts of Fire, Public Perceptions of Fire and Smoke, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evidence for Wildland Fire Smoke Transport of Microbes From Terrestrial Sources to the Atmosphere and Back
Year: 2024
Smoke from wildland fires contains more diverse, viable microbes than typical ambient air, yet little is known about the sources and sinks of smoke-borne microorganisms. Data from molecular-based surveys suggest that smoke-borne microorganisms originate from material associated with the vegetation and underlying soils that becomes aerosolized during combustion, however, the sources of microbes in smoke have not yet been experimentally assessed. To elucidate this link, we studied high-intensity forest fires in the Fishlake National Forest, Utah, USA and applied source-sink modeling to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Molecular shifts in dissolved organic matter along a burn severity continuum for common land cover types in the Pacific Northwest, USA
Year: 2024
Increasing wildfire severity is of growing concern in the western United States, with consequences for the production, composition, and mobilization of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from terrestrial to aquatic systems. Our current understanding of wildfire impacted DOM (often termed pyrogenic DOM) composition is largely built from temperature-based studies that can be difficult to extrapolate to field conditions, which are often defined by ‘burn severity’, or the post-wildfire impact observed at a site. Thus, burn severity can encapsulate a broader range of fire and environmental conditions…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Carbon emissions from the 2023 Canadian wildfires
Year: 2024
The 2023 Canadian forest fires have been extreme in scale and intensity with more than seven times the average annual area burned compared to the previous four decades. Here, we quantify the carbon emissions from these fires from May to September 2023 on the basis of inverse modelling of satellite carbon monoxide observations. We find that the magnitude of the carbon emissions is 647 TgC (570–727 TgC), comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of large nations, with only India, China and the USA releasing more carbon per year. We find that widespread hot–dry weather was a principal…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Pathways for sustainable coexistence with wildfires
Year: 2024
Sustainable coexistence with wildfire requires overcoming vicious cycles that trap socio-ecological systems in maladaptive states. A carefully coordinated programme of innovation, education and governance, the ‘wildfire adaptation triad’, is essential for escaping maladaptation across national, community and individual scales.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fuel types misrepresent forest structure and composition in interior British Columbia: a way forward
Year: 2024
A clear understanding of the connectivity, structure, and composition of wildland fuels is essential for effective wildfire management. However, fuel typing and mapping are challenging owing to a broad diversity of fuel conditions and their spatial and temporal heterogeneity. In Canada, fuel types and potential fire behavior are characterized using the Fire Behavior Prediction (FBP) System, which uses an association approach to categorize vegetation into 16 fuel types based on stand structure and composition. In British Columbia (BC), provincial and national FBP System fuel type maps are…
Publication Type: Journal Article
From flexibility to feasibility: identifying the policy conditions that support the management of wildfire for objectives other than full suppression
Year: 2024
Background. Intentional management of naturally ignited wildfires has emerged as a valuable tool for addressing the social and ecological consequences of a century of fire exclusion in policy and practice. Policy in the United States now allows wildfires to be managed for suppression and other than full suppression (OTFS) objectives simultaneously, giving flexibility to local decision makers. Aims. To extend existing research on the history of wildfire management, investigate how wildfire professionals interpret current policy with respect to OTFS management, and better understand how they…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Application of the wildland fire emissions inventory system to estimate fire emissions on forest lands of the United States
Year: 2024
BackgroundForests are significant terrestrial biomes for carbon storage, and annual carbon accumulation of forest biomass contributes offsets affecting net greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The immediate loss of stored carbon through fire on forest lands reduces the annual offsets provided by forests. As such, the United States reporting includes annual estimates of direct fire emissions in conjunction with the overall forest stock and change estimates as a part of national greenhouse gas inventories within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Forest fire emissions…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire Smoke Exposure and Incident Dementia
Year: 2024
Importance: Long-term exposure to total fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a recognized dementia risk factor, but less is known about wildfire-generated PM2.5, an increasingly common PM2.5 source. Objective: To assess the association between long-term wildfire and nonwildfire PM2.5 exposure and risk of incident dementia. Design, Setting, and Participants: This open cohort study was conducted using January 2008 to December 2019 electronic health record (EHR) data among members of Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC), which serves…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Using focus groups for knowledge sharing: Tracking emerging pandemic impacts on USFS wildland fire operations
Year: 2024
In early 2020 the US Forest Service (USFS) recognized the need to gather real-time information from its wildland fire management personnel about their challenges and adaptations during the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. The USFS conducted 194 virtual focus groups to address these concerns, over 32 weeks from March 2020 to October 2020. This management effort provided an opportunity for an innovative practice-based research study. Here, we outline a novel methodological approach (weekly, iterative focus groups, with two-way communication between USFS staff and leadership), which culminated in a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Trees have similar growth responses to first-entry fires and reburns following long-term fire exclusion
Year: 2024
Managing fire ignitions for resource benefit decreases fuel loads and reduces the risk of high-severity fire in fire-suppressed dry conifer forests. However, the reintroduction of low-severity wildfire can injure trees, which may decrease their growth after fire. Post-fire growth responses could change from first-entry fires to reburns, as first-entry fires reduce fuel loads and the vulnerability among trees to fire effects, which may result in trees sustaining less damage during reburns. To determine whether trees had growth responses that varied from first-entry fires to reburns, we cored…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The fastest-growing and most destructive fires in the US (2001 to 2020)
Year: 2024
The most destructive and deadly wildfires in US history were also fast. Using satellite data, we analyzed the daily growth rates of more than 60,000 fires from 2001 to 2020 across the contiguous US. Nearly half of the ecoregions experienced destructive fast fires that grew more than 1620 hectares in 1 day. These fires accounted for 78% of structures destroyed and 61% of suppression costs ($18.9 billion). From 2001 to 2020, the average peak daily growth rate for these fires more than doubled (+249% relative to 2001) in the Western US. Nearly 3 million structures were within 4 kilometers of a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Retention of highly qualified wildland firefighters in the Western United States
Year: 2024
Federal agencies responsible for wildland fire management face increasing needs for personnel as fire seasons lengthen and fire size continues to grow, yet federal agencies have struggled to recruit and retain firefighting personnel. While many have speculated that long seasons, challenging working conditions, and low wages contribute to recruitment and retention challenges, there has been…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Interannual Variability of Global Burned Area Is Mostly Explained by Climatic Drivers
Year: 2024
Better understanding how fires respond to climate variability is an issue of current interest in light of ongoing climate change. However, evaluating the global-scale temporal variability of fires in response to climate presents a challenge due to the intricate processes at play and the limitation of fire data. Here, we investigate the links between year-to-year variability of burned area (BA) and climate using BA data, the Fire Weather Index (FWI), and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) from 2001 to 2021 at ecoregion scales. Our results reveal complex spatial…
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
Demand for Information for Wildland Fire Management
Year: 2024
Significant resources have been devoted to increasing the supply of data and information products for wildland fire management. There has been comparatively less emphasis on understanding the demand for these products. There are large differences in the number of information sources that fire managers use in decision making. We developed a value-of-information model for wildland fire managers to formulate hypotheses about what factors drive these differences. Data from a comprehensive internet survey targeting a well-defined population of the Southwest wildland fire managers are used to test…
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
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
Projecting live fuel moisture content via deep learning
Year: 2023
Background: Live fuel moisture content (LFMC) is a key environmental indicator used to monitor for high wildfire risk conditions. Many statistical models have been proposed to predict LFMC from remotely sensed data; however, almost all these estimate current LFMC (nowcasting models). Accurate modelling of LFMC in advance (projection models) would provide wildfire managers with more timely information for assessing and preparing for wildfire risk. Aims: The aim of this study was to investigate the potential for deep learning models to predict LFMC across the continental United States 3 months…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Atmospheric turbulence and wildland fires: a review
Year: 2023
The behaviour of wildland fires and the dispersion of smoke from those fires can be strongly influenced by atmospheric turbulent flow. The science to support that assertion has developed and evolved over the past 100+ years, with contributions from laboratory and field observations, as well as modelling experiments. This paper provides a synthesis of the key laboratory- and field-based observational studies focused on wildland fire and atmospheric turbulence connections that have been conducted from the early 1900s through 2021. Included in the synthesis are reports of anecdotal…
Publication Type: Journal Article