This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: In a new study in Environmental Research: Ecology, I analyzed how fires were able to burn into communities and how fire-resistant land uses could be combined with fuel treatments to reduce fires burning into communities. If government support could be quickly redirected to community protection, communities could have time to fix much of this problem in roughly a decade.
My study found that some land uses (e.g., grasslands, chaparral, wildland vegetation) are quite vulnerable to wildfires, while others (e.g., cultivated crops, freeways, lakes, rivers, deserts) are fire-resistant. Based on fires from 2000–2021, 37 land uses define five land-use safeness categories from Safest to Very Dangerous. Safest land uses burned once every 1,400 years or more, but Very Dangerous uses burned once every 150 years or less.
Wildland vegetation was Dangerous, burning once every 190 years. I was surprised to find that the 788 fires from 2000–2021 that burned into 499 communities burned 95% in Wildland vegetation and 88% in Very Dangerous and Dangerous land uses, but only 6% in safe land uses. This finding supports replacing dangerous land uses with safe ones to reduce community fire risk.
Independent evidence of the value of safe land uses came with the 2025 Los Angeles fires. One, the Palisades Fire, was 84.6% in Wildland vegetation and 82.7% in dangerous land uses. Another, the Eaton Fire, was 81.9% in Wildland vegetation and 79.0% in dangerous land uses.
Even under strong Santa Ana winds, fires mostly burned in Wildland vegetation and dangerous land uses. Jon Keeley, a fire ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, explained about the Eaton Fire: "Fifty years ago, fewer people lived there.
Back then, some parts of the basin were surrounded by citrus orchards, and fires in the mountains would burn out in the orchards before reaching homes." This observation attests to the value of safe land uses, like irrigated orchards, in reducing fires burning into communities. A key feature of a potential fire-resistant system for a community is a set of buffers around the community boundary at distances that address key fire concerns: embers, smoke, fire intensity and fire spread. Buffers are based on metric distances of 100 m (1/16 mile), 850 m (0.53 miles), 2,500 m (1.55 miles) and 5,000 m (3.1 miles).
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