Communicating about Fire

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.

Background

We indexed 8,970 scientific publications on forest fires in order to bridge the gap between research and policy discussions on forest fires. Journal articles and conference papers dominated the literature, with an emphasis on environmental science, agricultural and biological sciences, earth and planetary sciences, engineering, and computer science.

Wildly destructive fires, wind driven through unmanaged and untended lands, take lives and homes and the solace of familiar places. Ash blankets the remains, trauma takes hold, but even when the smoke clears and communities begin to heal, there is a loss beyond words. These wildfires reveal the ways many are lacking relationships with the land.

Background

Achieving sustainable coexistence with wildfires in the Anthropocene requires skilful integrated fire observations, fire behaviour predictions, forecasts of fire risk, and projections of change to fire climates.

The USDA Forest Service’s Shared Stewardship strategy, announced initially in 2018, is built on a vision of advancing federal partnerships with states and other entities to better accomplish shared forest management priorities at the landscape scale.