Human Dimensions of Fire
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This concept paper presents a Stages of Collaborative Readiness framework. Collaborative, multi-party entities provide fundamental roles and contributions to prepare landscapes and communities to receive and recover from wildfire (identifying, connecting, and aligning stakeholders; co-developing strategies at scale; synchronizing operations; and facilitating science informed, continuous learning). The framework applies insights from the collaborative development literature to the context of forest and wildland fire risk management. It embeds the fundamental roles and contributions within a four-stage framework, identifying stage appropriate benchmarks and outcomes to increase the ability of a collaborative over time to serve those important functions.
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Research on social aspects of wildfire in the southwestern USA has continued to diversify and broaden in scope over time, but some foundational lines of inquiry (such as public support for prescribed fire) have become outdated while other areas of study (such as fire prevention) have not been explored at all. Opportunities to advance wildfire social science efforts in the Southwest are abundant and well positioned to inform social understandings in other regions and countries.
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Here, we outline barriers and opportunities in the next generation of fire science and provide guidance for investment in future research. We synthesize insights needed to better address the long-standing challenges of innovation across disciplines to (i) promote coordinated research efforts; (ii) embrace different ways of knowing and knowledge generation; (iii) promote exploration of fundamental science; (iv) capitalize on the “firehose” of data for societal benefit; and (v) integrate human and natural systems into models across multiple scales. Fire science is thus at a critical transitional moment. We need to shift from observation and modeled representations of varying components of climate, people, vegetation, and fire to more integrative and predictive approaches that support pathways toward mitigating and adapting to our increasingly flammable world, including the utilization of fire for human safety and benefit. Only through overcoming institutional silos and accessing knowledge across diverse communities can we effectively undertake research that improves outcomes in our more fiery future.
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This study documented a 246% rise in West-wide structure loss from wildfires between 1999–2009 and 2010–2020, driven strongly by events in 2017, 2018, and 2020. Increased structure loss was not due to increased area burned alone. Wildfires became significantly more destructive, with a 160% higher structure-loss rate (loss/kha burned) over the past decade. Structure loss was driven primarily by wildfires from unplanned human-related ignitions (e.g. backyard burning, power lines, etc.), which accounted for 76% of all structure loss and resulted in 10 times more structures destroyed per unit area burned compared with lightning-ignited fires. Annual structure loss was well explained by area burned from human-related ignitions, while decadal structure loss was explained by state-level structure abundance in flammable vegetation. Both predictors increased over recent decades and likely interacted with increased fuel aridity to drive structure-loss trends.
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Here, we examine recent (2010–2020) trends in human migration across the US in relation to features of the natural landscape and climate, as well as frequencies of various natural hazards. Controlling for socioeconomic and environmental factors, we found that people have moved away from areas most affected by heat waves and hurricanes, but toward areas most affected by wildfires. This relationship may suggest that, for many, the dangers of wildfires do not yet outweigh the perceived benefits of life in fire-prone areas. We also found that people have been moving toward metropolitan areas with relatively hot summers, a dangerous public health trend if mean and maximum temperatures continue to rise, as projected in most climate scenarios. These results have implications for policymakers and planners as they prepare strategies to mitigate climate change and natural hazards in areas attracting migrants.
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On a dry winter morning between Christmas and New Year’s Eve 2021, the communities in Boulder County braced for the wind. The area lies at the base of the Front Range, made up of flat-topped mesas and open grasslands where creek bottoms are lined with cottonwood trees. On the outskirts of the communities are scattered homes and ranchettes. Farther east are established neighborhoods with mature landscaping and newer subdivisions sparsely planted with shrubs and ornamental hardwoods. Green corridors and trails run through the area.
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Across all cases, actors spanned boundaries to perform functions including: (1) convening meetings and agreements; (2) implementing projects; (3) community outreach; (4) funding support; (5) project planning; (6) scientific expertise. These functions fostered conducive boundary settings, concepts and objects to communicate and work across boundaries, navigating challenges to implementing work on the ground. This work highlights context-specific ways to advance cross-boundary wildfire risk reduction efforts and uses a boundary spanning lens to illustrate how collective action in wildfire management evolves in different settings. This research highlights prescribed fire as a gateway for future collective action on wildfire risk, including managing naturally ignited wildfires for resource benefits and improving coordination during wildfire suppression efforts.
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We synthesize insights needed to better address the long-standing challenges of innovation across disciplines to (i) promote coordinated research efforts; (ii) embrace different ways of knowing and knowledge generation; (iii) promote exploration of fundamental science; (iv) capitalize on the “firehose” of data for societal benefit; and (v) integrate human and natural systems into models across multiple scales. Fire science is thus at a critical transitional moment. We need to shift from observation and modeled representations of varying components of climate, people, vegetation, and fire to more integrative and predictive approaches that support pathways toward mitigating and adapting to our increasingly flammable world, including the utilization of fire for human safety and benefit. Only through overcoming institutional silos and accessing knowledge across diverse communities can we effectively undertake research that improves outcomes in our more fiery future.
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We carried out a systematic literature review involving both a global and a case study approach (Portugal) to investigate the configuration of the social dimensions of wildfires in academic literature. We advance two interlocking claims: (i) human dimensions of wildfires are often simplified into shallow indicators of anthropogenic activities lacking social and historical grounding, and (ii) fire knowledge of Indigenous peoples and/or other forest and fire users and professionals remains overlooked. These arguments were manifest from the global-scale review and were confirmed by the case study of Portugal. The individual perceptions, memories and cultural practices of forest and fire users and professionals and the historical co-developments of fires, people and forests have been missing from wildfire research. Including and highlighting those perspectives will both add to existing knowledge and inform policies related to fire management by making them socially meaningful.
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We investigate priorities and effectiveness of wildfire suppression using a novel empirical strategy that compares 1,500 historical fire perimeters with the spatial distribution of assets at risk to identify determinants of wildfire suppression efforts. We find that fires are more likely to stop spreading as they approach homes, particularly when those homes are of higher value. This effect of threatened assets persists after controlling for physical factors (fuels, landscape, and weather) using outputs from a state-of-the-art wildfire simulation tool, and the probability that fire spread will be halted is affected by characteristics of homes 1–2 km from a fire’s edge. Our results provide evidence that wildfire suppression can substantively affect outcomes from wildfires but that some groups may benefit more from wildfire management than others.