Vulnerability & Risk

The current multi-year drought in the western U.S. highlights the increasing challenges posed by wildfires. While science in the past decades has substantially improved our understanding of wildfire as an integral part of ecosystems, questions remain about how fire, human actions, climate, and ecosystem responses co-evolve. As more people are exposed to fires and fire risk, these linkages between human actions to mitigate fire risk and the environmental consequences of fire increase. We hope to develop a new approach to examine the complex linkage among fire management actions such as fuels treatments, fire risk, and post-fire effects, including risks to water resources and other ecosystem services.