Science Inventory

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Historic droughts in western states driven by anthropogenic warming have resulted in an unprecedented increase in wildfire frequency and area burned. In the last few decades, fire acres burned in the United States have more than doubled, with concomitant increased risk to human h...

EPA Wildfire Research: Impacts on Air and Water Quality WESTAR-WRAP Spring Business Meeting 2024, Riverside, California Wildland fire smoke impacts millions of people in the United States every year. The EPA’s Office of Research and Development is addressing our increasingl...

This is a public presentation on the potential effects of nutrients in smoke on downwind cyanobacteria blooms. Wildfire activity is increasing in the continental U.S. and can be linked to climate change effects, including rising temperatures and more frequent drought conditions. ...

Fires emit sufficient sulfur to affect local and regional air quality and climate. This study analyzes SO2 emission factors and variability in smoke plumes from US wildfires and agricultural fires, as well as their relationship to sulfate and hydroxymethanesulfonate (HMS) fo...

Aquatic ecosystem responses to wildfire can vary widely depending on the characteristics of fire and the spatial context of where a fire takes place. Assessment of wildfire risk to aquatic ecosystems requires an understanding of sources of such variability (see Ebersole et al. th...

Wildfire risk to aquatic ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest is a growing concern, but this risk is not equally distributed across the region. Furthermore, risks vary among valued endpoints and may be perceived differently by drinking water providers, forest managers, and fish bi...

Wildfire frequency and intensity are expected to increase in many forested regions. Aquatic biota face multiple wildfire-induced changes in physical, chemical, and biological conditions, and these can vary with burn severity, post-fire weather, geomorphic events, stream features,...

This is a presentation on the effects of wildfire on air and water quality for the ACE webinar series

Over the past century, water temperatures of many headwater streams in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) have steadily risen, shrinking endangered salmonid habitats. Warming of stream reaches in the PNW can further accelerate due to wildfires burning forest stands that provide stream s...

Overview of published EPA wildfire research related to water quality impacts, modeling support for land management and the potential for smoke to serve as a disease vector.  

Wildfires can have complex effects on aquatic ecosystems that vary widely depending on the characteristics of the fire and the ecological context of the watershed, making predictions of fire effects on species of social and conservation interest, like salmonid fishes (Oncorhynchu...

Wildfire is a characteristic disturbance process affecting ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest (PNW). However, 150 years of intensive management and resource extraction across diverse PNW ecosystems complicates our understanding of how fire interacts with various ecological proce...

Wildland fires in the United States (U.S.) have increased in frequency and area burned since the mid-1980s. This trend is most pronounced in the western United States, and to a lesser extent in the nation’s southeastern region. Historic fire suppression policies have result...

Droughts and biological disturbance agents (BDAs, i.e., pests and pathogens) in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the United States are causing tree mortality but the disturbance-climate relationships are not well understood (Agne et al., 2018).  In recent decades, significant ...

This EPA report is based on the 2023 Post-fire Research and Monitoring Symposium that was organized by the Oregon Governor’s Post-fire Science Team and was held February 7-9, 2023 at Oregon State University. The Symposium aimed to increase awareness among those conducting post-fi...

Wildfire activity is increasing and can be linked to climate change effects, including rising global temperatures and more frequent drought conditions. Wildfire emissions impact human health and sensitive ecosystems, particularly in the western United States where large fire freq...

Wildfire activity in western US forests has increased over the last two decades, increasing solid and nutrient loadings to streams, and in some cases threatening drinking water supplies. Here, we demonstrate that a linked LANDIS-VELMA modeling approach can simulate wildland fire ...

Multiple drought-related wildfires burned forests across the western United States (U.S.) during the 2020 fall season. Wildfires can significantly affect hydrologic processes such as streamflow and nutrient transport to stream, however, the natural variability of its behavior com...

Mountain lakes are important resources for recreation, drinking water, and aquatic habitat but these lakes are particularly vulnerable to changing climate, air pollution, wildfire, harmful algal blooms, and human development. We investigated the condition of and threats to mounta...

Droughts in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the United States are causing tree mortality and increasing tree die off from wildfire and biological disturbance agents (BDAs, i.e., pests and pathogens) but the disturbance-climate relationships are not well understood (Agne et al. 201...

This presentation will provide an overview of recent research on causal modeling concepts with Bayesian networks at a Pacific Ecological Systems Division seminar series for wildfires. mistry. He is currently a Research Toxicologist in EPA’s Office of Research and Development in G...

Wildfire activity in western US forests has increased over the last two decades, resulting in increased solids and nutrient loadings to streams, and in some cases threatening drinking water supplies. These increases are attributed to rainfall events and the distribution of water ...

Forest biological disturbance agents (BDAs) are insects, pathogens, and parasitic plants that cause tree decline and mortality. Traditionally, BDAs were thought to increase the likelihood and severity of fire by adversely affecting forest health. However, there are a wide range o...

Droughts in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) of the United States are causing tree mortality and increasing tree die off from wildfire and biological disturbance agents (BDAs, i.e., pests and pathogens) but the disturbance-climate relationships are not well understood (Agne et al. 201...

The US Environmental Protection Agency is leading a coordinated national effort to protect public health and the environment in the face of increasing likelihood of wildfire ignitions, number of large wildfires (> 100,000 acres), and acres burned. In the Smoke-Ready Toolbox, t...