Research and Publications

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This report describes operational fire spread potential forecasts for the Northwest and Northern Rocky Mountain regions of the United States. We used satellite thermal detection data to estimate daily area burned from 547 wildfires that burned between 2012-2021. Using weather and soil moisture data corresponding to the day and location of each fire, we developed simple linear and logistic regression models estimating daily fire growth and potential for fire spread greater than 70 acres. These models are used to create daily prediction grids for the current date and for a 2-day forecast period for the Northwest U.S. These map outputs are publicly available and can be used by fire managers and predictive services staff to assess fire conditions to support strategic planning during the fire season.

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Results show that readiness awareness and preparedness self-efficacy were the strongest predictors of evacuation readiness, indicating that actionable knowledge and preparedness self-efficacy play a more decisive role in preparedness than perceived risk alone. Direct wildfire experience meaningfully increased both awareness and perceived risk, underscoring the influence of prior exposure on preparedness orientations. Sociodemographic disparities were also evident, with lower-income households reporting reduced evacuation readiness and older adults demonstrating lower awareness. Geographic differences in perceived risk followed known gradients of wildfire exposure, with residents outside California reporting substantially lower perceived vulnerability.

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Drawing on sustained ethnographic engagement over 2 years with the upper Poudre Canyon community in northern Colorado, I offer empirical examples of how community members, practitioners, and scientists are making sense of the CPF, the flooding and debris flows which came after it, and how they relate to a transformed landscape subject to the material consequences of fire and flood. In response to experiences of extreme wildfire and the cascading hazards which unfold as a result, I suggest that people undergo a process of recalibration in ways of knowing the environment, in relation to past wildfires, present and future conflagrations, risk assessment, reconciliation with loss, and orienting toward ecological patterns and cycles. I find that recalibration is born out of cumulative sensemaking, indicating that people can cope with significant personal and environmental changes wrought by wildfire by engaging in processes of sensemaking over time. This paper highlights how sensemaking can shape our understanding and relations with the material world in a way that allows for broader temporal and ontological expansiveness in contending with extreme wildfires, post-fire flooding, and uncertain climatic futures.

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When animals are concentrated within defined areas, their grazing, trampling, and hoof action help create discontinuous fuels and patches of bare ground. This natural disturbance reduces both vertical and
horizontal fuel loading, enhancing fire control and providing safe anchor points for prescribed fire ignition or wildfire suppression. Unlike mechanical or chemical methods, targeted grazing minimizes soil disturbance and supports soil health while simultaneously lowering input costs.

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This study presents a simulation-guided planning framework that combines fire-behavior modeling with treatment cost and resource constraints. The goal is not to replace expert judgment. Instead, the framework provides a structured way to test a proposed burn scenario, identify boundary locations where fire may escape, and compare alternative treatment layouts before implementation.

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Burned area and damages from wildfires in the western United States have increased in recent decades. Contrary to the common belief that the frequency of wildfires has also increased, trends in the number of fires have been less clear than trends in area burned, and they vary by data set, region, and fire size. Using a comprehensive fire occurrence data set, we find a significant decline in the annual number of wildfires in the western United States over the past three decades. Decreases in human-caused ignitions are most evident in California and Arizona, while human-caused ignitions increased in Wyoming. When examining how the number of human-caused fires relates to population patterns, we find that the relationship varies. In areas with very low population, fires increase as population increases. However, after the population reaches a certain level, further population growth is associated with fewer fires. Considering the influences of human populations and demographics on wildfire could improve both global and western United States estimates of future wildfire activity compared to estimates based on climate change alone.

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Nearly two decades ago, Utah state officials and the Fishlake National Forest began one of the nation’s most progressive investments in fuels management to improve the ecological health of Central Utah’s forests and rangelands and lessen impacts to communities from wildfire. The 2025 Monroe Canyon Fire is proof of concept of these investments. The Monroe Canyon Fire started on July 13th on a mountain between the communities of Richfield, Monroe, and Koosharem, Utah. Initial fire activity included extreme surface spread with tree torching, rapid perimeter advancement, and very high heat intensity due to
the hot, dry weather patterns, steep slopes, and heavy fuel accumulations.

Initial attack forces immediately requested air support and a Type III Incident Management Team. The Central Utah Type III Incident Management Team took command of the fire the evening of July 13 and Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team 3 took command of the fire on July 16th. An aggressive, full-suppression response to the fire was initiated at the fire’s first report.

Over the course of the next 28 days, the fire grew to over 70,000-acres as weather conditions deteriorated. Extreme fire behavior forced evacuations and threatened communities in all directions surrounding the mountain. Convection columns formed pyro cumulous clouds so large they collapsed on two separate occasions. Weather analysts issued an unprecedented 14 consecutive Red Flag Warnings during one period of the fire and Fire Behavior Analysts recorded and confirmed a relative humidity reading of 2 percent at 9,000 feet elevation, which is thought to be among the lowest readings ever recorded in North
America. Fire activity and growth substantially decreased by August 10th, but it took four more weeks for Complex Incident Management Teams (CIMTs) to achieve 100 percent containment on September 4th.

Throughout the fire’s duration, investments in fuels treatments gave firefighters an advantage as strategically placed treatments guided the fire away from population centers and minimized property loss. Treatments reduced fire intensity, created areas where firefighters could safely engage the fire, slowed or stopped perimeter growth in several areas, and resulted in improved forest and rangeland health in many areas within the fire perimeter. To a large degree, the intensity of the Monroe Canyon fire and the extreme resistance to control is tied to the untreated portions of the mountain and creates a stark
contrast with the portions of the mountain which had been treated. Taken together, the Monroe Canyon Fire is a successful outcome of the investment in fuels management.

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Decision support tools (DSTs) play an important role in all stages of wildland fire management from pre-fire planning to post-fire recovery. Recent studies centering on how end users and practitioners use DSTs in the field have assessed the barriers, facilitators, and uses for a number of wildfire DSTs. However, comparatively little attention has been paid to evaluating wildfire DST effectiveness at improving decision quality. We turn to the larger natural resource management literature on decision support to argue an effective DST is one that improves decision quality through either decision-relevant information or decision structuring. To define decision quality and understand how wildfire DSTs may contribute to decision quality, we conduct a review of the qualitative social science literature on wildfire DSTs (n = 13, USA, Canada, and Australia) and supplement with relevant grey literature (n = 14, USA). We summarize barriers, facilitators, and uses. We find that key barriers include communication failures, cultural barriers, landscape characteristics, and resource, capacity, and user issues. Key facilitators include prior awareness, cultural beliefs, formal training, interpersonal relationships and trust, sufficient resources and capacity, and user-friendliness. We find that practitioners use DSTs for both decision tasks (e.g., articulating objectives, assessing tradeoffs) and non-decision tasks (e.g., knowledge confirmation, documentation).

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Wildfires are among the most pressing environmental challenges of the 21st century, intensified by the accumulation of forest fuels after a century of fire suppression policies. Although fuel-reduction treatments (“fuel treatments”) are a primary tool for reducing wildfire risk, they remain underutilized, partly owing to limited evidence of their economic value. In this study, we integrated high-resolution data on wildfires, fuel treatments, suppression effort, and damages across the Western United States to assess their cost-effectiveness. Using a quasi-experimental design, we found that fuel treatments reduced wildfire spread and severity, avoiding an estimated $2.8 billion in damages by limiting structure loss, cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and lowering fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure. Each dollar invested yielded $3.73 in expected benefits. Our findings demonstrate the value of fuel treatment investments and offer guidance for maximizing their effectiveness.

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We use field data collected before and after a prescribed burn in eastern Oregon, USA, to uncover how prescribed fire impacts three problematic invasive annual grass species, cheatgrass, ventenata, and field brome and understory plant communities for 3 years after burning in a dry forest-mosaic landscape. Plant communities shifted towards invasive dominance over time regardless of burning. All three invasive annual grass species recovered within 2 years of burning to at or above pre-treatment levels and continued to increase in cover over time. Ventenata increased at the fastest rate across both burned and unburned areas, averaging less than 10% in 2016 to nearly 20% in 2020. This increase was slightly slower in burned areas than in unburned areas.