• WILDFIRESWIFIRE Lab Forms New Partnership with DHS

    By Rajan Tavathia and Kimberly Mann Bruch

    For the past 10 years, the WIFIRE team at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego has been focused on meeting the growing needs of hazard monitoring, mitigation and response. Most recently, the team has partnered with DHS to integrate edge computing – a strategy emphasizing data collection and analysis at the site of or geographically near data sources. Joint effort aims to demonstrate workflows utilizing edge computing for wildfire monitoring, response and mitigation.

  • WILDFIRESThe U.S. Is Spending Billions to Reduce Forest Fire Risks – We Mapped the Hot Spots Where Treatment Offers the Biggest Payoff for People and Climate

    By Jamie Peeler

    In a new study, my colleagues and I mapped out where forest treatments can do the most to simultaneously protect communities – by preventing wildfires from turning into disasters – and also protect the forests and the climate we rely on, by keeping carbon out of the atmosphere and stored in healthy soils and trees.

  • WILDFIRESWildfires Are Much Worse Than a Sign of Climate Change

    By Alvin Powell

    Summer headlines have screamed of climate extremes: Record temperatures, an ocean heat wave, and rampant wildfires. The fires present a dual problem: Not only are they a symptom of climate change — becoming bigger, hotter, and more common in regions where they can affect large population centers — but they also make the crisis worse. By burning vast layers of partially decomposed vegetable matter called peat, fires like those in Canada release even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

  • WILDFIRESClimate-Fueled Wildfires Lead to Rethink on Fire Tactics

    By Alistair Walsh

    Climate change is making wildfires more frequent and more destructive, and long-time firefighting strategies are no longer working. Scientists are calling for a radical rethink of how we fight wildfires.

  • FIREFIGHTINGFireDrone Supports the Firefighters

    Researchers are developing a heat-resistant drone that can analyze the source of danger at close range in the event of a building or forest fire. This allows firefighters to optimize the strategy of a high-risk operation before entering the danger zone.

  • WILDFIRESWe Aren't Helpless in the Face of Increasing Fires and Smoke

    By Jay Balagna

    Canada, Mexico, or the United States have published strategy documents that aim to rebalance fire’s place in our environment through methods such as prescribed fire. Even the most optimistic outlook on these efforts sees them as long-term solutions, though. Yes, a massive paradigm shift is necessary. But it’s also clear something needs to happen immediately, too. To protect ourselves, we can take steps that won’t distract from those long-term goals.

  • WILDFIREColorado Law Will Require Homes to Be More Wildfire Resistant

    By Jennifer Oldham

    The state will develop building standards for homes in high-risk areas after ProPublica’s reporting showed previous efforts to require fire-resistant housing materials had been repeatedly stymied by developers and municipalities.

  • WILDFIRESA Lawsuit to Protect Streams Could Take Away an Important Firefighting Tool

    By Max Graham

    The U.S. Forest Service uses millions of gallons of fire retardant to fight wildfires. There have long been concerns about what happens when that mix of ammonium phosphate, emulsifiers, and colorants finds its way into water.

  • WILDFIRESControlled Burns Help Prevent Wildfires, Experts Say. But Regulations Have Made It Nearly Impossible to Do These Burns.

    By Jennifer Oldham

    Even though the 2021 Marshall Fire made it clear that the fire threat posed by Colorado’s grasslands endangers large urban areas, federal, state and local rules continue to make it difficult to address the risk.

  • EXPLOSION PREVENTIONPreventing Fires and Explosions

    Lines in natural gas grids have to be maintained and serviced regularly. This entails using flares to vent the natural gas. With FlareSimulator, research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF have developed an assistive tool that calculates the correct distance of flares to houses, trees and other nearby objects. This makes it easy to maintain minimum distances and prevent potential hazards and explosions.

  • WILDFIRESUnderstanding Plants Improves Wildland-Fire Modeling in Uncertain Future

    Drought and warmer temperatures make vegetation dynamics crucial to fire behavior and effects. A new conceptual framework for incorporating the way plants use carbon and water into fine-scale computer models of wildland fire provides a critical first step toward improved global fire forecasting.

  • WILDFIRESWhat’s Driving Re-Burns Across California and the West?

    Seasonal temperature, moisture loss from plants, and wind speed are what primarily drive fires that sweep across the same landscape multiple times, a new study reveals. As climate change sparks more new fires in old burn areas, understanding the underlying causes can help shape land management strategies.

  • WILDFIRESFor 400 years, Indigenous Tribes Buffered Climate's Impact on Wildfires in the American Southwest

    Devastating megafires are becoming more common, in part, because the planet is warming. But a new study suggests bringing “good fire” back to the U.S. and other wildfire fire-prone areas, as Native Americans once did, could potentially blunt the role of climate in triggering today’s wildfires.

  • WILDFFIRESAmericans Are Flocking to Wildfire

    People are trading hurricane zones for wildfire areas, says national study of migration, natural disasters, and climate change.

  • WILDFIRESWildfires Threats Not Commonly Disclosed by U.S. Firms Despite Risk to Economy

    Wildfires in the United States, especially in Western states, increasingly pose a significant risk to entire communities, often destroying homes, businesses and lives. Yet U.S. firms rarely report their wildfire risks in required federal filings and instead bury such risks in nonspecific risk disclosures.