ABOUT
WFFRC
The Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative (WFFRC) is a research program designed to accelerate scientific discoveries that will enhance forest resilience and wildfire decision making.
Convene
WFFRC brings together scientists and practitioners to identify key knowledge gaps that challenge stewardship of Western forests.
Research
WFFRC scientists leverage fieldwork, remote sensing, and advanced simulations to address these knowledge gaps.
Catalyze Innovation
By sharing its discoveries with decision makers and forest stewards, WFFRC facilitates new strategies adapted to the current and future realities of Western wildfires.
WFFRC’s actions will lead to a deeper understanding of biophysical, ecological, and social dynamics needed to underpin a strategic portfolio of innovative fire management and community adaptation efforts across the Western US.
A BURNING ISSUE.
CREATING A RESEARCH PROGRAM TOGETHER.
THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW.
Fire is natural in many Western US ecosystems. Yet, climate change and a legacy of suppression are pushing fires far beyond historical ranges of variability. Ordinarily, science might take decades to converge on clear guidance for decision makers — time we do not have to address the fire crisis. WFFRC aims to dramatically speed up the pathway from data to discovery to decision. We will achieve this by accelerating the collection of crucial data, developing a first-of-its-kind model that can simulate important feedback between fire and forests, testing new fire management strategies, and ensuring the best science is immediately available to decision makers.
WFFRC partners with fire management and policy experts to understand, catalyze, and deliver the science they need. We are co-creating and implementing a research program that will ensure that forest stewards have the best available science to inform long-term planning.
Our window of opportunity to address the fire crisis in the Western US is closing. The best models overwhelmingly agree that increasing fire due to climate change is already pushing Western forest ecosystems over tipping points, with profound consequences for local communities, national conservation initiatives, and even climate and life globally.
It is time to act. Ensuring that practitioners — from the local to national levels — can use the best data and most robust models will ensure that we invest in strategies to maximize our potential, shifting the balance of fire from devastating to sustainable.
ANNA TRUGMAN
University of California, Santa Barbara
One exciting and powerful aspect of this Collaborative is the highly multidisciplinary approach to the problem of wildfire in the Western United States, with expertise ranging from forest ecology and the physical climate sciences to smoke exposure impacts and fire effects on ecosystem services.
PARTNERS.
