Our Pillars of Focus

Wildfires are an essential natural process in many regions of the world, playing a fundamental role in ecosystem structure and function and the evolution of biodiversity. However, rapid global changes in climate, vegetation, land use, and land management are shifting fire regimes beyond their natural range of variability. Dramatic or persistent changes in the frequency, severity, or timing of wildfires beyond what plants and animals in a region are adapted to is threatening biodiversity at a global scale, and in some cases, transforming ecosystems into different states that no longer function nor provide important ecosystem services.

Increasingly extreme fire behavior coupled with expanding human exposure to fire through land use change is resulting in unprecedented human and economic losses. In recent years, single wildfire events across the globe have taken hundreds of lives, destroyed thousands of structures, displaced entire communities, and caused severe, often chronic impacts on human health due to persistent and widespread smoke. Socially vulnerable people have been disproportionately affected.

Wildfire is uniquely complex among natural hazards because it arises from — and influences — tightly coupled relationships between humans and ecosystems, where human activities, land use, climate, vegetation, and a multitude of other factors interact in dynamic and often unpredictable ways. Therefore, addressing the escalating threat of wildfires necessitates a globally coordinated scientific approach that transcends disciplines and geographies, underscoring the notion that a one-size-fits-all approach is ineffective. Instead, solutions to increase wildfire resilience for humans and ecosystems require a collaborative, interdisciplinary framework that is adaptable to local contexts. Hence the need for the Global Wildfire Collective, as a forum to facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration between the global communities of interdisciplinary wildfire researchers and practitioners. Fire research and management have been heavily funded by a few agencies in the Global North, leading to disproportionate investment in temperate wildfire regimes. However, regions in the Global South remain critically underfunded and understudied.

Wildfire research and management span an immense range of topics, scales, and disciplines. However, to bring focus and foster meaningful collaboration, we define four key pillars of concentration to organize our discussions, activities and partnerships.

Our Pillars Of Focus

Wildfire and Global Change

The alteration of natural fire regimes is leading to profound ecological transformations, posing serious threats to biodiversity and risking species extinction on a large scale. Wildfires are also altering essential ecological services on which humans depend, such as clean air and water supply, soil stability and fertility, carbon storage, pest and disease control, and more. It is estimated that 75% percent of terrestrial area on earth has experienced significant change to natural fire regime conditions.

Fire ecology is the study of the role fire plays in shaping ecosystems, influencing its effect on plant and animal life, nutrient cycling, and landscape dynamics. Fire ecologists examine how fire interacts with various environmental factors and how ecosystems and individual species adapt to or depend upon fire for regeneration and maintenance of biodiversity. At a broader scale, fire ecologists study how fire regimes vary across landscapes and influence ecosystem structure and function over time.

Fire ecology and biodiversity is a distinctive pillar of the GWC because of the unique expertise required to understand the natural fire regimes of different landscapes, how ecosystems are adapted to fire, and the long-term or cumulative effects of altered fire patterns on natural systems. Insights into how fire interacts with biological systems and impacts biodiversity and ecosystem function are crucial for developing fire management strategies that are best aligned with ecological processes and provide maximum benefits for people and nature.

Fire Ecology & Biodiversity

Fire Management and Policy Operations

It is important to any strong Integrated Fire Management plan that it considers the unique interconnections between the human and ecological characteristics of the region. Ecosystem-appropriate land management strategies should be deployed in accordance with the physical environment, plant adaptations, and other components shaping a region’s natural fire regime. In some regions, mechanical treatments and prescribed fire may be important tools to increase ecosystem resilience and reduce wildfire impacts to people. In other regions, similar approaches may be less effective or ecologically detrimental, and instead combating invasive species may provide the best vegetation management outcomes.

In many parts of the world, there is an enormous need for best-in-class models and trained scientists who can predict where wildfires are most likely to start and spread and how fires are likely to behave under a range of weather conditions. These regions also need advanced early warning systems to identify extreme fire weather conditions and detection systems for the early identification of ignitions. When a multinational community of practitioners comes together in a forum such as the Global Wildfire Collective, learnings from regions of the world that have already developed sophisticated capabilities can inform the adaptation of similar approaches to use in regions that lack those resources.

Equitable Community Safety & Resilience

A growing body of research suggests that certain measures can be taken locally, within properties and communities, to reduce the impacts on humans from wildfire. Strategies for locating and arranging new housing developments could reduce human exposure to and risk from wildfire. For existing developments in fire-prone landscapes, structural retrofits and garden design can increase the survivability of structures; and community planning, public education and preparedness measures can help to save lives. This pillar is focused on the research needed to understand which community resilience measures are most effective for a given region, and how to facilitate an expanded and equitable adoption of these measures across all communities located in fire-prone ecosystems. Recent studies indicate that socially vulnerable communities are disproportionately negatively affected by wildfire – both because they are more exposed to wildfire and because they are more susceptible to the impacts of wildfire. Socially vulnerable people may also lack the resources needed to increase community fire resilience. Social vulnerability is partially the product of social inequalities—those social factors that influence or shape the susceptibility of various groups to harm and that also govern their ability to respond. However, it also includes place inequalities—those characteristics of communities and the built environment that contribute to the social vulnerability of places. More research is needed to identify which groups of people are most vulnerable, where they reside, and why these conditions exist. It is important to engage Indigenous communities regarding their views and use of fire. Recent research suggests that once this type of marginalized environmental knowledge is publicly acknowledged, indigenous people feel more confident to engage in dialogue with other actors, thus allowing for an inclusive process of developing wildfire resilience strategies. This will help ensure that wildfire preparation, recovery strategies and policy interventions are appropriately, equitably, and effectively designed.

Figure X. The practices on the left show some of the recommended ways to design and maintain a fire-wise landscape to help protect your home. The practices on the right are not recommended. Zones from 0–5, 5–30, and 30–100 feet from the house are based on the National Fire Protection Association’s Home Ignition Zone.

Credit: Oregon State University

Global wildfire activity has oscillated for millions of years in response to cycles of climate change and human uses of fire. However, the earth’s systems are now in a state of rapid change, driven by the interconnected forces of climate change, land-use transformation, biodiversity loss, and human activity. Altered fire regimes, in turn, have become both a fundamental cause and consequence of these changes. The term “Pyrocene” has even emerged to describe this new era of megafires and extreme wildfire events.

While much popular media points to climate change as the primary driver of shifting wildfire patterns, the fact of the matter is that no single factor is responsible. Variation in fire regimes manifests in response to distinctive combinations of climate and atmospheric conditions, ignition patterns, vegetation characteristics, and geomorphology. Sudden changes in any of these factors can disrupt the characteristic behavior of fire in a given region. Thus, while climate change lengthens the dry season or increases the frequency of dry years in some regions, it may concurrently lead to reduced vegetation biomass in others. Changes in climate also interact with other factors such as altered ignition patterns, fire management and policy, or insect infestations, to name just a few.

Because fire regimes have been altered in multiple ways, for multiple reasons, wildfire & global change is our first pillar topic. A holistic understanding of each region’s unique fire-influencing variables is critical for developing comprehensive strategies for effective fire management and long-term co-existence with fire.

Preparedness is critical to mitigating the impact of wildfires and enhancing the resilience of ecosystems and human communities, and this pillar of the GWC is focused on the fire management and policy operations that are essential to achieve beneficial outcomes. The most effective preparedness efforts involve an interdisciplinary set of “before”, “during”, and “after” actions carried out by community members, fire practitioners, firefighters, policymakers, conservation planners, and developers that are informed by the scientific and Indigenous knowledge of the regional context. This approach is known as Integrated Fire Management.