ArticlePNAS nexus2023
Shifting social-ecological fire regimes explain increasing structure loss from Western wildfires.
Article in PNAS nexus, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prescribed fire is unlikely to reduce net PMProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Blazing a Trail for Fire Management and Smoke Health Collaboration: Takeaways From the 2024 Rocky Mountain Wildfire Smoke Symposium.GeoHealth · 2026Article
- Assessing the Evidence for Differential Health Effects of Wildfire Smoke Across Fires and Populations: A Critical Review of Recent Studies.Current environmental health reports · 2026Review
- Wildfire risk to United States cultural resources.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Performative planning creates a values mismatch between wildfire plans and community needs.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Urban areas in the United States experience substantial wildfire impacts.Communications earth & environment · 2026Article
- Rising rates of wildfire building destruction in the conterminous United States.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Emissions from burned structures in wildfires as significant yet unaccounted sources of US air pollution.Nature communications · 2025Article
- De-energization as maladaptation: Uneven residential exposure to wildfire Public Safety Power Shutoffs and compound heat.Global environmental change : human and policy dimensions · 2025Article
- Wildfires have created instability within risk transfer markets. Here's a path forward.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Fire risk to structures in California's Wildland-Urban Interface.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Intensifying Fire Season Aridity Portends Ongoing Expansion of Severe Wildfire in Western US Forests.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Benchmarking performance of annual burn probability modeling against subsequent wildfire activity in California.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Co-occurring climate events and environmental justice in California, 2018-2019.Environmental research, health : ERH · 2025Article
- Disproportionately large impacts of wildland-urban interface fire emissions on global air quality and human health.Science advances · 2025Article
- A fire deficit persists across diverse North American forests despite recent increases in area burned.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Physical Health Symptoms and Perceptions of Air Quality among Residents of Smoke-Damaged Homes from a Wildland Urban Interface Fire.ACS ES&T air · 2025Article
- Volatile Organic Compounds Inside Homes Impacted by Smoke from the Marshall Fire.ACS ES&T air · 2025Article
- Robust differential gene expression patterns in the prefrontal cortex of male mice exposed to an occupationally relevant dose of laboratory-generated wildfire smoke.Toxicological sciences : an official journal of the Society of Toxicology · 2024Article
- Drivers and Impacts of the Record-Breaking 2023 Wildfire Season in Canada.Nature communications · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Structure loss is an acute, costly impact of the wildfire crisis in the western conterminous United States ("West"), motivating the need to understand recent trends and causes. We document a 246% rise in West-wide structure loss from wildfires between 1999-2009 and 2010-2020, driven strongly by events in 2017, 2018, and 2020. Increased structure loss was not due to increased area burned alone. Wildfires became significantly more destructive, with a 160% higher structure-loss rate (loss/kha burned) over the past decade. Structure loss was driven primarily by wildfires from unplanned human-related ignitions (e.g. backyard burning, power lines, etc.), which accounted for 76% of all structure loss and resulted in 10 times more structures destroyed per unit area burned compared with lightning-ignited fires. Annual structure loss was well explained by area burned from human-related ignitions, while decadal structure loss was explained by state-level structure abundance in flammable vegetation. Both predictors increased over recent decades and likely interacted with increased fuel aridity to drive structure-loss trends. While states are diverse in patterns and trends, nearly all experienced more burning from human-related ignitions and/or higher structure-loss rates, particularly California, Washington, and Oregon. Our findings highlight how fire regimes-characteristics of fire over space and time-are fundamentally social-ecological phenomena. By resolving the diversity of Western fire regimes, our work informs regionally appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategies. With millions of structures with high fire risk, reducing human-related ignitions and rethinking how we build are critical for preventing future wildfire disasters.
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