Living on a flammable planet: interdisciplinary, cross-scalar and varied cultural lessons, prospects and challenges

Anthropogenic warming is a key climate indicator of rising urban fire activity in China

China, one of the most populous countries in the world, has suffered the highest number of natural disaster-related deaths from fire. On local scales, the main causes of urban fires are anthropogenic in nature. Yet, on regional to national scales, little is known about the indicators of large-scale co-varying urban fire activity in China. Here, we present the China Fire History Atlas (CFHA), which is based on 19 947 documentary records and represents fires in urban areas of China over the twentieth century (1901-1994). We found that temperature variability is a key indicator of urban fire activity in China, with warmer temperatures being correlated with more urban fires, and that this fire-temperature relationship is seasonally and regionally explicit. In the early twentieth century, however, the fire-temperature relationship was overruled by war-related fires in large urban areas. We further used the fire-temperature relationship and multiple emissions scenarios to project fire activity across China into the twenty-first century. Our projections show a distinct increase in future urban fire activity and fire-related economic loss. Our findings provide insights into fire-climate relationships in China for densely-populated areas and on policy-relevant time scales and they contribute spatial coverage to efforts to improve global fire models.

Bridging scales for landscape-level wildfire adaptation: A case study of the Kittitas Fire Adapted Communities Coalition

Federal-level strategies or guidance for addressing wildfire risk encourage adaptation activities that span progressively larger scales, often focusing on landscape-level action that necessitates coordination between decision-makers and socially diverse communities. Collaborative organizations are increasingly explored as one approach for coordinating local efforts that address wildfire risk and adaptation, offering a platform for scaling and adjusting federal and state guidance that align with the needs of local landscapes. We conducted semi-structured interviews with members and supporters of the Kittitas Fire Adapted Communities Coalition (KFACC) and later facilitated two workshops at the behest of the organization. The goal of our interviews and workshops were to better understand how organizations such as KFACC emerge, function, and evolve in complex social and ecological landscapes, with a focus on their role in addressing landscape-level wildfire adaptation. We use an existing theoretical analogy of fire adaptation that crosses institutional and physical scales to help conceive of lessons from in-depth analysis of KFACC functioning. We found that KFACC originated from a need to establish a shared local mission for fire adaptation and a recognition that federal and state initiatives surrounding wildfire management needed further contextualization to be effective among diverse local social conditions. Later organizational foci included identifying key audiences for targeted adaptation efforts, including the identification of key messages and communities where specific mitigation actions might be needed. KFACC members were effective in strategically advocating for fire adaptation resources and policies at broader scales that might increase adaptation within Kittitas County, including caveats to local planning efforts designed for wildfire risk reduction. Likewise, the organization had begun to focus on tailoring mitigation efforts to different communities in the landscape as an effective means of catalyzing sustained, realistic fire adaptation actions. We suggest that organizations like KFACC are well-positioned to act as "board hoppers" who can integrate community-based needs into wildfire management, but caution that the functioning and 'niche' of such organizations may require strategic development or regular reflection on organizational goals.

The contribution of Indigenous stewardship to an historical mixed-severity fire regime in British Columbia, Canada

Indigenous land stewardship and mixed-severity fire regimes both promote landscape heterogeneity, and the relationship between them is an emerging area of research. In our study, we reconstructed the historical fire regime of Ne Sextsine, a 5900-ha dry, Douglas fir-dominated forest in the traditional territory of the T'exelc (Williams Lake First Nation) in British Columbia, Canada. Between 1550 and 1982 CE, we found median fire intervals of 18 years at the plot level and 4 years at the study-site level. Ne Sextsine was characterized by an historical mixed-severity fire regime, dominated by frequent, low-severity fires as indicated by fire scars, with infrequent, mixed-severity fires indicated by cohorts. Differentiating low- from mixed-severity plots over time was key to understanding the drivers of the fire regime at Ne Sextsine. Low-severity plots were coincident with areas of highest use by the T'exelc, including winter village sites, summer fishing camps, and travel corridors. The high fire frequency in low-severity plots ceased in the 1870s, following the smallpox epidemic, the forced relocation of Indigenous peoples into small reserves, and the prohibition of Indigenous burning. In contrast, the mixed-severity plots were coincident with areas where forest resources, such as deer or certain berry species, were important. The high fire frequency in the mixed-severity plots continued until the 1920s when industrial-scale grazing and logging began, facilitated by the establishment of a nearby railway. T'exelc oral histories and archeological evidence at Ne Sextsine speak to varied land stewardship, reflected in the spatiotemporal complexity of low- and mixed-severity fire plots. Across Ne Sextsine, 63% of cohorts established and persisted in the absence of fire after colonial impacts beginning in the 1860s, resulting in a dense, homogeneous landscape that no longer supports T'exelc values and is more likely to burn at uncharacteristic high severities. This nuanced understanding of the Indigenous contribution to a mixed-severity fire regime is critical for advancing proactive fire mitigation that is ecoculturally relevant and guided by Indigenous expertise.

Reimagine fire science for the anthropocene

Fire is an integral component of ecosystems globally and a tool that humans have harnessed for millennia. Altered fire regimes are a fundamental cause and consequence of global change, impacting people and the biophysical systems on which they depend. As part of the newly emerging Anthropocene, marked by human-caused climate change and radical changes to ecosystems, fire danger is increasing, and fires are having increasingly devastating impacts on human health, infrastructure, and ecosystem services. Increasing fire danger is a vexing problem that requires deep transdisciplinary, trans-sector, and inclusive partnerships to address. Here, we outline barriers and opportunities in the next generation of fire science and provide guidance for investment in future research. We synthesize insights needed to better address the long-standing challenges of innovation across disciplines to (i) promote coordinated research efforts; (ii) embrace different ways of knowing and knowledge generation; (iii) promote exploration of fundamental science; (iv) capitalize on the "firehose" of data for societal benefit; and (v) integrate human and natural systems into models across multiple scales. Fire science is thus at a critical transitional moment. We need to shift from observation and modeled representations of varying components of climate, people, vegetation, and fire to more integrative and predictive approaches that support pathways toward mitigating and adapting to our increasingly flammable world, including the utilization of fire for human safety and benefit. Only through overcoming institutional silos and accessing knowledge across diverse communities can we effectively undertake research that improves outcomes in our more fiery future.

Transforming fire governance in British Columbia, Canada: an emerging vision for coexisting with fire

The dominant command and control fire governance paradigm is proven ineffective at coping with modern wildfire challenges. In response, jurisdictions globally are calling for transformative change that will facilitate coexisting with future fires. Enacting transformative change requires attention to historical governance attributes that may enable or constrain transformation, including diverse actors, objectives, worldviews of fire, decision-making processes and power, legislation, and drivers of change. To identify potential pathways for transformative change, we systematically examined the history of fire governance attributes in British Columbia (BC), Canada (until 2020), a region that has experienced seven catastrophic fire seasons in the twenty-first century. By reviewing 157 provincial historical documents and interviewing 19 fire experts, we delineated five distinct governance eras that demonstrated the central role of government actors with decision-making power shaping fire governance through time, superseding First Nations fire governance starting in the 1870s. The emerging vision for transformation proposed by interviewees focuses on the need for increased decision-making power for community actors, yet legacies of entrenched government power and organizational silos between fire and forestry continue to constrain transformation. Although progress to overcome constraints has been made, we argue that enabling transformative change in fire governance in BC will require intervention by the provincial government to leverage modern drivers of change, including recent catastrophic fire seasons and reconciliation with First Nations.

A Preliminary Global Automatic Burned-Area Algorithm at Medium Resolution in Google Earth Engine

A preliminary version of a global automatic burned-area (BA) algorithm at medium spatial resolution was developed in Google Earth Engine (GEE), based on Landsat or Sentinel-2 reflectance images. The algorithm involves two main steps: initial burned candidates are identified by analyzing spectral changes around MODIS hotspots, and those candidates are then used to estimate the burn probability for each scene. The burning dates are identified by analyzing the temporal evolution of burn probabilities. The algorithm was processed, and its quality assessed globally using reference data from 2019 derived from Sentinel-2 data at 10 m, which involved 369 pairs of consecutive images in total located in 50 20 × 20 km2 areas selected by stratified random sampling. Commissions were around 10% with both satellites, although omissions ranged between 27 (Sentinel-2) and 35% (Landsat), depending on the selected resolution and dataset, with highest omissions being in croplands and forests; for their part, BA from Sentinel-2 data at 20 m were the most accurate and fastest to process. In addition, three 5 × 5 degree regions were randomly selected from the biomes where most fires occur, and BA were detected from Sentinel-2 images at 20 m. Comparison with global products at coarse resolution FireCCI51 and MCD64A1 would seem to show to a reliable extent that the algorithm is procuring spatially and temporally coherent results, improving detection of smaller fires as a consequence of higher-spatial-resolution data. The proposed automatic algorithm has shown the potential to map BA globally using medium-spatial-resolution data (Sentinel-2 and Landsat) from 2000 onwards, when MODIS satellites were launched.

African burned area and fire carbon emissions are strongly impacted by small fires undetected by coarse resolution satellite data

Fires burn an area comparable to Europe each year, emitting greenhouse gases and aerosols. We compared burned area (BA) based on 20-m resolution images with a BA derived from 500-m data. It represents an 80% increase in BA in sub-Saharan Africa, responsible for about 70% of global BA. This difference is predominately (87%) attributed to small fires (<100 ha), which account for 41% of total BA but only for 5% in coarse-resolution products. We found that African fires were responsible for emissions of 1.44 PgC, 31–101% higher than previous estimates and representing 14% of global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel burning. We conclude that small fires are critically important in characterizing the most important disturbance agent on a global scale.

Fires are a major contributor to atmospheric budgets of greenhouse gases and aerosols, affect soils and vegetation properties, and are a key driver of land use change. Since the 1990s, global burned area (BA) estimates based on satellite observations have provided critical insights into patterns and trends of fire occurrence. However, these global BA products are based on coarse spatial-resolution sensors, which are unsuitable for detecting small fires that burn only a fraction of a satellite pixel. We estimated the relevance of those small fires by comparing a BA product generated from Sentinel-2 MSI (Multispectral Instrument) images (20-m spatial resolution) with a widely used global BA product based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images (500 m) focusing on sub-Saharan Africa. For the year 2016, we detected 80% more BA with Sentinel-2 images than with the MODIS product. This difference was predominately related to small fires: we observed that 2.02 Mkm² (out of a total of 4.89 Mkm²) was burned by fires smaller than 100 ha, whereas the MODIS product only detected 0.13 million km² BA in that fire-size class. This increase in BA subsequently resulted in increased estimates of fire emissions; we computed 31 to 101% more fire carbon emissions than current estimates based on MODIS products. We conclude that small fires are a critical driver of BA in sub-Saharan Africa and that including those small fires in emission estimates raises the contribution of biomass burning to global burdens of (greenhouse) gases and aerosols.

Human and climate drivers of global biomass burning variability

Biomass burning is one of the most critical factors impacting vegetation and atmospheric trends, with important societal implications, particularly when extreme weather conditions occur. Trends and factors of burned area (BA) have been analysed at regional and global scales, but little effort has been dedicated to study the interannual variability. This paper aimed to better understand factors explaining this variation, under the assumption that the more human control of fires the more frequently they occur, as burnings will be less dependent of weather cycles. Interannual variability of BA was estimated from the coefficient of variation of the annual BA (BA_CV) estimated from satellite data at 250 m, covering the period from 2001 to 2018. These data and the explanatory variables were resampled at 0.25-degree resolution for global analysis. Relations between this variable and explanatory factors, including human and climate drivers, were estimated using Random Forest (RF) and generalized additive models (GAM). BA_CV was negatively related to BA_Mean, implying that areas with higher average BA have lower variability as well. Interannual BA variability decreased when maximum temperature (TMAX) and actual and potential evapotranspiration (AET, PET) increased, cropland and livestock density increased and the human development index (HDI) values decreased. GAM models indicated interesting links with AET, PET and precipitation, with negative relation with BA_CV for the lower ranges and positive for the higher ones, the former indicating fuel limitations of fire activity, and the latter climate constrains. For the global RF model, TMAX, AET and HDI were the main drivers of interannual variability. As originally hypothesised, BA_CV was more dependent on human factors (HDI) in those areas with medium to large BA occurrence, particularly in tropical Africa and Central Asia, while climatic factors were more important in boreal regions, but also in the tropical regions of Australia and South America.

Mobilizing the past to shape a better Anthropocene

As our planet emerges into a new epoch in which humans dominate the Earth system, it is imperative that societies initiate a new phase of responsible environmental stewardship. Here we argue that information from the past has a valuable role to play in enhancing the sustainability and resilience of our societies. We highlight the ways that past data can be mobilized for a variety of efforts, from supporting conservation to increasing agricultural sustainability and food security. At a practical level, solutions from the past often do not require fossil fuels, can be locally run and managed, and have been tested over the long term. Past failures reveal non-viable solutions and expose vulnerabilities. To more effectively leverage increasing knowledge about the past, we advocate greater cross-disciplinary collaboration, systematic engagement with stakeholders and policymakers, and approaches that bring together the best of the past with the cutting-edge technologies and solutions of tomorrow.

Landsat and Sentinel-2 Based Burned Area Mapping Tools in Google Earth Engine

Four burned area tools were implemented in Google Earth Engine (GEE), to obtain regular processes related to burned area (BA) mapping, using medium spatial resolution sensors (Landsat and Sentinel-2). The four tools are (i) the BA Cartography tool for supervised burned area over the user-selected extent and period, (ii) two tools implementing a BA stratified random sampling to select the scenes and dates for validation, and (iii) the BA Reference Perimeter tool to obtain highly accurate BA maps that focus on validating coarser BA products. Burned Area Mapping Tools (BAMTs) go beyond the previously implemented Burned Area Mapping Software (BAMS) because of GEE parallel processing capabilities and preloaded geospatial datasets. BAMT also allows temporal image composites to be exploited in order to obtain BA maps over a larger extent and longer temporal periods. The tools consist of four scripts executable from the GEE Code Editor. The tools’ performance was discussed in two case studies: in the 2019/2020 fire season in Southeast Australia, where the BA cartography detected more than 50,000 km2, using Landsat data with commission and omission errors below 12% when compared to Sentinel-2 imagery; and in the 2018 summer wildfires in Canada, where it was found that around 16,000 km2 had burned.

Native American fire management at an ancient wildland-urban interface in the Southwest United States

The intersection of expanding human development and wildland landscapes-the "wildland-urban interface" or WUI-is one of the most vexing contexts for fire management because it involves complex interacting systems of people and nature. Here, we document the dynamism and stability of an ancient WUI that was apparently sustainable for more than 500 y. We combine ethnography, archaeology, paleoecology, and ecological modeling to infer intensive wood and fire use by Native American ancestors of Jemez Pueblo and the consequences on fire size, fire-climate relationships, and fire intensity. Initial settlement of northern New Mexico by Jemez farmers increased fire activity within an already dynamic landscape that experienced frequent fires. Wood harvesting for domestic fuel and architectural uses and abundant, small, patchy fires created a landscape that burned often but only rarely burned extensively. Depopulation of the forested landscape due to Spanish colonial impacts resulted in a rebound of fuels accompanied by the return of widely spreading, frequent surface fires. The sequence of more than 500 y of perennial small fires and wood collecting followed by frequent "free-range" wildland surface fires made the landscape resistant to extreme fire behavior, even when climate was conducive and surface fires were large. The ancient Jemez WUI offers an alternative model for fire management in modern WUI in the western United States, and possibly other settings where local management of woody fuels through use (domestic wood collecting) coupled with small prescribed fires may make these communities both self-reliant and more resilient to wildfire hazards.

The legacy of colonial fire management policies on traditional livelihoods and ecological sustainability in savannas: Impacts, consequences, new directions

Land occupation and management systems have defined fire regimes and landscapes for millennia. The savanna biome is responsible for 86% of all fire events, contributes to 10% of the total carbon emissions annually and is home to 10% of the human population. European colonization has been associated with the implementation of fire suppression policies in many tropical savanna regions, markedly disrupting traditional fire management practices and transforming ecosystems. In this paper we assess savanna burning approaches from pre-colonial to contemporary eras in three regions: northern Australia, southern Africa and Brazil. In these regions, fire suppression policies have led to (i) conflicts between government authorities and local communities; (ii) frequent late dry season wildfires and/or (iii) woody encroachment. Such consequences are facilitating changes to fire management policies, including recognition and incorporation of traditional ecological knowledge in contemporary community-based adaptive savanna fire management. Such programs include implementation of prescribed early dry season fires and, in some regions, generating income opportunities for rural and traditional communities through the reduction of late dry season wildfires and associated greenhouse gas emissions. We present a brief history of fire management policies in these three important savanna regions, and identify ongoing challenges for implementation of culturally and ecologically sustainable fire management policies.

Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium

Fire use has played an important role in human evolution and subsequent dispersals across the globe, yet the relative importance of human activity and climate on fire regimes is controversial. This is particularly true for historical fire regimes of the Americas, where indigenous groups used fire for myriad reasons but paleofire records indicate strong climate-fire relationships. In North American grasslands, decadal-scale wet periods facilitated widespread fire activity because of the abundance of fuel promoted by pluvial episodes. In these settings, human impacts on fire regimes are assumed to be independent of climate, thereby diminishing the strength of climate-fire relationships. We used an offsite geoarchaeological approach to link terrestrial records of prairie fire activity with spatially related archaeological features (driveline complexes) used for intensive, communal bison hunting in north-central Montana. Radiocarbon-dated charcoal layers from alluvial and colluvial deposits associated with driveline complexes indicate that peak fire activity over the past millennium occurred coincident with the use of these features (ca. 1100-1650 CE). However, comparison of dated fire deposits with Palmer Drought Severity Index reconstructions reveal strong climate-fire linkages. More than half of all charcoal layers coincide with modest pluvial episodes, suggesting that fire use by indigenous hunters enhanced the effects of climate variability on prairie fire regimes. These results indicate that relatively small, mobile human populations can impact natural fire regimes, even in pyrogeographic settings in which climate exerts strong, top-down controls on fuels.

An Integrative Review of Empirical Research on Perceptions and Behaviors Related to Prescribed Burning and Wildfire in the United States

Social science research from a variety of disciplines has generated a collective understanding of how individuals prepare for, and respond to, the risks associated with prescribed burning and wildfire. We provide a systematic compilation, review, and quantification of dominant trends in this literature by collecting all empirical research conducted within the U.S. that has addressed perceptions and behaviors surrounding various aspects of prescribed burning and wildfire. We reviewed and quantified this literature using four thematic categories covering: (1) the theory and methods that have been used in previous research; (2) the psychosocial aspects of prescribed burning and wildfire that have been studied; (3) the biophysical characteristics of the fires which have been studied; and (4) the types of fire and management approaches that have been examined. Our integrative review builds on previous literature reviews on the subject by offering new insight on the dominant trends, underutilized approaches, and under-studied topics within each thematic category. For example, we found that a select set of theories (e.g., Protection Motivation Theory, Attribution Theory, etc.) and approaches (e.g., mixed-methods) have only been used sparingly in previous research, even though these theories and approaches can produce insightful results that can readily be implemented by fire-management professionals and decision makers. By identifying trends and gaps in the literature across the thematic categories, we were able to answer four questions that address how future research can make the greatest contribution to our understanding of perceptions and behaviors related to prescribed burning and wildfire.

The interaction of fire and mankind: Introduction

Fire has been an important part of the Earth system for over 350 Myr. Humans evolved in this fiery world and are the only animals to have used and controlled fire. The interaction of mankind with fire is a complex one, with both positive and negative aspects. Humans have long used fire for heating, cooking, landscape management and agriculture, as well as for pyrotechnologies and in industrial processes over more recent centuries. Many landscapes need fire but population expansion into wildland areas creates a tension between different interest groups. Extinguishing wildfires may not always be the correct solution. A combination of factors, including the problem of invasive plants, landscape change, climate change, population growth, human health, economic, social and cultural attitudes that may be transnational make a re-evaluation of fire and mankind necessary. The Royal Society meeting on Fire and mankind was held to address these issues and the results of these deliberations are published in this volume.This article is part of the themed issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'.

The role of fire in UK peatland and moorland management: the need for informed, unbiased debate

Fire has been used for centuries to generate and manage some of the UK's cultural landscapes. Despite its complex role in the ecology of UK peatlands and moorlands, there has been a trend of simplifying the narrative around burning to present it as an only ecologically damaging practice. That fire modifies peatland characteristics at a range of scales is clearly understood. Whether these changes are perceived as positive or negative depends upon how trade-offs are made between ecosystem services and the spatial and temporal scales of concern. Here we explore the complex interactions and trade-offs in peatland fire management, evaluating the benefits and costs of managed fire as they are currently understood. We highlight the need for (i) distinguishing between the impacts of fires occurring with differing severity and frequency, and (ii) improved characterization of ecosystem health that incorporates the response and recovery of peatlands to fire. We also explore how recent research has been contextualized within both scientific publications and the wider media and how this can influence non-specialist perceptions. We emphasize the need for an informed, unbiased debate on fire as an ecological management tool that is separated from other aspects of moorland management and from political and economic opinions.

This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.

The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process

Numbers of animal species react to the natural phenomenon of fire, but only humans have learnt to control it and to make it at will. Natural fires caused overwhelmingly by lightning are highly evident on many landscapes. Birds such as hawks, and some other predators, are alert to opportunities to catch animals including invertebrates disturbed by such fires and similar benefits are likely to underlie the first human involvements with fires. Early hominins would undoubtedly have been aware of such fires, as are savanna chimpanzees in the present. Rather than as an event, the discovery of fire use may be seen as a set of processes happening over the long term. Eventually, fire became embedded in human behaviour, so that it is involved in almost all advanced technologies. Fire has also influenced human biology, assisting in providing the high-quality diet which has fuelled the increase in brain size through the Pleistocene. Direct evidence of early fire in archaeology remains rare, but from 1.5 Ma onward surprising numbers of sites preserve some evidence of burnt material. By the Middle Pleistocene, recognizable hearths demonstrate a social and economic focus on many sites. The evidence of archaeological sites has to be evaluated against postulates of biological models such as the ‘cooking hypothesis' or the ‘social brain’, and questions of social cooperation and the origins of language. Although much remains to be worked out, it is plain that fire control has had a major impact in the course of human evolution.

This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.

Baptism by fire: the pivotal role of ancient conflagrations in evolution of the Earth's flora

Fire became a defining feature of the Earth's processes as soon as land plants evolved 420 million years ago and has played a major role in shaping the composition and physiognomy of many ecosystems ever since. However, there remains a general lack of appreciation of the place of fire in the origin, evolution, ecology and conservation of the Earth's biodiversity. We review the literature on the presence of fire throughout the Earth's history following the evolution of land plants and examine the evidence for the origin and evolution of adaptive functional traits, biomes and major plant groups in relation to fire. We show that: (1) fire activities have fluctuated throughout geological time due to variations in climate, and more importantly in atmospheric oxygen, as these affected fuel levels and flammability; (2) fire promoted the early evolution and spread of major terrestrial plant groups; (3) fire has shaped the floristics, structure and function of major global biomes; and (4) fire has initiated and maintained the evolution of a wide array of fire-adapted functional traits since the evolution of land plants. We conclude that fire has been a fundamental agent of natural selection on terrestrial plants throughout the history of life on the Earth's land surface. We suggest that a paradigm shift is required to reassess ecological and evolutionary theories that exclude a role for fire, and also there is a need to review fire-suppression policies on ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation in global fire-prone regions.

Wildfire policy and management in England: an evolving response from Fire and Rescue Services, forestry and cross-sector groups

Severe wildfires are an intermittent problem in England. The paper presents the first analysis of wildfire policy, showing its halting evolution over two decades. First efforts to coordinate wildfire management came from local fire operation groups, where stakeholders such as fire services, land owners and amenity groups shared knowledge and equipment to tackle the problem. A variety of structures and informal management solutions emerged in response to local needs. Knowledge of wildfire accumulated within regional and national wildfire forums and academic networks. Only later did the need for central emergency planning and the response to climate change produce a national policy response. Fire statistics have allowed wildfires to be spatially evidenced on a national scale only since 2009. National awareness of wildfire was spurred by the 2011 fire season, and the high-impact Swinley Forest fire, which threatened critical infrastructure and communities within 50 miles of London. Severe wildfire was included in the National Risk Register for the first time in 2013. Cross-sector approaches to wildfire proved difficult as government responsibility is fragmented along the hazard chain. Stakeholders such as the Forestry Commission pioneered good practice in adaptive land management to build fire resilience into UK forests. The grass-roots evolution of participatory solutions has also been a key enabling process. A coordinated policy is now needed to identify best practice and to promote understanding of the role of fire in the ecosystem.This article is part of a themed issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'.