Research and Publications
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Using our integrated, co-located methods, we detail methods used to produce hierarchically scaled datasets of the structure and composition of canopy and surface fuels across 9 southeastern pine sites, 5 western pine sites, and 4 western grassland sites. These are now publicly available within the Wildland Fire Science Initiative data repository (https://doi.org/10.60594/W4859C).
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Homeowners’ mitigation efforts are crucial for wildfire risk reduction in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). However, participation in mitigation efforts remains limited, partly due to financial constraints and free-riding incentives. Existing studies often treat mitigation decisions in isolation, overlooking dynamic social interactions and potential policy interventions that might shape collective behavior. This study develops a game-theoretic model to investigate how cost sensitivity, homeownership tenure, and neighboring strategies influence homeowners’ wildfire mitigation decisions. Then, using a replicator dynamics framework, we further explore the conditions under which mitigation behavior either spread or collapse within a community, and how policy interventions can shift these dynamics toward greater collective action. Key findings include the following: (1) the analysis derives a critical subsidy threshold, beyond which collective mitigation becomes the socially optimal equilibrium; (2) early-stage seeding of mitigation behavior is essential to avoid convergence to inaction; and (3) policies that enhance perceived personal benefits are more effective than appeals to collective risk in promoting participation. These findings inform the design of behaviorally responsive subsidy policies to improve wildfire resilience in WUI areas.
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Intensifying wildfire regimes and expanding human settlements into wilderness areas have heightened concerns about the wildland–urban interface (WUI) due to the associated increase in fire risk. However, the WUI presents broader social-ecological challenges that go beyond wildfire risk and remain understudied. We assessed two WUI governance systems to identify challenges and opportunities for implementing adaptive governance and facilitating transdisciplinary approaches to WUI planning and management. Our approach considers WUI areas as complex social-ecological systems and the challenges of WUI planning and management as a wicked problem. Specifically, we focus on collaboration and participatory processes within WUI governance, recognizing their potential to integrate broader perspectives and facilitate the co-production of knowledge that characterizes transdisciplinary approaches. Results from policy analysis and semi-structured interviews suggest that WUI governance systems in Colorado (US) and Neuquén (Argentina) present a mix of opportunities and challenges for advancing adaptive governance and facilitating transdisciplinary approaches to WUI management. Reflexive policies (flexible and adaptable) based on minimum standards and legal sunsets (periods for policy revision and adaptation) emerged as adaptive governance enablers in both systems. However, ambiguity in the definition of social-ecological boundaries and the way in which participatory processes are currently implemented represent important challenges to adaptive governance and transdisciplinary approaches to WUI planning and management. We suggest that, to advance a more comprehensive management of WUI areas, WUI governance systems (including actors, legal frameworks, processes, etc.) should emphasize collaboration and participatory processes, facilitating active forms of community participation and the co-development of WUI management objectives.
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We evaluated 198 scenarios with different budget levels, management priorities, and jurisdictional constraints to find optimal fuel break placement solutions. Our results show significant fire hazard and risk reduction potential even at modest fuel treatment budgets. Fire risk to structures is reduced most when fuel breaks are placed inside and outside the jurisdiction of the military base. The proposed framework offers a workable decision-support tool for land managers and allows accommodating for real-world jurisdictional constraints, budget limitations, and risk reduction priorities in fire-prone regions.
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The findings underscore the need to strike a balance between fuel treatments and ecological and cultural priorities. Low-intensity thinning retains culturally relevant structure and old-growth characteristics but may fail under severe fire weather conditions. More intensive treatments (35 and 50 cm) substantially reduced fire behavior metrics but introduced trade-offs. Although the 25-cm diameter cap was based on ecological research, observations from community members about dense woodlands and sparse understory highlight the need for treatment mosaics that take culturally important trees and areas into consideration. Increased thinning intensity may be valuable in areas with high values-at-risk, such as the wildland-urban interface, to mitigate crown fire potential and protect communities. Managers could use the range of thinning treatments tested to create a strategic mosaic of fuel reduction across the landscape. This study offers critical insight into the trade-offs associated with restoration and fuel treatment strategies in culturally and ecologically important woodlands.
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Our synthesis highlights significant limitations with existing definitions, particularly their reliance on subjective thresholds and their emphasis on extreme fire behavior alone. EWEs encompass a spectrum of complex, multi-dimensional phenomena that extend beyond immediate biophysical characteristics to include cumulative social, economic, and ecological impacts. These impacts often manifest over extended timeframes and include hazardous environmental contamination, severe geomorphic disturbances, ecosystem transformations, and unintended consequences of post-fire management actions. Current wildfire modeling frameworks inadequately capture these compounding factors, particularly the interactions among social systems, ecological conditions, and extreme fire behavior.
To overcome these issues, we advocate for an interdisciplinary and context-sensitive approach to defining and studying EWEs. This revised definition emphasizes wildfires exhibiting anomalies in fire behavior, ecological outcomes, or social impacts relative to historically observed baselines, accommodating variability across different geographic regions and ecological settings.
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Observed increases in wildfire activity across the contiguous United States (U.S.), together with continued warming and expanding development in fire-prone landscapes, highlight the need to anticipate near-term changes in fire regimes. We apply a Bayesian statistical model that integrates projected population density (SSP2) and downscaled climate simulations under a moderate emissions scenario (RCP 4.5) to estimate future wildfire occurrence, maximum fire size (using the 90th percentile of fire size distribution), and total area burned for large fires (>1000 acres) across all EPA Level III ecoregions for 2020–2060. Relative to 1984–2019, we project nationwide increases of 56% in fire occurrence and 59% in area burned, with larger increases in maximum fire size (63%) in 2020–2060. Spatial patterns vary substantially: fire occurrence increases most strongly in the eastern U.S., including regions where large fires have historically been rare, while western ecoregions experience the largest absolute increases in burned area and extreme fire size. The disproportionate growth in maximum fire size suggests that changes in fire weather will amplify extreme events beyond increases in ignition frequency alone. These projections indicate expanding wildfire risk across diverse U.S. landscapes and underscore the need for regionally tailored fire management and preparedness strategies.
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Managing ecosystems in an era of rapid change is inherently challenging not only because of uncertainty in future climate but also due to diverse responses of ecosystems to climate. Projections of ecological transformation alongside information about plausible vegetation trajectories can help land managers explore divergent scenarios and consider how modeled outcomes match their observations. Climate‐analog impact models (AIMs) compare environmental information (e.g., vegetation types) between sets of climatically similar locations to infer change and can be used to identify multiple outcomes. We used AIMs to project changes in vegetation across the western United States under a mid‐21st century climate scenario, characterize ecological transformation vulnerability based on projection divergence, and demonstrate how AIMs can inform decision‐making. We projected high or very high vulnerability to ecological transformation across 29% of the western US, nearly 1 M km 2 . Vulnerability varied among vegetation groups; 75% of alpine vegetation had high or very high vulnerability vs. 6% of desert scrub. We estimate that 9% of the study area faces a high likelihood of transformation based on combined measures of vulnerability and projection agreement. Transformation at the vegetation type ( n = 50) level is projected for 40% (1.4 M km 2 ) of the study area, based on primary projections. As vegetation shifts towards types supported by a more arid climate, forested area is expected to contract by 9% and subalpine forests specifically by 54%. Elsewhere, vulnerability is low or trajectories are uncertain, implying opportunities for managers to intervene. Dry forests, for example, could be stabilized through vegetation management and intentional fire use. Our findings suggest likely ecological transformations with significant downstream consequences for ecosystem services and natural resources. They are best used within decision‐making frameworks that draw on multiple lines of evidence including local expertise and complementary knowledge systems.
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When focusing on putting out scientific papers, there are considerations that can set up research for success in implementation, such as:
- Formally aligning research priorities with end-user priorities in research planning to strengthen relevance.
- Capitalizing on insight from personal and professional connections built with end-users, science communicators, and boundary organizations.
- Use of multiple ways of scoping and framing research topics to broaden potential impact.
- Inclusion of communication, engagement, implementation, and knowledge exchange activities in research proposals.
- Cover how scientific results can be used when drafting manuscripts in a specific and detailed way by including a thorough discussion, an example of implementation, a case study demonstrating use, or mentioning what next steps might lead to impact.
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From an initial pool of 1585 scientific journal articles, only six articles took an empirical, quantitative approach to assessing fuel break effectiveness at the regime scale. The six selected studies suggest that fuel breaks can modify fire behaviour and support suppression efforts. However, this effectiveness depends on many factors including weather, fire behavior, suppression resource availability, vegetation type and condition, and fuel break width, accessibility and maintenance. Importantly, fuel break performance declines substantially under extreme weather conditions.