Identification

Title

Effect of recent prescribed burning and land management on wildfire burn severity and smoke emissions in the Western United States

Abstract

Wildfires in the western US increasingly threaten infrastructure, air quality, and public health. Prescribed (“Rx”) fire is often proposed to mitigate future wildfires, but treatments remain limited, and few studies quantify their effectiveness on recent major wildfires. We investigate the effects of Rx fire treatments on subsequent burn severity across western US ecoregions and particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) emissions in California. Using high‐resolution (30‐m) satellite imagery, land management records, and fire emissions data, we employ a quasi‐experimental design to compare Rx fire‐treated areas with adjacent untreated areas to estimate the impacts of recent Rx fires (Fall 2018–Spring 2020) on the extreme 2020 wildfire season. We find that within 2020 wildfire burn areas where Rx fires were used prior to 2020, burn severity changed by −16% ( p  < 0.001) and smoke PM 2.5 emissions changed by −101 kg per acre ( p  < 0.1). Rx fires in the wildland‐urban interface (“WUI”) were less effective in reducing burn severity and smoke PM 2.5 emissions than those outside the WUI. Overall, Rx fires led to a net reduction of −14% in PM 2.5 emissions, including those from the Rx fires themselves. The proposed policy of treating one million acres annually in California could reduce smoke emissions by 655,000 tons over the next 5 years, equivalent to 52% of the emissions from 2020 wildfires. Our analysis provides comprehensive estimates of the net benefits of Rx fire on subsequent burn severity and smoke PM 2.5 emissions in the western US, an empirical basis for evaluating proposed Rx fire expansions, and valuable constraints for future modeling.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7tx3ktt

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2025-06-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact