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Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US

Wildfires in the western United States (US) are increasingly expensive, destructive, and deadly. Reducing wildfire losses is particularly challenging when fires frequently start on one land tenure and damage natural or developed assets on other ownerships. Managing wildfire risk in multijurisdiction...

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Autores principales: Downing, William M., Dunn, Christopher J., Thompson, Matthew P., Caggiano, Michael D., Short, Karen C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8847424/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35169134
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06002-3
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author Downing, William M.
Dunn, Christopher J.
Thompson, Matthew P.
Caggiano, Michael D.
Short, Karen C.
author_facet Downing, William M.
Dunn, Christopher J.
Thompson, Matthew P.
Caggiano, Michael D.
Short, Karen C.
author_sort Downing, William M.
collection PubMed
description Wildfires in the western United States (US) are increasingly expensive, destructive, and deadly. Reducing wildfire losses is particularly challenging when fires frequently start on one land tenure and damage natural or developed assets on other ownerships. Managing wildfire risk in multijurisdictional landscapes has recently become a centerpiece of wildfire strategic planning, legislation, and risk research. However, important empirical knowledge gaps remain regarding cross-boundary fire activity in the western US. Here, we use lands administered by the US Forest Service as a study system to assess the causes, ignition locations, structure loss, and social and biophysical factors associated with cross-boundary fire activity over the past three decades. Results show that cross-boundary fires were primarily caused by humans on private lands. Cross-boundary ignitions, area burned, and structure losses were concentrated in California. Public lands managed by the US Forest Service were not the primary source of fires that destroyed the most structures. Cross-boundary fire activity peaked in moderately populated landscapes with dense road and jurisdictional boundary networks. Fire transmission is increasing, and evidence suggests it will continue to do so in the future. Effective cross-boundary fire risk management will require cross-scale risk co-governance. Focusing on minimizing damages to high-value assets may be more effective than excluding fire from multijurisdictional landscapes.
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spelling pubmed-88474242022-02-17 Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US Downing, William M. Dunn, Christopher J. Thompson, Matthew P. Caggiano, Michael D. Short, Karen C. Sci Rep Article Wildfires in the western United States (US) are increasingly expensive, destructive, and deadly. Reducing wildfire losses is particularly challenging when fires frequently start on one land tenure and damage natural or developed assets on other ownerships. Managing wildfire risk in multijurisdictional landscapes has recently become a centerpiece of wildfire strategic planning, legislation, and risk research. However, important empirical knowledge gaps remain regarding cross-boundary fire activity in the western US. Here, we use lands administered by the US Forest Service as a study system to assess the causes, ignition locations, structure loss, and social and biophysical factors associated with cross-boundary fire activity over the past three decades. Results show that cross-boundary fires were primarily caused by humans on private lands. Cross-boundary ignitions, area burned, and structure losses were concentrated in California. Public lands managed by the US Forest Service were not the primary source of fires that destroyed the most structures. Cross-boundary fire activity peaked in moderately populated landscapes with dense road and jurisdictional boundary networks. Fire transmission is increasing, and evidence suggests it will continue to do so in the future. Effective cross-boundary fire risk management will require cross-scale risk co-governance. Focusing on minimizing damages to high-value assets may be more effective than excluding fire from multijurisdictional landscapes. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8847424/ /pubmed/35169134 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06002-3 Text en © This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Downing, William M.
Dunn, Christopher J.
Thompson, Matthew P.
Caggiano, Michael D.
Short, Karen C.
Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
title Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
title_full Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
title_fullStr Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
title_full_unstemmed Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
title_short Human ignitions on private lands drive USFS cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western US
title_sort human ignitions on private lands drive usfs cross-boundary wildfire transmission and community impacts in the western us
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8847424/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35169134
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06002-3
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