For most of the 20th century and beyond, national wildland fire policies concerning fire suppression and fuels management have primarily focused on forested lands. Using summary statistics and landscape metrics, wildfire spatial patterns and trends for non-forest and forest burned area over the past two decades were examined across the U.S, and federal agency jurisdictions.

Increased wildfire activity has led to renewed interest in enhancing local capacity to reduce wildfire risk in residential areas. Local fire departments (LFDs) are often the first responders to rural wildfires.

Wildfire sizes and proportions burned with high severity effects are increasing in seasonally dry forests, especially in the western USA. A critical need in efforts to restore or maintain these forest ecosystems is to determine where fuel build-up caused by fire exclusion reaches thresholds that compromise resilience to fire.

A small but growing number of watershed investment programs in the western United States focus on wildfire risk reduction to municipal water supplies.

Artemisia tridentata ssp. vaseyana ecosystems evolved with periodic fire, but invasive grasses, conifer encroachment, fire suppression, and climate change have resulted in altered fire regimes and plant communities. Post-fire increases in invasive annual grasses such as Bromus tectorum and reductions in native vegetation are common across the sagebrush steppe.

In this study we illustrate the value of social data compiled at the community scale to guide a local wildfire mitigation and education effort. The four contiguous fire-prone study communities in North Central Washington, US, fall within the same jurisdictional fire service boundary and within one US census block group.

The increased global frequency and scale of impactful and destructive wildfires has necessitated the reimagination of recovery assistance in affected communities. Unequal experience with and access to resources to support recovery mean that organizations operating at different scales may provide varying types of assistance after fire, particularly in rural areas.

Wildfire losses are increasing across the United States, and yet land use planning to reduce wildfire risk is not federally mandated and is rarely used by local jurisdictions.

Recent decades have witnessed an escalation in the social, economic, and ecological impacts of wildfires worldwide.

The research presented in this article responds to the deficit described above by exploring the ways that interaction between residents, land managers, fire professionals, and government officials’ influences local approaches to wildfire management.