By David Calkin, Kimiko Barrett, Jack Cohen, Mark Finney, Stephen Pyne, and Stephen Quarles for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Pulitzer Center-Public News Service Collaboration.

Consider several of the most devastating fire disasters of the last century. In August 2023, the wildfire-initiated urban conflagration of Lahaina, Hawaii, damaged or destroyed more than 2,200 structures and killed 98 people. In December 2021, the Marshall Fire sparked conflagrations in Superior and Louisville, Colorado, destroying 1,084 structures and killing two. In September 2020, the Almeda Drive Fire in the communities of Talent and Phoenix, Oregon, destroyed 2,600 homes and killed three. In November 2018, the Camp Fire initiated ignitions in Paradise, California, destroyed 18,804 buildings, and killed 85. In November 2016, fires spread through Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, destroying 2,460 structures and killing 14.

These fire disasters burned in vastly different environments. But all had human causes (power lines contributed to at least three), were near communities, occurred during extreme wind events, then inflicted their damage as urban conflagrations. Almost all destruction occurred within the first 12 hours after ignition. These fires immediately overwhelmed wildland and structural firefighting efforts, which were largely ineffective during the initial and extreme phase of the fire. Further, all these fires occurred since 2016. It's clear that structures and whole communities were vulnerable to ignition and burning-irrespective of what initiated the fires.

Society largely regards the wildfire problem as the destruction of human communities. Collectively, disaster fires, such as those mentioned here, have been lumped into a category of wildland-urban interface fires. These problem fires were defined as an issue of wildfires that involved houses. In reality, they are urban fires initiated by wildfires. That's an important distinction-and one that has big repercussions for how we prepare for future fires. To date, these repercussions have not received enough attention.

The Right Framing

Community fire destruction has become a national crisis, a systemic problem that will only worsen without aggressive, appropriate intervention-and this intervention will have to look far different than the current dominant paradigm. Climate change is blurring the boundaries that had defined where, when, and how fires burn (1). The needed changes will challenge ideas, institutions, and policies. The first step: reframing, from a focus on the wildlands to one centered on the structure and its immediate surroundings.

To effectively address this urban conflagration crisis requires that we fundamentally redefine the WU fire problem. Calkin et al. (2) developed a community wildfire risk framework that starts with a focus at the individual home level and identifies realistic objectives, effective mitigations, and responsible parties to reduce WU fire risk. The framework highlights the critical role of individual homeowners and local government, while recognizing that the traditional federal and state land-management agencies with responsibilities for wildland fuels management and suppression response have limited impact on community destruction. However, many of the recent investments to address wildfire risk to communities, such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, are primarily directed toward fuel treatments in natural areas governed by public land-management agencies.

The wildfire management system's default response is to suppress wildfire wherever and whenever possible, with few exceptions (3). It extends an urban fire service model into the wildlands. With fire exclusion as the primary solution to both community and wildland protection, risk reduction translates to fire suppression and landscape fuel reduction. As wildfire losses increase, the assumption that community protection should be a primary focus of federal wildfire management efforts has become entrenched within both agency culture and federal legislation.

But even as wildfire suppression costs and use of technology have skyrocketed, we are experiencing more damaging urban fires. Clearly, the answer to community adaptation resides in the communities themselves (2, 4), and until the WU fire problem statement is redefined to recognize the key role of structure ignition and focus on creating ignition-resistant communities, risk-reduction strategies will continue to be ineffective and insufficient.

The Right Response

In 2022, the US Forest Service released the Wildfire Crisis Strategy, outlining an ambitious goal of treating an additional 20 million acres of US Forest Service land and 30 million acres of other federal, tribal, state, and privately owned land "to address wildfire risks to critical infrastructure, protect communities, and make forests more resilient" (ref. 5; see also ref. 6). While federal land-management agencies-primarily the US Forest Service and Department of Interior-have been tasked with wildfire risk reduction, most wildfire ignitions are caused by humans and occur on private lands (7), including those that destroy a majority of structures in the western United States (8). Furthermore, what has often been considered a western United States issue has now come to the fore in locations with limited wildfire experience, such as Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Lahaina, Hawaii, thus creating additional challenges. As a result, actions on private land are essential to achieving fire-adapted communities across the country.

The community disaster sequence occurs when more homes are ignited than responders can protect (Fig. 1). Once structures are burning in a community, they become sources of lofted embers, radiant heat, and flame contact. Thus, community fire growth can accelerate quickly, resulting in urban conflagration that's exacerbated in higher-density development due to structure-to-structure fire spread. Reducing the likelihood that a home will ignite interrupts the disaster sequence by enabling effective structure protection. New construction siting, design, construction materials, and landscaping requirements should take wildfire potential into account. This will improve community resilience and ensure that new development does not increase community risk. The best way to make existing wildfire-vulnerable developments ignition resistant is to work within the limited area of the "home ignition zone"-a home and its surroundings within 100 feet (which may include neighboring homes). There are ways to reduce home ignition risk. Homeowners should install nonignitable roofing materials and flame- and ember-resistant vents; clean gutters of flammable debris; ensure that wooden steps, fences, and decks do not directly contact a home's flammable materials; and remove flammable materials immediately surrounding buildings and under attached decks (9-11).

Initiating substantial changes to the built environment requires that all levels of society address deeply rooted cultural expectations and develop a fundamentally new paradigm for community and homeowner responsibility. Such changes will take time. Communities need robust evacuation planning, including resilient early warning systems, identification and enhancement of egress routes, and consideration of support for individuals with mobility difficulties that all recognize the complexity of individual decision-making during emergency events (12). The community disaster sequence typically occurs during extreme wind events; thus, ignition-prevention programs should address infrastructure resilience and human behavior under these conditions.

Unfortunately, many communities and local governments often lack the resources, budget, staff, and experience to implement and maintain parcel- and neighborhood-level risk-reduction measures. The practice of modifying the built environment to growing wildfire risk requires multidisciplinary understanding of wildfire behavior, structural ignition vulnerabilities, urban resilience, and landscaping vegetation. Such know-how is not intrinsic institutional knowledge for public land-management agencies. As such, an appropriate response may resemble public health measures, where protecting the host from infection (home ignition prevention) is emphasized over trying to eliminate the infectious agent (wildfire).

Community leaders and locally elected officials are central to implementing effective wildfire mitigation strategies. And these leaders require significant technical assistance and financial support from federal and state levels. They need administrative mechanisms to direct funding and technical assistance to communities; this will require enhanced interagency coordination among federal and state-level departments, which can administer resources to local jurisdictions. Initial efforts in California, Colorado, and Oregon are structuring home ignition mitigation programs on this model, with the underlying objective of delivering funding, support, and expertise to communities and individual residents (13-15).

A New Perspective

All such projects and reforms must recognize an important truth: The current wildfire management approach has inverted the wildfire problem. wildland fires do not, per se, encroach on communities. Rather, it's communities that have impinged on wildlands, where fires play an important ecological role. Predominant strategies continue to apply limited, risk-averse reactions that emphasize community protection at the expense of both resilient landscapes and safe, effective wildfire responses. Forward-looking ecological and practical thinking would help move communities away from continually degrading fire-adapted ecosystems and underinvesting in community resilience. Instead, this change in thinking will move toward a sustainable approach that consistently promotes ecological and human ecosystem benefits.

Communities and governments need to accept living with wildland fire. They must recognize that fire in the wildlands is ecologically appropriate and inevitable-and it does not significantly influence community fire destruction (16). To do this, we must communicate differently on the nature of the WU fire problem and the ecological necessity of wildland fire. We must empower our public land managers and tribal partners to utilize fire appropriately to sustain resilient ecosystems and adapt our communities to this natural reality.

Inasmuch as people and communities are implicated in the wildfire problem, so, too, are they part of the solution. Federal land-management agencies cannot resolve this crisis alone; we all have a role to play in reducing wildfire risk in the places we live. Stronger collaboration in public and private partnerships, such as those that increase alignment between insurance providers, residents, and local and state governments, could further encourage and incentivize risk-reduction measures at the individual parcel and neighborhood scale.

The Wildfire Partners Program in Boulder County, Colorado, offers a model for an integrated approach to wildfire mitigation. It supports homeowners in reducing risk on their property by local government providing technical and financial support, including individual home assessments, vulnerability reports, and grants to subsidize necessary work, while offering a platform where insurance providers actively engage with homeowners to retain coverage on mitigated homes (17). This interdisciplinary approach builds wildfire resiliency from the bottom up and helps temper the expectation that the federal government is exclusively responsible for community protection.

Wildfire risk is complex, and local context matters. The ability to adapt reflects the realities, resources, and diverse needs of any one community. Effective solutions must account for localized nuance (18). Federal and state administrations can help direct funding, assistance, and technical expertise for wildfire mitigation. Communities with high social vulnerability will likely need additional support.

The recent addendum to the "National Cohesive wildland Fire Management Strategy" (19) specifies an important goal: "Human populations and infrastructure are as prepared as possible to receive, respond to, and recover from wildland fire." Achieving this vision means confronting the failed approach of trying to remove fire from our landscapes. We must recognize that our communities were developed in a climate and environment that no longer exist. We have the tools and knowledge to reduce community wildfire risks. But we must address the profound and deeply rooted misalignment of political and social expectations regarding what it means to live with wildfire. Now is the time to invest in long-term, economically efficient solutions, rather than short-term, risk-averse tactics.

We have to live with wildland fire. We don't have to live with fire in our communities.


David Calkin, Kimiko Barrett, Jack Cohen, Mark Finney, Stephen Pyne, and Stephen Quarles wrote this article for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


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New Mexico farmers finding it more difficult to grow historic crops are taking up conservation techniques to meet the challenge.

Drought, water scarcity, and extreme weather events combine to require growers to adopt new methods and modern tools.

John Idowu, extension agronomist specialist at New Mexico State University, shows farmers how to improve soil health and help control wind erosion. For long term success, he said they need to focus on sustainable, regenerative practices.

"How can I optimize my system and make it more resilient to climate change, to weather changes?" Idowu explained. "Once we have all those things worked out, farmers will tend to stay in business for longer."

Earlier this year, a NOAA satellite captured an image of winds lifting vast amounts of dust and dirt from New Mexico's dry farmlands. Some forecasters compared it to images last seen in the 1930s Dust Bowl.

Plowing agricultural fields annually was a common practice until the Dust Bowl period but in recent decades no-till or low-till farming operations have gained traction.

Bonnie Hopkins Byers, program director for the San Juan County Extension Service, encouraged New Mexico farmers to get a soil analysis and consider adopting the less aggressive approach. She said it could mean they do not need to till every year.

"One of the biggest problems is that people do something because that's the way they've always done it, or because it's the way their parents have done it, or their grandparents," Hopkins Byers acknowledged. "My philosophy has always been if you're going to till something over, till something in."

Intense dust storms known as "haboobs" were originally thought to be confined to Africa's Sudan but are becoming more common in other arid regions such as the Southwest.

Idowu stressed it makes the adoption of regenerative practices more urgent, as topsoil on New Mexico farmland disappears due to drought, land use changes and wind, which he noted has been particularly strong this year.

"The wind has been a major force, especially in the spring, so many days where you couldn't do anything outside because of the wind," Idowu observed. "You have a lot of dust and that means a lot of erosion and that is exactly what you don't like when it comes to crop production."

The New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group formed to help farmers improve their land and livelihoods.


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By Carolyn Beans for Lancaster Farming.
Broadcast version by Mark Richardson for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the Lancaster Farming-MIT Climate Change Engagement Program-Public News Service Collaboration

At Mountain View Holsteins in Bethel, Pennsylvania, owner Jeremy Martin is always working to make his dairy more efficient.

Currently, he has his sights set on a manure solid-liquid separator. He'd like to use the solid portion of his manure as bedding for his 140 cows and the liquid as fertilizer.

But the project is pricey - he expects the equipment alone will run around $100,000. So Martin hopes to defray the cost through grant funding for dairy projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Removing much of the solids from manure reduces the feed for the methane-producing microbes that thrive in the anaerobic conditions of liquid manure.

The approach is just one of many dairy practices now considered "climate-smart" because they could cut production of climate-warming gases.

For Martin, a manure separator wouldn't be possible without a grant.

"Once it's in place and going, I think some of these practices will pay for themselves, but the upfront cost is more than I can justify," he says. "If there's money out there to pay that upfront cost to get started, it makes sense to me to do it."

Across Pennsylvania, dairy farmers are learning more about climate-smart practices and funding opportunities, and weighing whether these changes are really sustainable for their businesses as well as the environment.

The Latest Buzzword

USDA has defined climate-smart agriculture as an approach that reduces or removes greenhouse gas emissions, builds resilience to the changing climate, and sustainably increases incomes and agricultural productivity.

"Before climate-smart was a thing, we called it conservation. We called it stewardship," says Jackie Klippenstein, a senior vice president at Dairy Farmers of America.

Indeed, long before the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations coined the term "climate-smart agriculture" in 2010, Pennsylvania dairy farmers had adopted many of the practices that now fall under the label.

For dairy, climate-smart practices largely include strategies that reduce greenhouse gases emitted from cows, manure or fields. Tried and true conservation practices like cover cropping and reduced tillage count.

So do newer practices like using the feed additive Bovaer to reduce methane production in a cow's rumen, or precision nitrogen management to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from fields.

Paying for Climate-Smart

"Margins are very tight on the dairy farm," says Jayne Sebright, the executive director of the Center for Dairy Excellence, a public-private partnership to strengthen Pennsylvania's dairy industry. "Some of these (climate-smart practices) are good for the climate, but they don't make good economic sense until they're subsidized."

In 2022, the center joined a Penn State-run program called "Climate-smart Agriculture that is profitable, Regenerative, Actionable and Trustworthy" to provide dairy farmers with funds for switching to climate-smart practices.

CARAT was launched with a $25 million USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant, but the future of the Pennsylvania project is in doubt. In April, USDA canceled the partnership program, suggesting that recipients reapply to a new USDA initiative called Advancing Markets for Producers.

Over 60 dairy farmers across Pennsylvania, including Martin, had already applied and been accepted into the first phase of CARAT. This initial phase was intended to help farmers identify the best climate-smart practices for their operations. In the second phase, farmers would have applied for funding to implement those practices. One farmer was already paid for his project before the USDA canceled the partnership program.

"There are fewer funding sources for climate-smart projects than in the last administration. However, private organizations and other entities are funding climate-smart projects," Sebright says. "Depending on what the practice is, (climate-smart) could also be conservation projects. It could be water quality projects."

Sebright suggests that dairy farmers also look for support through state-level funding, such as Pennsylvania's Resource Enhancement and Protection program, which offers tax credits for implementing practices that benefit farms and protect water quality.

Pennsylvania dairy farmers can also contact their county conservation districts to ask about funding opportunities for climate-smart projects, says Amy Welker, a project manager and grant writer for Pennsylvania-based Jones Harvesting, which operates Maystone Dairy in Newville and Molly Pitcher Milk in Shippensburg.

In the next year, Jones Harvesting plans to install a methane digester and solid-liquid separator at a site near Maystone Dairy. The digester is funded with an Agricultural Innovation Grant from the state and an Environmental Quality Incentives Program grant from USDA, along with private funds.

There's money out there for farmers who implement climate-smart practices, says Welker. But "you can't just look at one source."

Long-Term Payoffs

Ultimately, for climate-smart projects to make economic sense, they must continue paying for themselves long after the initial investment. One major goal of the USDA's Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program was to develop markets where farmers adopting these practices could earn a premium.

Some dairy farmers might see that return in the carbon market. National checkoff organization Dairy Management Inc. and its partners have pledged to shrink the industry's net greenhouse gas production to zero by 2050. There are growing opportunities for companies working toward that goal in the dairy supply chain to pay farmers for their contributions.

Early last year, Texas dairy farmer Jasper DeVos became the first to earn credits through the livestock carbon insetting marketplace. DeVos earned carbon credits by reducing methane emissions with a feed protocol that included the feed additive Rumensin. Dairy Farmers of America then purchased those credits through Athian, a carbon marketplace for the livestock industry.

Increased Efficiency

Even without direct monetary payoff, many farmers who adopt climate-smart practices reap rewards in improved efficiency and productivity.

"When you look at climate-smart, you also have to look at what's farm smart," Sebright says. She suggests that farmers choose practices that benefit their farms, not just the climate.

A farmer might decide to put a cover and flare system on a manure pit, not only because it reduces methane emissions but also because it keeps rainwater out of the pit and reduces the number of times each year the pit must be emptied.

Andy Bollinger of Meadow Spring Farm in Lancaster County has been running a manure separator since 2009. The liquid fertilizes his fields, and a portion of the solids becomes bedding for his cows.

He estimates the system saves him at least $20,000 a year in bedding costs.

"We put a fresh coating of it onto the stalls that our cows lay in every day and scrape the old stuff out," says Bollinger, who is also the vice president of the Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania. "It seems to work quite well, and it saves us from buying other bedding products."

No-till farming is also a cost saver because it reduces field passes with equipment, says James Thiele of Thiele Dairy Farm in Cabot, which has been 100% no-till for at least six years. The practice saves him money on fuel and herbicides.

"You're saving your environment, and you're also saving green," he says.

But Thiele questions whether some other climate-smart practices like methane digesters would be practical for his farm, which has 75 to 80 cows.

"I don't know if it'd be worth it for somebody as small as I am," he says.

"I think over the next few years, we'll rapidly see (climate-smart) tools become more available, and we'll see more organizations like DFA talking to our small to mid-sized farmers to make sure they understand they've got a place in this, they can benefit from it, and the practices and tools are affordable to them as well," Klippenstein says.

Weighing Climate-Smart

Many dairy farmers wonder whether some of the practices championed as climate-smart will really support their businesses.

Donny Bartch of Merrimart Farms in Loysville has adopted environmental practices from cover cropping to a manure management plan.

"I want to protect the environment. I want to keep my nutrients here on the farm and be sustainable for another five generations," Bartch says. "But we have to make sure that we're making the right decisions to keep the business going. And to do some of these (climate-smart) practices, the only way they pencil out is to have those subsidies."

There is also frustration with a system that rewards climate-smart improvements made today without acknowledging the contributions of farmers who were climate-smart before anyone put a name on it.

"You come around and want to start rewarding people for doing these things. You really need to start with the ones that have been doing it for a long time, but that's really not what happens," says Jim Harbach of Schrack Farms in Loganton, whose farm has been no-till for 50 years.

Climate-smart grant money and carbon credits are typically awarded for the implementation of new practices.

"It's just the unfortunate way that all of the policies and regulations were written," Sebright says. "What I would say is, if you do a climate-smart plan, maybe there are practices or things you can do to enhance or support or take what you're doing a step further."

Scientific Measurements on Real Farms

Some dairy farmers also want to know more about how climate-smart practices will affect their farms before jumping in.

Steve Paxton remembers participating in a government program to improve timber over 50 years ago on his family dairy, Irishtown Acres in Grove City. His family members were paid to climb up into their white pines and saw off many of the bottom branches.

The goal was to create a cleaner log. Instead, more sunlight shown through, which caused grape vines to climb up and topple the trees.

"The bottom line is, there was research done, it looked good, but it hadn't had enough time to follow through and see just really what the end results would be," Paxton says.

When Paxton sees estimates of how some practices might reduce greenhouse gases emitted from cows, he wonders how much of that research has been tested on actual dairies.

"I think some of it now is just kind of a textbook estimate of what's happening," he says.

More meaningful data is needed to show how climate-smart practices reduce greenhouse gases on individual dairies, Sebright says.

As part of the CARAT program, Penn State researchers planned to place greenhouse gas sensors on a dozen dairies and test how much greenhouse gas production falls as farmers experiment with different practices. The researchers intended to then use that data to build models that predict how those practices may affect emissions on other farms. They will still measure emissions this spring on one farm that is experimenting with a new approach for spreading manure in fields of feed crops.

"The real goal of (CARAT) is to have research that says, if you put a cover and flare (manure storage system) on a 500-cow dairy, this is how greenhouse gas emissions will change," Sebright says. "Or if you use Bovaer on a 90-cow herd, here's how this will affect greenhouse gas emissions."

Martin of Mountain View Holsteins has his own personal beliefs about where a dairy farmer's responsibilities to the planet begin and end. But from a business perspective, he feels compelled to adopt climate-smart practices because he expects the industry will eventually require them.

"Climate concerns are coming whether I'd like it or not," he says. "So my thought is, I might as well get started on it while there's funding to do it."


Carolyn Beans wrote this article for Lancaster Farming.


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Oregon's new state budget cuts funding for programs intended to protect residents from extreme weather and make renewable energy more accessible.

Climate justice advocates said it is a major setback after years of progressive climate policies.

Ben Brint, senior climate program director for the Oregon Environmental Council, is disappointed to lose funding for the Community Renewable Energy Grant Program, which supports a variety of projects tailored to communities, including microgrids and solar storage.

"We felt legislators didn't fund climate resilience programs while fires are raging, people's houses are burning down and the state has already experienced record heat waves in June," Brint pointed out. "Legislators don't see we are in an actual climate emergency and chose inaction."

Brint said the grant program aimed to help low-income, rural and communities of color, those most impacted by climate disasters. Lawmakers attributed the cuts to budget shortfalls and uncertainty over federal funding.

Joel Iboa, executive director of the Oregon Just Transition Alliance, said the Community Resilience Hub program, which creates networks as well as physical places to protect people from extreme cold, heat and smoke also lost funding this session. He argued the hubs are effective because communities design them to meet their unique needs.

"Whether it be a place to plug in your phone or a place to go get diapers or get an air conditioner or whatever your community may need," Iboa outlined. "Depending on what's going on."

A heat pump program for rental housing, aimed at making energy-efficient heating and cooling more affordable, was also cut this session.

Brint added he realizes legislators have to make tough decisions about how to fund health care and housing but emphasized climate change is connected to those issues.

"When we're talking about heat pumps or the C-REP program, we're talking about people's health and livelihoods and saving lives in the face of climate fueled disaster," Brint stressed.

Brint added since climate change is not going away, the movement to push for climate resilience will not either.


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