Wildfire is a sudden and highly destructive natural disaster that poses significant challenges in terms of response rescue efforts. Influenced by factors such as climate, combustible materials, ignition sources, wildfires have been increasingly occurring worldwide on an annual basis. In recent years, researchers shown growing interest studying wildfires, leading to substantial body related rese...

In wildfire science, spotting refers to non-local creation of new fires, due to downwind ignition of brands launched from a primary fire. Spotting is often mentioned as being one of the most difficult problems for wildfire management, because of its unpredictable nature. Since spotting is a stochastic process, it makes sense to talk about a probability distribution for spotting, which we call t...

The fuel characteristics that influence the initiation and spread of wildfires were measured in Keteleeria fortune forest (FT1), Pinus yunnanensis forest (FT2), P. yunnanensis and Platycladus orientalis (L.) Franco mixed forest (FT3), P. yunnanensis Franch and K. fortunei (Murr.) Carr mixed forest (FT4), Tsuga chinensis forest (FT5), and P. orientalis forest (FT6) in southwest Sichuan Province,...

Each wildfire has its own “history”, burns under specific conditions and leads to unique environmental impacts. Information on where and when it has started and its duration is important to improve understanding on the dynamics of individual wildfires. This information is typically included in fire databases that are known to have: (i) multiple error sources; (ii) limited spatial coverage and/o...

Fire is widely used as a traditional habitat management tool in Scotland, but wildfires pose a significant and growing threat. The financial costs of fighting wildfires are significant and severe wildfires can have substantial environmental impacts. Due to the intermittent occurrence of severe fire seasons, Scotland, and the UK as a whole, remain somewhat unprepared. Scotland currently lacks an...

Wildfire presents a challenge to natural resource managers the world over, and the intentional setting of fires can be used to alleviate some of the challenges associated with wildfire management. Prescribed burning can be used prior to wildfires to reduce fuel loads and promote ecological integrity in fire-adapted systems, while suppression burning can help firefighters control the direction, ...

Wildfires across western North America have increased in number and size over the past three decades, and this trend will continue in response to further warming. As a consequence, the wildland-urban interface is projected to experience substantially higher risk of climate-driven fires in the coming decades. Although many plants, animals, and ecosystem services benefit from fire, it is unknown ...

Strategic fire and fuel management planning benefits from detailed understanding of how wildfire occurrences are distributed spatially under current climate, and from predictive models of future wildfire occurrence given climate change scenarios. In this study, we fitted historical wildfire occurrence data from 1986 to 2009 to a suite of spatial point process (SPP) models with a model averaging...

Global increases in the occurrence of large, severe wildfires in forested watersheds threaten drinking water supplies and aquatic ecology. Wildfire effects on water quality, particularly nutrient levels and forms, can be significant. The longevity and downstream propagation of these effects as well as the geochemical mechanisms regulating them remain largely undocumented at larger river basin s...