Fire Communication & Education
This mobile-friendly, current, and interactive map combines data from the National Digital Forecast Database and RAWS surface weather observations.
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This interactive map identifies frequently threatened towns and cities, including the different sizes and distances of wildfires from nearby communities.
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This study introduces a number of newer concepts and methods related to transboundary risk governance for the state of Arizona. The methods fill a gap in existing risk assessment efforts by explicitly identifying transboundary exposure. We show how the methods and results can be used to better define the scale of risk and design effective risk governance institutions. Improving scale recognition within existing transboundary risk governance systems can help reduce inefficiencies in risk planning.
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Oregon State University’s Citizen Fire Academy (CFA) program equips participants with the knowledge they need to improve fire preparedness and resiliency on their own properties and in their communities. This curriculum offers interested educators or agencies the teaching tools needed to conduct their own CFA program, including lesson plans, detailed agendas, tour ideas, and suggestions for presenting it as a hybrid course. The content is divided into six modules, with options to combine and separate the modules to fit the needs of the CFA facilitator.
Readers can download the entire 154-page curriculum as a single PDF or they can access individual sections. The single-PDF version of the publication includes hyperlinks to all references and resources, and includes an interactive Table of Contents for easy navigation to specific sections. In addition, corresponding PowerPoint presentations, worksheets, and handouts can be downloaded individually.
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Smoke from wildfires is a public health concern. Smoke affected the entire Pacific Northwest region in 2015, and again in 2017. Scientists developed the BlueSky Modeling Framework that forecasts where smoke will travel, allowing public health agencies and communities to prepare for smoke impacts. Wildfires are here to stay. Scientists predict that with climate change, the annual area burned will continue to increase. Learning to coexist with wildfire means we will have to learn to coexist with some amount of smoke.
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Managing wildfire for resource benefits and ecological purposes refers to a strategic choice to use naturally ignited fires to achieve resource management objectives.
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The 2017 Fire Narrative and Timeline tells the story of successes and challenges, and also addresses emerging technology and science, such as Quantitative Risk Assessment, Risk Management Assistance Teams, and using Unmanned Aircraft Systems (drones) for infrared and reconnaissance flights.
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The World of Wildland Fire vision is to provide and connect fire science educators, trainers, and the public with scientifically solid and peer-reviewed teaching tools and techniques, using state-of-the-art materials, which will be free and accessible to all. This is done to significantly enhance the learning experience.
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It’s not the way we fight wildfires in the West that’s the problem. The problem is the way we manage our fire-dependent forests.
Since 2000, 154 wildfires in the region have cost over $20 million each to control. Many of them cost several times more. Together, these costliest fires, which were less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all Western wildfires in the period, cost more than $9 billion to fight. If you factor in property losses, natural resource damage and environmental impacts, the true costs skyrocket, but they are rarely measured or accounted for. What can’t be ignored is that these unprecedented wildfires tell us we need a much better land-management strategy.
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This study indicates that wildfire smoke leads to a 4 to 6 percent reduction in birthweight, and these effects are most pronounced among mothers exposed to smoke during the second or the third trimesters of pregnancy. It also found that these effects attenuate (or diminish) with respect to distance to a wildfire, becoming ineffectual three miles and further from the burn source. In contrast, it found that even if infants had been close to a wildfire while in utero, there was no statistically significant effect on their birthweight if they were outside the smoke’s path.