Fire in Human Landscapes

Dear Colleagues,

While trends in fire occurrence vary across the globe, researchers and managers are increasingly identifying the importance of understanding the interactions between landscape fire and human land use. Humans come in into contact with landscape fire in the densely settled and expanding wildland–urban interface (WUI), as well as in less-populated but modified agricultural and pastoral areas. The human impact in fire occurrence in these zones is complicated; there is the potential for greater ignitions, either accidental or deliberate, but also increased suppression, and the opportunity for fuel treatment and other vegetation and landscape planning activities to moderate fire occurrence and severity. Landscape fire close to urban and settled areas poses unique challenges for suppression, due to the combination of structure fires with vegetation fires. Population exposure to landscape fire smoke is also of particular concern in these landscapes, where smoke concentrations from both prescribed and wildfires can be extreme, although often short-lived, and epidemiological understanding of the health impacts of short-term exposure to high concentrations of smoke is limited.

In recent years, significant fires in a number of countries (Australia, the United States of America, Greece, Chile) have impacted human lives, property, and infrastructure in human-modified landscapes. These events have drawn global attention to the interaction of landscape fire with human settlements and have provided novel research opportunities.

This Special Issue encourages the submission of papers that enhance our understanding of the complex interactions of fire and human land use, including issues of landscape planning, risk assessment, fire spread in complex landscapes, cost–benefit analysis of fuel treatment and suppression close to settlements, the unique challenges of burning structures combined with burning vegetation, and the impact of prescribed and wildfire smoke on populated areas. We especially welcome studies focusing on fire in human landscapes from less economically developed countries and areas.

In this webinar we present research from three recent papers providing insights into the drivers and impacts of fire in human landscapes.

Date: 24 February 2022
Time: 9:00am CET | 3:00am EST | 4:00pm CST Asia

Dr. Grant Williamson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.