WildFIRE PIRE Science Plan

The WildFIRE PIRE Science Plan outlines the research framework for this international partnership funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under the Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE) program.

Led by Montana State University, the project integrates paleoecological records, modern fire ecology, and future climate modeling to understand how wildfire has shaped ecosystems across space and time and how it will respond to ongoing climate change.

Project Overview

WildFIRE PIRE brings together scientists from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina to study wildfire dynamics in four key regions that represent a broad range of fire-prone ecosystems. By combining long-term fire history with contemporary observations and future projections, the project aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of wildfire as a fundamental ecological process.

Research Objectives

  1. Reconstruct fire history over the past 10,000+ years using charcoal, pollen, and tree-ring records
  2. Quantify the interactions between climate, vegetation, and human activity in driving wildfire regimes
  3. Develop improved models for predicting wildfire behavior under future climate scenarios
  4. Inform science-based strategies for wildfire management, ecosystem restoration, and disaster risk reduction

Study Regions

The project focuses on four representative fire-prone landscapes:

Research Methods

The Science Plan employs a multi-proxy, multi-scale approach:

  • Paleoecological analysis — lake sediment cores, charcoal accumulation rates, and pollen records
  • Modern fire ecology — field monitoring, remote sensing, and fire behavior modeling
  • Climate-fire modeling — integration of paleoclimate data with GCMs and dynamic vegetation models
  • Cross-regional synthesis — comparative analysis across hemispheres and continents

Expected Outcomes and Broader Impacts

  • A global synthesis of long-term fire-climate-human relationships
  • Freely available paleo-fire datasets for the scientific community
  • Enhanced international research capacity through student and postdoctoral training
  • Practical guidance for land managers and policy makers facing increasing wildfire risk

View the full project description

Related Categories
All Project pages | All Research topics | All Science Plan documents

Tags
NSF | PIRE | Fire Ecology | Paleoecology | Climate Change | Soil Erosion Control | Wildfire Management

This page is faithfully restored from the 2013–2015 historical archives of wildfirepire.org. The original Science Plan was developed under NSF PIRE funding and remains in the public domain.