Wildland Fire Science Literacy: Education, Creation, and Application

This open access article was published December 19, 2018: https://doi.org/10.3390/fire1030052

Abstract

Wildland fire science literacy is the capacity for wildland fire professionals to understand and communicate three aspects of wildland fire: (1) the fundamentals of fuels and fire behavior, (2) the concept of fire as an ecological regime, and (3) multiple human dimensions of wildland fire and the socio-ecological elements of fire regimes. Critical to wildland fire science literacy is a robust body of research on wildland fire. Here, we describe how practitioners, researchers, and other professionals can study, create, and apply robust wildland fire science. We begin with learning and suggest that the conventional fire ecology canon include detail on fire fundamentals and human dimensions. Beyond the classroom, creating robust fire science can be enhanced by designing experiments that test environmental gradients and report standard data on fuels and fire behavior, or at least use the latter to inform models estimating the former. Finally, wildland fire science literacy comes full circle with the application of robust fire science as professionals in both the field and in the office communicate with a common understanding of fundamental concepts of fire behavior and fire regime.

Keywords:  environmental education; fire ecology and management; human dimensions of wildland fire; natural resource science and management

Citation

McGranahan, Devan, and Carissa Wonkka. "Wildland Fire Science Literacy: Education, Creation, and Application." Fire 1, no. 3 (2018): 52.

Corresponding author: Devan Allen McGranahan (devan.mcgranahan "at" ndsu.edu)