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NEWS &
RESOURCES

Photo credit: Ann Olsson

WFFRC

Science Vision.

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WFFRC
Introduction

Breakthrough science to address questions on fire and forest resilience

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Mechanisms of Forest Resilience

Research through field observations, experiments, and vegetation modeling

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Tracking Forest & Fire

Quantifying how fire regimes, forest structor, and forest functions are changing with remote sensing

Science Objectives.

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Making Science Actionable

Actionable science developed to meet the needs of decision-makers and guide land managers

Impacts on People & Nature

How do changing forests & fire regimes affect WUI and ecosystem services?

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Projecting Forests & Fires

Using simulation modeling to analyze past fires and forecast future patterns

Recent Publications.

Co-regulation of water use and canopy temperature in desert trees

The Western United States Large Forest-Fire Stochastic Simulator (WULFFSS) 1.0: A monthly gridded forest-fire model using interpretable statistics

The Western United States MTBS-Interagency database of large wildfires, 1984–2024 (WUMI2024a)

Rising rates of wildfire building destruction in the conterminous United States

The weak land carbon sink hypothesis

Evapotranspiration sensitivity to environmental variability provides a window into subsurface processes in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum

Nonlinear Carbon Feedbacks in CMIP6 and Their Impacts on Future Freshwater Availability

Simulating the Potential for Invasive Grass Expansion to Alter Wildfire Behavior in Southern California With WRF-Fire

Anthropogenic warming drives earlier wildfire season onset in California

Ecological and hydroclimatic determinants of vegetation water-use strategies

Air Quality Impacts of the January 2025 Los Angeles Wildfires: Insights from Public Data Sources

Current Forest Carbon Offset Buffer Pool Contributions Do Not Adequately Insure Against Disturbance-Driven Carbon Losses

Wildfires drive multi-year water quality degradation over the western United States

The Unstable Relationship Between Drought Status and Leaf Water Content Complicates the Remote Sensing of Tree Drought Stress

Betting on rains that do not come: Monsoon failure and leaf area overshoot relate to increased tree mortality from drought

Influence of Time-Averaging of Climate Data on Estimates of Atmospheric Vapor Pressure Deficit and Inferred Relationships With Wildfire Area in the Western United States

Exacerbating risk in human-ignited large fires over western United States due to lower flammability thresholds and greenhouse gas emissions

A fire deficit persists across diverse North American forests despite recent increases in area burned

The impacts of compounding droughts: scaling from stomatal responses to ecosystem dynamic

Spatiotemporal Synchrony of Climate and Fire Occurrence Across North American Forests (1750–1880)

Diverging responses of terrestrial ecosystems to water stress after disturbances

Source vs sink limitations on tree growth: from physiological mechanisms to evolutionary constraints and terrestrial carbon cycle implications

Extreme fire seasons are looming — science can help us adapt

The fastest-growing and most destructive fires in the US (2001 to 2020)

Anthropogenic climate change has reduced drought recovery probabilities across the western US

Rare and highly destructive wildfires drive human migration in the U.S.

Tree species explain only half of explained spatial variability in plant water sensitivity

Forest Carbon Storage in the Western United States: Distribution, Drivers, and Trends

Anthropogenic Intensification of Cool-Season Precipitation Is Not Yet Detectable Across the Western United States

Climate-driven disturbances amplify forest drought sensitivity

Mortality attributable to PM2.5 from wildland fires in California from 2008 to 2018

Do Vegetation Fuel Reduction Treatments Alter Forest Fire Severity and Carbon Stability in California Forests?

Exposure to Smoke From Wildfire, Prescribed, and Agricultural Burns Among At-Risk Populations Across Washington, Oregon, and California

Quantifying the Smoke-related Public Health Trade-offs of Forest Management

The impacts of rising vapour pressure deficit in natural and managed ecosystems

Exploring spatial heterogeneity in synergistic effects of compound climate hazards: Extreme heat and wildfire smoke on cardiorespiratory hospitalizations in California

Science Panel.
Living Sustainably with Wildfire

Living Sustainably with Wildfire: Science for Solutions

WFFRC News.

Nearly three-quarters of western US overdue for wildfires

Nearly three-quarters of western US overdue for wildfires

Nearly three-quarters of western US overdue for wildfires

The Wolverine Creek Fire located northwest of Lucerne, WA began on June 29, 2015 and has consumed an estimated 25,000 acres. The fire was caused by a lightning strike. USFS photo. Adapted from a press release by AGU Wildfires can benefit forests by clearing old debris, leaving behind fertilizer, and more. For over a century, the United States has poured billions of dollars into fire suppression tactics to keep people, homes and critical environments safe, but suppression can

Building a burn severity atlas to track changing wildfires in real time

Building a burn severity atlas to track changing wildfires in real time

Building a burn severity atlas to track changing wildfires in real time

When you walk through a forest a few months after it’s burned in a severe wildfire, trees are killed and charred, and the ground is black and grey with ash. You come out covered in charcoal, like you’ve just put your face into a campfire. But it's also often a time of dynamic growth and change. Tree seedlings are sprouting from the ash. It's amazing to see. In less severely burned areas, the smaller trees in the understory — what we call ladder fuels — are often killed, creat

After an autumn of fire in the Northeast, what can we learn from the West?

After an autumn of fire in the Northeast, what can we learn from the West?

After an autumn of fire in the Northeast, what can we learn from the West?

In mid-November, the Northeast Drought Early Warning System reported abnormal dryness or drought in 93% of the Northeast. This fall,...

Lara Kueppers

LARA KUEPPERS
University of California, Berkeley

I am thrilled to be collaborating with this diverse and motivated group of scientists in service of a shared objective. These landscapes are changing, and understanding the pace and intensity of that change is an essential part of adapting our stewardship approaches.

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