Background: Suppression effectiveness is often evaluated by measuring the extent to which it slows fire spread and reduces fireline intensity. Although studies have used infrared (IR) imaging methods to explore suppression effectiveness, most do not measure or assess the influence of water application on energy release.

In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies.

On January 7 and 8, 2025, a series of wind-driven wildfires occurred in Los Angeles County in Southern California. Two of these fires ignited in dense woody chaparral shrubland and immediately burned into adjacent populated areas–the Palisades Fire on the coastal slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Eaton fire in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Small-scale variation in wildfire behavior may cause large differences in belowground bacterial and fungal communities with consequences for belowground microbial diversity, community assembly, and function.

In recent decades, bark beetle outbreaks have caused mass tree mortality in western US forests, which has led to altered wildfire characteristics, hydrological processes, and forest carbon dynamics.

Rapid increases in wildfire area burned across North American forests pose novel challenges for managers and society. Increasing area burned raises questions about whether, and to what degree, contemporary fire regimes (1984–2022) are still departed from historical fire regimes (pre-1880).

The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was initiated more than two decades ago with the goal of evaluating the ecological impacts of mechanical treatments and prescribed fire in different ecosystems across the United States.

In the fire-prone and fire-adapted landscape of the Rogue River Basin of southwestern Oregon, communities mobilize to prepare, respond, and recover from wildfire while modifying the current social and ecological system.

Previous research has examined individual factors contributing to wildfire risk, but the compounding effects of these factors remain underexplored. Here, we introduce the “Integrated Human-centric Wildfire Risk Index (IHWRI)” to quantify the compounding effects of fire-weather intensification and anthropogenic factors—including ignitions and human settlement into wildland—on wildfire risk.