Future changes in society and climate are expected to affect wildfire activity in the south-eastern United States. The objective of this research was to understand how changes in both climate and society may affect wildfire in the coming decades. We estimated a three-stage statistical model of wildfire area burned by ecoregion province for lightning and human causes (1992–2010) based on precipitation, temperature, potential evapotranspiration, forest land use, human population and personal income. Estimated parameters from the statistical models were used to project wildfire area burned from 2011 to 2060 under nine climate realisations, using a combination of three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-based emissions scenarios (A1B, A2, B2) and three general circulation models. Monte Carlo simulation quantifies ranges in projected area burned by county by year, and in total for higher-level spatial aggregations. Projections indicated, overall in the Southeast, that median annual area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire increases by 34%, human-ignited wildfire decreases by 6%, and total wildfire increases by 4% by 2056–60 compared with 2016–20. Total wildfire changes vary widely by state (–47 to +30%) and ecoregion province (–73 to +79%). Our analyses could be used to generate projections of wildfire-generated air pollutant exposures, relevant to meeting the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

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Abstract. We describe how two important tools of wildfire management, wildfire prevention education and prescribed fire for fuels managemenl, can be coordinated 10 minimise the combination of management costs and expected societal losses resulting from wildland fire. We present a long-run model that accounts for the dynamiCS of wildfire, the effects of fuels management on wildfire ignition risk and area burned, and the effects of wildfire prevention education on the ignition risk ofhuman-causcd, unintentional wildfires. Based on wildflrc management activities in Florida from 2002 to 2007, we find that although wildfire prevention education and prescribed fire have different effects on timing and types of fires, the optimal solution is to increase both interventions. Prescribed fire affects whole landscapes and therefore reduces losses from all wildfire types (including lightning), whereas wildfire prevention education reduces only human-caused ignitions. However, prescribed fire offers a longer-tenn solution with little short-tenn flexibility. Wildfire prevention education programs. by comparison. are more flexible, both in time and space. and can respond to unexpected outbreaks, but with limited mitigation longevity. Only when used togcther in a coordinated effort do we find the costs and losses from unintentional wildfires are minimised.