Wildfire and Drought: Impacts on wildfire planning, behavior, and effects

The relationship between drought and wildfire can appear to be simple, but the drought and wildfire nexus encompasses a profusion of human and environmental impacts. Images of burning forests, neighborhoods, and “smoked out” communities are all now commonplace.

The National Integrated Drought Information System, in partnership with NOAA’s Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC), the California Nevada Applications Program (CNAP, a NOAA Regional Integrated Science
Applications team), the Desert Research Institute (DRI), and the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC), hosted the Integrating Drought Science and Information into Wildfire Management Workshop in Boise, Idaho on 21-22 October 2015.  The 22 participants in the workshop were invited as representatives of a broad spectrum of expertise including prescribed fire, wildland fire management, climatology, smoke and air quality, fuels management, fire behavior, drought, and policy.

In this report, we present the opportunities and challenges the workshop participants identified and the impacts of drought on wildfire. The workshop also provided the opportunity to identify next steps in understanding and addressing drought impacts on wildfire.