Social and Community Impacts of Fire

Theory predicts that effective environmental governance requires that the scales of management account for the scales of environmental processes. A good example is community wildfire protection planning. Plan boundaries that are too narrowly defined may miss sources of wildfire risk originating at larger geographic scales whereas boundaries that are too broadly defined dilute resources.

Social vulnerability approaches seek to identify social, economic, and political drivers that exacerbate environmental risks, and inform adaptation strategies that redress uneven vulnerabilities. Social Vulnerability Indices (SVIs), one such approach, have exponentially increased in use since their inception in 2003.

Communities interspersed throughout the Canadian wildland are threatened by fires that have become bigger and more frequent in some parts of the country in recent decades. Identifying the fireshed (source area) and pathways from which wildland fire may ignite and spread from the landscape to a community is crucial for risk-reduction strategy and planning.

Extreme events such as wildfires and winter storms result in disruptions to grid-based electricity delivery.

Wildfire is increasing in frequency, extent, and severity in many parts of the USA. Considering the unequal burden of natural hazards on socially vulnerable populations, we ask here, how are characteristics of social vulnerability associated with wildfire occurrence nationwide, at different scales and across differing levels of wildland–urban interface development?

Wildfire risk is increasing all over the world, particularly in the western United States and the communities in wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas are at the greatest risk of fire.

As climate change increases the frequency and severity of wildfires across the Western U.S., there is an urgent need for improved wildfire preparedness and responses.

Pyrodiversity (temporally and spatially diverse fire histories) is thought to promote biodiversity by increasing environmental heterogeneity and replicating Indigenous fire regimes, yet studies of pyrodiversity-biodiversity relationships from areas under active Indigenous fire stewardship are rare.

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