Understanding wildfires
Fast-moving wildfires in Los Angeles County have burned thousands of homes and killed at least 24 people amid fierce winds and dry conditions. Stanford-led research shows how wildfire risks are changing, illuminates connections to climate and health, and offers promising solutions.
Multiple wildfires around Los Angeles have burned thousands of homes and killed at least 24 people amid fierce winds and dry conditions.
Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability scholars and collaborators are unraveling the factors that contribute to wildfire risk, understanding their impacts, and developing solutions.
Explore wildfire research and insights
-
Debbie Sivas discusses California's fire crisis and examines how climate change and urban development are making residents more susceptible to the dangers of fires.
-
In light of the Los Angeles-area wildfires, Stanford experts spanning the fields of environmental science, medicine, and public health discuss what we know about wildfires’ health impacts, what remains a mystery, and how communities can better protect themselves from the increasingly common threat.
-
Stanford’s campus has become a living lab for testing innovative fire management techniques, from research on wildfire exposure risks to a cross-campus competition for students to develop wildfire-related solutions.
-
The Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment recently hosted a first-of-its-kind “boot camp” in which congressional staffers got a crash course from experts in climate, forestry, fire science, utilities, insurance, and other wildfire-related topics.
-
Researchers have developed a sprayable gel that creates a shield to protect buildings from wildfire damage. It lasts longer and is more effective than existing commercial options.
-
Supported by a Sustainability Accelerator grant, a multidisciplinary team is exploring policy options such as prescribed burning with the goal of reducing wildfire risk in California.
-
Severe wildfires can drive chemical changes in soil that affect ecosystem recovery and risks to human health. A new study finds broader surveillance and modeling of these changes could inform strategies for protecting lives, property, and natural resources, and managing wildlife.
-
A new white paper from Stanford researchers analyzes Western investor-owned utilities’ wildfire mitigation plans, highlighting those that are leading the way and identifying steps utilities with exposure to wildfire risk should be taking.
-
New research from Stanford University shows wildfires can transform a natural element in soils into a cancer-causing and readily airborne metal known as chromium 6.
-
High-intensity, often catastrophic, wildfires have become increasingly frequent across the Western U.S. Researchers quantified the value of managed low-intensity burning to dramatically reduce the risk of such fires for years at a time.
-
Two new reports could help decision-makers allocate resources to mitigate the health impacts of wildfire in public TK-12 schools in California.
-
Stanford researchers examined how often Californians visit emergency departments and found that people tend to avoid the hospital on the smokiest days.
-
Stanford research reveals the rapidly growing influence of wildfire smoke on air quality trends across most of the United States. Wildfire smoke in recent years has slowed or reversed progress toward cleaner air in 35 states, erasing a quarter of gains made since 2000.
-
Stanford research finds low-income communities in California face a “wildfire safety deficit” as a result of longstanding policies about who should pay to move power lines underground.
-
Understanding the physics of wind currents above forest canopies may help wildfire managers forecast the flight paths of dangerous burning embers, or firebrands, which are responsible for most home destruction during wildfires.
-
Climate change and decades of fire suppression have fueled increasingly destructive wildfires across the western U.S. and Canada. Stanford scholars and wildfire experts outline how a path forward requires responsive management, risk reduction, and Indigenous stewardship.
-
Pollution from wildfires is linked to lower test scores and possibly lower future earnings for kids growing up with more smoke days at school, a new study finds. Impacts of smoke exposure on earnings are disproportionately borne by economically disadvantaged communities of color.
-
Controlled burning has proven effective at reducing wildfire risks, but a lack of insurance has dissuaded private landowners from implementing the practice. Policy expert Michael Wara discusses soon-to-be-enacted legislation that would pay for fire damages to neighboring properties in California.
-
Stanford researchers have developed an AI model for predicting dangerous particle pollution to help track the American West’s rapidly worsening wildfire smoke. The detailed results show millions of Americans are routinely exposed to pollution at levels rarely seen just a decade ago.
-
Rapidly growing communities in the American West’s forests and shrublands are nestled in zones where local soil and plant traits amplify the effect of climate change on wildfire hazards and lead to bigger burns.
Media Contacts
Explore More
-
Artificial intelligence provides new evidence that rapid decarbonization will not prevent warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius. The hottest years of this century are likely to shatter recent records.
-
Research suggests image search engines reinforce climate preconceptions. Better image search is key to inspiring climate action.
-
Minghao Qiu, a postdoctoral scholar in Earth system science and a Planetary Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, discusses his work modeling how climate change might influence air pollution levels – and how increased air pollution from wildfires, dust, and the burning of fossil fuels might affect people’s health.
