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Prominent among proposed strategies in addressing this challenge is the use of prescribed fire (also known as controlled burning), which is the practice of intentionally igniting and managing fire under prescribed conditions to meet specific desired hazard reduction or ecosystem-related objectives–including the reduction of wildland fuel density and improving ecosystem health and resilience to a warming climate and other disturbances. This increasingly stark reality has been been met with growing calls for both short-term interventions and long-term solutions. This escalating “wildfire crisis,” as it has been termed, has arisen from a confluence of aggravating factors -including the harmful legacy of historical fire suppression policies, increasing development in fire-prone areas, and the vegetation-aridifying effects of climate change.

The American West, as well as many other fire-prone regions globally, have been experiencing a large increase in the level and severity of wildfire activity in recent decades-a trend that has wrought a growing human toll both directly (though loss of life and structures) and indirectly (though harm to ecosystems and watersheds, increasingly extreme smoke-related air pollution episodes, and even regional effects on housing availability or affordability). (Photo credit: Edward Smith/The Nature Conservancy) use drip torches to ignite pine needles, cones and other vegetation in prescribed fire operations at Independence Lake Preserve near Truckee, California as part of ecological forest restoration and fuels reduction to improve forest health and reduce the chances of a high intensity wildfire. What is prescribed fire, anyway? Staff from The Nature Conservancy and Firestorm, Inc.

Note: This special Weather West article focuses on new peer-reviewed scientific research, recently published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, that I led with the help of a team of collaborators from UC Merced, UC Berkeley, The Nature Conservancy, and Washington State University.