By Izzy Sofio & Katie McElroy
The mere mention of wildfire likely brings back vivid memories— whether it’s the Woolsey Fire, Camp Fire, Witch Fire, or another one that impacted your life most. Every year, fires seem to be bigger, more frequent, and closer to home. We’re not imagining this—researchers confirm that it’s true. And the best way to fight back against fires? More fire.
So how do we fight fire with fire? Through a practice known as prescribed burning. A prescribed burn is intentionally set to reduce the risk of a larger wildfire. They can also achieve other management goals like improving habitat for native species or rangeland, or for cultural purposes. And while it may sound illogical, these smaller, controlled fires really help, especially when implemented across all communities, not just those with economic or political influence. They burn off plant growth like the crisp, dried shrubs that act as fuel to a wildfire.
In fact, the practice of prescribed burning is centuries old. Indigenous communities used burning as a tool to cultivate crops, like acorns from oak trees, and to renew medicinal and practical materials. Colonization of Indigenous Californians by the Spanish and U.S. governments, along with suppressive laws like the 1850 Act for Government Protections of Indians, severely diminished Indigenous burning practices. On top of that, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) made fire suppression its main priority in the early twentieth century. This caused a buildup of fuel and fostered a fear of fire reinforced by the endearing, yet misleading, Smokey Bear.
The key to fighting fire with fire is doing it at the right time—before a wildfire burns Main Street. Sarah Anderson, a professor of Environmental Politics at UC Santa Barbara, finds that communities receive more fuels management projects—efforts to reduce dry and/or flammable plants that serve as potential fuel for wildfires—like prescribed burns only after a close wildfire. This happens even more in whiter, wealthier communities where wildfires can stimulate funding and political mobilization. The pattern needs to change if we want all Californians to be prepared to live with wildfire.
Yet scientists know little about predicting wildfires and protecting communities in the most populated portions of the state—California’s foothills. Twenty-seven million people, or over 65 percent of the state’s population, live in a region dominated by coastal shrublands, grasslands, and oak woodlands. These areas are threatened by increasingly frequent and destructive wildfires.
The Building Resiliency to Wildfire Project
A research project based at the UC Nature’s Sedgwick Reserve in Santa Barbara County has sought to bridge this knowledge gap. Called the Building Resiliency to Wildfire Project (BRW), it investigated how prescribed burning affects California’s coastal foothills. The project gathered information about the conditions of the landscape before, during, and after prescribed burns. This experimental design allowed comparisons between each stage of the process.
The approach led to new insights into fire recovery and behavior. For example, researchers expected a consistent relationship between fire intensity and vegetation regeneration, but the varied regrowth rates observed after prescribed burns open promising paths for future research. Additionally, fog and lichen, the organism hanging from oak canopies like an old man’s beard, proved more influential in fire behavior than previously thought. Observers during one prescribed burn watched lichen erupt in flames, redirecting the fire ever so slightly. The next day, the team hosed down the lichen before igniting the controlled fire, which prevented the fire from reaching the oaks’ canopies. Researchers suspect this relates to fog. Fog buffers vegetation from fire, while lichen can either accelerate or slow fires depending on whether it has absorbed fog recently.
The BRW Project also united the work of several pre-existing research efforts to answer new questions about fire. These research efforts focus on California’s supply of fresh water, predictive fire modeling, prescribed burning programs, quantifying moisture in plants, and collecting localized wind and weather data.
A mix of experts yields unique findings
The team of interdisciplinary researchers on this project included a diverse array of experts in water, vegetation, fog, local weather, and more. Working together, these experts posed novel research questions, decided what data to collect, and produced unusually comprehensive and insightful lessons and solutions. For example, the computer scientists and ecohydrologists worked together to develop a fire prediction model. The model would not be as effective without the data the atmospheric scientists collected at their weather stations and the flux tower at Sedgwick. Ecologists collected data on the amount of moisture in plants at Sedgwick that also funneled into the model. Data collected in the field by ecophysiologists studying oak trees helps the models predict whether these iconic trees benefit, survive, or die in response to fire. The overall result of the project was an extensive analysis of fire in coastal sage shrublands, oak woodlands, and grasslands was conducted.
Because Sedgwick Reserve has seen both prescribed burns and a serious recent wildfire—the Lake Fire that burned for much of July 2024—scientists could directly compare the two types of fire. The comparison highlights a key benefit of fighting fire with fire: air quality. Communities surrounding the Lake Fire experienced unhealthy and very unhealthy ranges of 150 to 300 Air Quality Index (AQI). However, during the smaller, less smokey prescribed burns [PDF], the AQI averaged a moderate 61 AQI in the same communities.
Less smoke from catastrophic wildfires also means a lot to California’s award-winning wine industry. The fear of smoke looms over the wine industry as smoke can taint wine’s flavor, ruining entire batches. So in addition to cleaner air, vintners can better protect their grapes from smoke when they can plan for fire.
Of course, all fires lead to smoke, yielding health concerns like lung, heart, and stomach issues, but prescribed burns are carefully planned to reduce smoke exposure. This is especially important for those working outside in unhealthy AQI measurements, like agricultural workers.
Prescribed burns were also unexpectedly critical in helping first responders tackle the Lake Fire. When fighting the flames, firefighters found that critical infrastructure installed to run prescribed burns, such as containment lines, made their work more efficient. These burns also strengthened relationships between first responders and reserve staff, enhancing communication during the fire. Lastly, firefighters were also more familiar with the landscape because they were present during the prescribed burns, helping them to fight the wildfire before it destroyed homes and infrastructure in the area.
Wildfires are inevitable, but catastrophic fires and inequitable fire mitigation measures don’t have to be. The choice is ours. If we embrace prescribed burning before wildfires scare us into action, we can better protect all our communities, our health, and our environment.
As Bren Environmental Leadership Fellows for Summer 2024, Katie McElroy and Izzy Sofio developed a communication and policy plan for the Building Resiliency to Wildfire Project. With support from the Moore Foundation, Katie (a rising senior at UC Santa Barbara) and Izzy (a second-year master’s student at UC Santa Barbara’s the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management ) conducted interviews with key researchers and created communication and policy products that will benefit the project for years to come.
More of photographer Ethan Turpin’s work can be seen at the Burn Cycle Project.
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