Mitigating increasing wildfire risk through fuel break innovations.

ABSTRACT: A warming climate and expanding wildland urban interface are escalating wildfire risk to human life and property in the boreal forests of western North America. To address this heightened risk, fuel breaks, which reduce fuels and enhance tactical use by firefighters, are increasingly being installed around northern communities. However, the current design and implementation of fuel breaks have social and ecological trade-offs that undermine wider acceptance and adoption. Creative fuel break designs could address these trade-offs by supporting complementary activities with ecological and socio-economic values-termed co-benefits-while maintaining tactical use for wildfire operations. Here, we report results from public listening sessions that recorded desired co-benefits from boreal resident

SUBMITTER: Link NT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12803937 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature