New study outlines seven-step roadmap for wildfire management
- Citizens' Platform
- Apr 2
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Source: Tyndall Centre
As wildfires grow more extreme in a changing climate, researchers explore fire management practices that move away from suppression to a more adaptive and integrated approach.
A new study in Communications Earth & Environment outlines five core objectives and a seven-step roadmap to improve wildfire management as climate change contributes to longer, more intense fire seasons. Researchers – including Tyndall members Alice Hsu, Rachel Carmenta and Matthew Jones – explore Integrated Fire Management (IFM), which balances prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, as a powerful strategy to manage escalating risks.
The study’s roadmap is designed to help nations adapt to new fire regimes, as well as promote climate change adaptation and mitigation benefits.
Wildfires are becoming more extreme
“Fire regimes” – the pattern, frequency, and intensity of wildfires over time – are altering across the world, and increasingly affected by climate change.
Between 1979 and 2013, fire seasons lengthened by around 20 per cent, and models suggest that burned areas will increase by 9–14 per cent by 2030 and 20–33 per cent by 2050, even under the lowest emissions scenario. Wildfire carbon emissions are also rising – boreal forest fires alone released a record 0.48 gigatons of carbon in 2021, double the average of the 2001-2018 period.
These changing conditions are making ecosystems and human populations even more vulnerable to the impacts of wildfires. The rapid pace of these changes has also exposed gaps in the knowledge, tools and structures needed to adopt informed and holistic approaches to fire management.
Why fire suppression is not enough
Over the past few centuries, most fire management has focused on suppression – banning fires and putting them out as quickly as possible, regardless of the type of fire.
This approach has failed to address fire prevention or post-fire recovery, and led to high fuel loads in many regions, which increases the risk of high-intensity fires. Land use changes, such as urban expansion into fire-prone areas, have also heightened challenges.
Integrated Fire Management moves beyond emergency responses to fire and combines fire prevention, response and recovery, while integrating ecological, socio-economic and cultural factors into management strategies. For example, IFM often uses controlled, low-intensity burns to manage vegetation and reduce wildfire risk. The study presents IFM as a comprehensive framework to manage fire risk more effectively.
A roadmap for a global challenge
Moving from fire suppression systems to IFM at a national level requires significant policy reforms. Moreover, IFM is highly context-dependent, so requires a different strategy based on local context and management goals.
Because of this complexity, the proposed roadmap gives incremental steps to ensure feasibility and flexibility – from developing a policy and legal framework to knowledge sharing among regions and countries.
By integrating diverse knowledge systems and adopting a flexible, learning-based approach to fire management, IFM could be a key strategy to help countries adapt to the realities of a changing climate.
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