Sponsor
This material is based upon work supported by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which is a major facility sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) under Cooperative Agreement No. 1852977. This manuscript is a product of discussions at the Wildfire in the Biosphere workshop held in May 2021 funded by the NSF through a contract to KnowInnovation. J.K.S. was supported as part of the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments - Tropics, funded by the US Department of Energy, the Office of Science, the Office of Biological and Environmental Research, and by the NASA Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment grant 80NSSC19M0107. R.T.B. was supported by the NSF grant DEB-1942068. P.E.H. was supported by the NSF grant DEB-1655121. J.K.B. and E.N.S. were supported by CIRES, the University of Colorado Boulder.
Published In
PNAS Nexus
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-2022
Subjects
Wildfires -- research, Wildfire risk -- United States
Abstract
Fire is an integral component of ecosystems globally and a tool that humans have harnessed for millennia. Altered fire regimes are a fundamental cause and consequence of global change, impacting people and the biophysical systems on which they depend. As part of the newly emerging Anthropocene, marked by human-caused climate change and radical changes to ecosystems, fire danger is increasing, and fires are having increasingly devastating impacts on human health, infrastructure, and ecosystem services. Increasing fire danger is a vexing problem that requires deep transdisciplinary, trans-sector, and inclusive partnerships to address. Here, we outline barriers and opportunities in the next generation of fire science and provide guidance for investment in future research. We synthesize insights needed to better address the long-standing challenges of innovation across disciplines to (i) promote coordinated research efforts; (ii) embrace different ways of knowing and knowledge generation; (iii) promote exploration of fundamental science; (iv) capitalize on the “firehose” of data for societal benefit; and (v) integrate human and natural systems into models across multiple scales. Fire science is thus at a critical transitional moment. We need to shift from observation and modeled representations of varying components of climate, people, vegetation, and fire to more integrative and predictive approaches that support pathways toward mitigating and adapting to our increasingly flammable world, including the utilization of fire for human safety and benefit. Only through overcoming institutional silos and accessing knowledge across diverse communities can we effectively undertake research that improves outcomes in our more fiery future.
Rights
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences 2022. This work is written by (a) US Government employee( s) and is in the public domain in the US.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac115
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39294
Citation Details
Shuman, J. K., Balch, J. K., Barnes, R. T., Higuera, P. E., Roos, C. I., Schwilk, D. W., ... & Zhang, X. (2022). Reimagine fire science for the anthropocene. PNAS Nexus, 1(3), pgac115.