California has consistently ranked number one for having the most wildfires per state. As droughts intensify and the rate of climate change accelerates, wildfires are growing more and more severe, causing the state and its residents millions of dollars in repairs and firefighting.
In the last decade, an appreciation for Indigenous wisdom that encourages yearly prescribed burnings has surfaced as Californian officials have realized that the threat wildfires pose is becoming too severe. Prescribed burning involves a calculated analysis of an area of land and its respective fuel load. The practice effectively reduces the fuel load of an area to prevent buildup of fuel loads and an increase in wildfire intensity. Prescribed burning was once effectively banned in Indigenous communities but is now increasingly common.
Through this project, I sought to investigate spatial and temporal trends in prescribed burning in California over the last decade to analyze statistically significant trends in burn locations over time.
Hi there! Thank you for visiting my page. I decided to pursue this project because I am interested in Indigenous land wisdom, developed by the intimate interaction between Indigenous communities and the earth, and how it should be honored and incorporated into federal and state land management policy. I chose to look at wildfires in California, as it is widely known that they are growing in intensity and severity. I first learned about prescribed burning as a mitigative tool for wildfires this year and was curious about the history of the practice and its prevalence. I am excited to talk to you more about my project and how information derived from it can be used in the future!
Hi Zahra! This is a very interesting project, and I am really surprised at the finding! It almost seems counterintuitive to me that they are encouraging burning in California, especially in those previous “cold spots.” The emerging hot spot analysis provides us with a lot more information than the more traditional method, good job!
Hi Peregrine, thank you for your comment! Me as well, I’m glad that it is becoming more accepted and hope that officials continue to listen to Indigenous land wisdom as they use prescribed burning as a practice. I too was intrigued by the emerging hot spot analysis and think its a cool way to see hotspots over time!
Hi Zahra,
Fascinating project! I hadn’t thought about the California wildfires through this lens, so thank you for broadening my perspective on the issue presented. It is more important today than ever that decision-makers who provide support and allocate funds have full access to this information. While controlling wildfires in these areas is necessary, develop means to prevent them in the future should be considered equally prioritized. Nice work!
Definitely! Thank you for sharing these thoughts, Brooke!
Interesting project! It seems that prescribed burns are fairly effective at preventing large scale wildfires. However, I wonder if the counterintuitive nature of the act (burning to prevent burning) is partly responsible for the lack of prescribed burns in places that are particularly vulnerable (i.e. how much does public approval of prescribed burns factor into their usage?). I can imagine that those uneducated on the practicality of these burns would be apprehensive to their use, especially if they live in close proximity to recent wildfires.
Prescribed burning is certainly still not as pervasive as it once was pre-colonial contact. I think that there is still an apprehension amongst citizens living near forests because the prescribed burning does result in air pollution, but it is worth noting that it is significantly less than that which is generated by these huge wildfires that have ravaged the state in recent years.
A neat approach to investigating response to California wildfires! I bet this work could supplement future research, like what types of land these hotspots are occurring on and who lives there.
Yes, definitely! That would be really cool. Thanks for commenting!
Hello Zahara
It is so nice to see students interested in Indigenous wisdom and how to apply it to find solutions to current problems like the one that you worked on.
Do know how these hotspots relate to the wildfire locations?
Hi Maria! Thank you for your comment. There are some consistent patterns- for example, the Central Valley Region of California does not have a high frequency of prescribed burns or wildfires because of the area’s topography. It was difficult to run an analysis that looked at both wildfire occurrences and prescribed burn occurrences because the prescribed burns count towards the general wildfire count and this would cause an error in data.
I agree with the others – it’s great to see Indigenous wisdom valued and studied, and this is certainly a timely topic to explore. How is the prescribed burning data collected? Is it reliant on people reporting their controlled burning to some centralized authority?
Thank you, Nadia! It is actually collected by government agencies, namely CalFire. All burns are supposed to be reported but I’m sure this was used in combination with satellite data for the unreported burns.
Zahra, interesting initial look at this relationship over time. My main question is where were prescribed burns actually conducted? And where are those in relation to the emergent hotspot analysis results (especially the oscillating hotspots)? Do you have a point or polygon dataset of prescribed burnings over time and where are they in relation to these hotspots? The issue to tease apart is also fire severity–is there an negative correlation between prescribed burnings and wildfire frequency (or severity or extent)? That would take in the direction of a regression–does prescribed burning (independent variable) predict decreased wildfire (dependent variable)? The hypothesis would be that it does, and the null hypothesis that prescribed burning has no discernible effect compared to a random distribution of wildfires. Good start–let me know if you plan to continue with this project and I can help with some next steps.
Hi Professor Wernke, thank you for your comments! So the raw data of prescribed burnings over time was in polygon format and I then converted it to point format using the feature to point function in the spatial analysis toolbox. I did construct a time-series map that displayed the distribution of prescribed burnings (as points) over time, but didn’t have enough room for that on the presentation poster. In terms of deducing the correlation between prescribed burnings and wildfire frequency, that was tough because I had to be cognizant of the likelihood of double counting data. For example, the prescribed burns would also be counted in the wildfire total, so it would be difficult to parse out the prescribed burns from this total. I would love to hear more about how I could parse out that data to continue with the project!