Social and Community Impacts of Fire

There is a growing recognition that the social diversity of communities at risk from wildland fire may necessitate divergent combinations of policies, programs and incentives that allow diverse populations to promote fire adapted communities (FACs).

Until Euro-American colonization, Indigenous people used fire to modify eco-cultural systems, developing robust Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Since 1980, wildfire activity has increased due to fire suppression and climate change. In 2017, in Waterton Lakes National Park, AB, the Kenow wildfire burned 19,303 ha, exhibiting extreme fire behavior.

Background Evaluating fuel treatment effectiveness is challenging when managing a landscape for diverse ecological, social, and economic values.

Boundary organizations facilitate two-way, sustained interaction and communication between research and practitioner spheres, deliver existing science, and develop new, actionable scientific information to address emerging social–ecological questions applicable to decision-making.

Since its establishment in the early twentieth century, the U.S. Forest Service has periodically evolved its approach to decision-making and management for the millions of hectares of national forest under its authority.

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.

We examined traditional knowledge of fire use by the Ichishikin (Sahaptin), Kitsht Wasco (Wasco), and Numu (Northern Paiute) peoples (now Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, CTWS) in the eastside Cascades of Oregon to generate insights for restoring conifer forest landscapes and enhancing culturally-valued resources.

Wildfires bring stark attention to interactions among climate change, fire, forests, and livelihoods, prompting urgent calls for change from policy-makers and the public.

In his October 26, 2017 commentary in these pages, Dr. Tom Zimmerman highlights a number of ongoing and future challenges faced by wildland fire management. To address these challenges he also identifies an important role for science and in particular management-relevant wildland fire research. Here, we first briefly elaborate on Dr.