Wildfire, Smoke, and Research: Working With Wildfire Management Agencies

Researchers from the Program for Climate, Ecosystems & Fire Applications at DRI have worked extensively over the last 20 years with the wildland fire management community in the United States and Australia. Collectively, we have collaboratively worked on over 30 different projects with national and regional/state fire agencies that range from examining fire behavior, smoke modeling and impacts, perceptions of wildfire risk and decision making, forecast accuracy and user perceptions of accuracy, decision making tool assessments, and developing and teaching fire climate in advanced fire behavior and fire danger courses at the National as a part of the National Advanced Fire & Resource Institute (NAFRI), a national level training center serving the interagency wildland fire community. A key aspect to the success of this program has been the longevity of the relationships built between individuals and fire management organizations and a programmatic focus on working collaboratively with agency partners/practitioners to do research that meets user-defined needs and questions that can directly support decision making. This presentation will focus on a set of observations based on the experiences of the researchers involved in this program that set forth the best practices and challenges we have identified working within the wildland fire management community.