A planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will organize and convene a workshop on the future climate and social-ecological drivers and consequences of wildfire in the western region of the United States and Canada. Wildfires and their impacts on human health, property, and systems are increasing precipitously in much of the region, with cumulative, compounding and cascading effects that multiply their costs to society. The workshop will consider the present, "immediate future” (next decade), and "near-term future" (mid-century) as critical timescales for addressing the human dimensions of wildfires. In particular, the workshop will focus on understanding and responding to a trajectory of increasing fire size, severity, frequency, and synchronicity in western North America that has been underway since the 1970s.

Key questions include:

(1) To what extent will current fire science, fire management, and public understanding be able to address fire conditions in the future? Are landowners, management organizations, and communities adequately preparing for increasing wildfire and considering climate adaptation strategies that address non-stationary and no-analog conditions?

(2) What are the full costs of current wildfires from the pre-fire treatments to fire-fighting efforts and ecological, health, and infrastructure damages during fire to the long-term costs related to social-economic recovery and management response? How will those costs likely change in the future?

(3) What are the consequences of future wildfires on rural, overburdened, and marginalized communities that may already have low levels of healthcare, higher co-morbidities, and few available resources?

(4) What are critical information gaps within the social, health, and ecological sciences that need to be addressed to improve future wildfire response planning (i.e., fire management system, research needs, data needs, modeling, and technological needs)?

(5) What is the role for behavioral and decision sciences, applied to fire management organizations and their approaches, communities and individuals in fire-prone areas, individual homeowner/resident decisions, and public communication of wildfire risk and response?

The public workshop will focus on policy/practice considerations, research/data needs, and community engagement strategies. It will also seek to identify gaps in knowledge, the value of filling those gaps, strategies for doing so, and what disciplines must work together.
A proceedings of the workshop describing the presentations and discussions will be produced by a designated rapporteur in accordance with institutional guidelines.

This workshop is joint with the Royal Society of Canada whose aim is to connect and integrate expertise on wildfires across the international North American West.