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Fire History

Displaying 1 - 10 of 111

Compounding effects of climate change and WUI expansion quadruple the likelihood of extreme-impact wildfires in California

Year of Publication
2025
Publication Type

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.

Changing fire regimes in the Great Basin USA

Year of Publication
2025
Publication Type

Wildfire is a natural disturbance in landscapes of the Western United States, but the effects and extents of fire are changing. Differences between historical and contemporary fire regimes can help identify reasons for observed changes in landscape composition.

Temporal and spatial pattern analysis of escaped prescribed fires in California from 1991 to 2020

Year of Publication
2025
Publication Type

Background: Prescribed fires play a critical role in reducing the intensity and severity of future wildfires by systematically and widely consuming accumulated vegetation fuel. While the current probability of prescribed fire escape in the United States stands very low, their consequential impact, particularly the large wildfires they cause, raises substantial concerns.

Ladder fuels rather than canopy volumes consistently predict wildfire severity even in extreme topographic-weather conditions

Year of Publication
2024
Publication Type

Drivers of forest wildfire severity include fuels, topography and weather. However, because only fuels can be actively managed, quantifying their effects on severity has become an urgent research priority. Here we employed GEDI spaceborne lidar to consistently assess how pre-fire forest fuel structure affected wildfire severity across 42 California wildfires between 2019–2021.

Exploring the use of satellite Earth observation active wildland fire hotspot data via open access web platforms

Year of Publication
2024
Publication Type

Globally, managing wildland fire is increasing in complexity. Satellite Earth Observation (EO) data, specifically active fire ‘hotspot’ data, is often used to inform wildland fire management. This study explores hotspot data usage via web traffic data (‘user counts’) for the FIRMS, GWIS and EFFIS web portals between September 2019 and April 2023.