Encountering Prescribed\nFire: Characterizing the Intersection\nof Prescribed Fire and Wildfire in the CONUS

Prescribed\nfire is applied across the United States as a fuel treatment\nto manage the impact of wildfires and restore ecosystems. While the\nrecent application of prescribed fire has largely been confined to\nthe southeastern US, the increase in catastrophic wildfires has accelerated\nthe growth of prescribed fire more broadly. To effectively achieve\nwildfire risk reduction benefits, which includes reducing the amount\nof smoke emitted, the area treated by prescribed fire must come into\ncontact with a subsequent wildfire. In this study, we applied timely\nand consistent geospatially resolved data sets of prescribed fires\nand wildfires to estimate the rate at which an area treated by prescribed\nfire encounters a subsequent wildfire. We summarize these encounter\nrates across time intervals, prescribed fire treatment area, and number\nof previous prescribed fires and by region. On all U.S. Forest Service\nlands across the Conterminous US (CONUS) 6.2% of prescribed fire treated\narea from 2003–2022 encountered a subsequent wildfire in 2004–2023.\nEncounter rates were highest in western US forests, which tend to\nbe more impacted by wildfire than the eastern US, and lower in the\neastern US. Encounter rates increased with treatment area in the southeastern\nUS but were relatively flat in the northwest. For the CONUS, encounter\nrates increased with longer time intervals, associated with diminished\npotential for reducing wildfire severity, between prescribed fire\nand the subsequent wildfire area burned. Our results provide timely\ninformation on prescribed fire and wildfire interactions that can\nbe leveraged to optimize analyses of the trade-offs between prescribed\nfire and wildfire.