Author Archives

During the 17 June webinar, we had a brief discussion on wildland fire management considerations under COVID-19, highlighting the briefing papers that Dr. Peter Moore, Dr. Cathelijne Stoof, Bethany Hannah and others co-authored. Please see below for the abstracts and links to those papers. Wildland fire management under COVID-19. Brief 1, review of materials Peter Moore, Bethany Hannah, Jasper de Vries, Marijn Poortvliet, Ron Steffens, Cathelijne R. Stoof Abstract COVID-19 will have major implications for wildland fire management, because of severe social distancing and hygiene requirements. We collected procedures and guidance created around the world to help prepare wildland fire professionals globally for […]

Highlights from the second PyroLife Symposium webinar on June 10, 2020 by Hugo Lambrechts. Does fire discriminate? It is thought that when it comes to fire risk all of society is impacted equally. It is, however, the poor and marginalized that are affected the greatest. Informal settlements make up 33% of city dwellings and 1 in 8 of settlements globally, and it is often in informal settlements where the inequality is most evident. Danielle Antonellis looked at different examples of fire safety inequality and offered some perspectives on how to address this. Although everyone is evenly at risk of being […]

Highlights from the second PyroLife Symposium on June 10, 2020 by Nemer Abusamha. To prepare for unprecedented wildfires amplified by climate change, a lack of fuel management and vast urbanization, fire agencies, and managers use fire forecasting and risk prediction tools to improve decision making in wildland fire management. Over the last years, fire agencies and fire managers have faced unprecedented wildfires that require applied fire sciences with diverse other disciplines for them to make better decisions. Such integration produces operational tools and software for predicting wildfires hazard and to reduce wildfire risk. Operational wildfires software and applications provide integrated […]

Synopsis by Judith Kirschner and Mariña Fernández. Over the last years, Europe has experienced the onset of unprecedented wildfire seasons. Marc Castellnou discusses lessons learned in the Mediterranean and what to expect for temperate Europe. Highlights: During the last decade, countries in Southern Europe experienced increasingly severe wildfire seasons mainly due to changes in land use and enhanced by global warming. A similar increase in wildfire events is expected for Central and Northern Europe. Experience from the Mediterranean shows that land management is an essential tool to decrease fuel loads, interrupt landscape connectivity and thereby reduce vulnerability to extreme wildfires. […]

Highlights from the PyroLife Symposium webinar on June 3, 2020 by Bethany E. Hannah and Kathleen Uyttewaal. Dr. Cathelijne Stoof kicked off the 2020 PyroLife International Symposium with a presentation that introduced the PyroLife project, discussed the need for diversity within the greater wildland fire community, and gave some insight into how we might address some of the challenges societies will encounter as we transition to living with fire. Pyrogeography and PyroLife Cathelijne is a pyrogeographer and her experience in this field is what gave rise to the PyroLife project. Pyrogeography studies the spatial distribution of fire on the planet. […]