As contemporary wildfire activity intensifies across the western United States, there is increasing recognition that a variety of forest management activities are necessary to restore ecosystem function and reduce wildfire hazard in dry forests. However, the pace and scale of current, active forest management is insufficient to address restoration needs.

Larger and more severe wildfires are becoming more frequent and impacting different communities and human settlements. Much of the scientific literature and media on wildfires has focused on area of ecosystems burned and numbers of structures destroyed. Equally unprecedented, but often less reported, are the increasing socioeconomic impacts different people and communities face from wildfires.

The intensity and scale of wildfires has increased throughout the Pacific Northwest in recent decades, especially within the last decade, destroying vast amounts of valuable resources and assets. This trend is predicted to remain or even magnify due climate change, growing population, increased housing density.

Since their introduction two decades ago, Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) have become a common planning tool for improving community preparedness and risk mitigation in fire-prone regions, and for strengthening coordination among federal and state land management agencies, local government, and residents.

Predicting wildfire under future conditions is complicated by complex interrelated drivers operating across large spatial scales. Annual area burned (AAB) is a useful index of global wildfire activity. Current and antecedent seasonal climatic conditions, and the timing of snowpack melt, have been suggested as important drivers of AAB.

Wildfires pose a large and growing threat to communities across California, and understanding fire vulnerability and impacts can enable more effective risk management. Government hazard maps are often used to identify at-risk areas, but hazard zones and fire experience may have different implications for communities.

To develop effective long-term strategies, natural resource managers need to account for the projected effects of climate change as well as the uncertainty inherent in those projec- tions. Vegetation models are one important source of projected climate effects.

Background: The risk of destructive wildfire on fire-prone landscapes with excessive fuel buildup has prompted the use of fuel reduction treatments to protect valued resources from wildfire damage. The question of how to maximize the effectiveness of fuel reduction treatments at landscape scales is important because treating an entire landscape may be undesirable or unfeasible.

Background Maximizing the effectiveness of fuel treatments at landscape scales is a key research and management need given the inability to treat all areas at risk from wildfire. We synthesized information from case studies that documented the influence of fuel treatments on wildfire events.

Background Wildland fires are fundamentally landscape phenomena, making it imperative to evaluate wildland fire strategic goals and fuel treatment effectiveness at large spatial and temporal scales. Outside of simulation models, there is limited information on how stand-level fuel treatments collectively contribute to broader landscape-level fuel management goals.