Journal Article

The growing frequency of large wildland fires has raised awareness of the ‘wildfire paradox’ and the ‘firefighting trap’ that are both rooted in the fire exclusion paradigm. However, a paradigm shift has been unfolding in the wildland fire community that seeks to restore fire ecology processes across broad landscapes.

The interaction between grazing and fire influences ecosystems around the world. However, little is known about the influence of grazing on fire, in particular ignition and initial spread and how it varies by grazing management differences.

Wildfire’s economic, ecological and social impacts are on the rise, fostering the realisation that business-as-usual fire management in the United States is not sustainable.

Wildland firefighters must assess potential fire behaviour in order to develop appropriate strategies and tactics that will safely meet objectives. Fire danger indices integrate surface weather conditions to quantify potential variations in fire spread rates and intensities and therefore should closely relate to observed fire behaviour.

One crucial component of large fire response in the United States (US) is the sharing of wildland firefighting resources between regions: resources from regions experiencing low fire activity supplement resources in regions experiencing high fire activity.

Escape routes are essential components of wildland firefighter safety, providing pre-defined pathways to a safety zone. Among the many factors that affect travel rates along an escape route, landscape conditions such as slope, low-lying vegetation density, and ground surface roughness are particularly influential, and can be measured using airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data.

Currently, limited research on large-fire suppression effectiveness suggests fire managers may over-allocate resources relative to values to be protected. Coupled with observations that weather may be more important than resource abundance to achieve control objectives, resource use may be driven more by risk aversion than efficiency.

Despite large commitments of personnel and equipment to wildfire suppression, relatively little is known about the factors that affect how many resources are ordered and assigned to wildfire incidents and the variation in resources across incident management teams (IMTs).

During active fire incidents, decisions regarding where and how to safely and effectively deploy resources to meet management objectives are often made under rapidly evolving conditions, with limited time to assess management strategies or for development of backup plans if initial efforts prove unsuccessful.

Characterising the impacts of wildland fire and fire suppression is critical information for fire management decision-making.