A more nuanced approach to understanding wildland fire.

Prescribed fire is an essential element of maintaining ecosystem health and resilience as well as mitigating wildfire risk. However, because most research and management effort has been directed towards wildfire suppression and risk assessment, there is a void in meteorological guidance necessary to expand prescribed fire treatments. Currently most fire prescriptions rely on single weather and fuel moisture parameters for go/no-go decisions on whether prescribed fire ignitions are permissible. However, fire behavior is driven by complex interactions and synergies among weather parameters, vegetation type, ignition techniques and fuel moisture. Furthermore, most fire behavior forecasting tools are focused on the risk associated with deteriorating fire weather and fuel moisture conditions. Here we discuss an approach to create greater opportunities for prescribed fire by understanding how the interactions between atmospheric drying potential, soil moisture and fuel moisture dynamics influence fire behavior. We will discuss how these results can be extended to regional short to mid-term forecasts of both optimal and improving conditions for prescribed fire based on existing remote sensing products.