Abstract

The US faces multiple challenges in facilitating the safe, effective, and proactive use of fire as a landscape management tool. This intentional fire use exposes deeply ingrained communication challenges and distinct but overlapping strategies of prescribed fire, cultural burning, and managed wildfire. 

We argue for a new conceptual model that is organized around ecological conditions, capacity to act, and motivation to use fire and can integrate and expand intentional fire use as a tool. This result emerges from more considered collaboration and communication of values and needs to address the negative consequences of contemporary fire use. When applied as a communication and translation tool, there is potential to lower barriers to faster and more successful collaboration among stakeholders. 

Such improvements are a vital part of strategies to address climate adaptation, wildfire mitigation, and the wellbeing of ecosystems.