2007 EastFIRE Conference: introduction to special issue

Wildland fire is a global process, subject to regional characterization, with localized impacts on natural resources, people and their social systems. Fire science strives to meld internationaland national-scale applicability with regionaland local-scale application. Satellite observations reinforce the belief that as the basic combustion and behaviour processes governing fire are globally consistent, models of those processes should be adaptable to local conditions. Although the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System is a notable exception, years of scientific effort have gone into developing fire systems that are often not accepted outside of their region of origin within a nation, or across national boundaries. The United States are regionally divided into east, interior west and west coast in terms of ecosystem domains and demographic distributions. The eastern United States are approximately bounded by the west side of the Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic Ocean, are home to over 70% of the USA population and more than 50% of USA forests, are strongly dominated by non-Federal wildland ownership, and experienced the two historically (19th century) highest human-impact wildland fires in USA history (Pestigo and Hinckley). Post-World War II fire suppression assumed a strong western focus as vast acreages of Federal timber resources were impacted by fire, and fire research coevolved as a modern science to support a maturing fire management mission. But as we entered the 21st century, the importance of fire management for timber resource protection was being overshadowed by the demographic driver known as the wildland–urban interface (WUI), and climate change was increasingly being viewed as at least an equal to fuel accumulation as a causative reason for the strong upward trend in acres burned and suppression dollars spent over the past 20 years. These distributions and trends heightened the sense that the eastern region of the USA receives less than an equitable portion of fire research applications. As such, it seemed useful to conduct a continuing exchange for broadly relevant fire research information in an underserved regional market. The regional practitioner community would thus have available applicable science regardless of place of origin, and the science community would be better apprised of the regional application nuances expected of their products. The EastFIRE Conferences were started to serve as an eastern marketplace for the focussed exchange of fire science information. The 2007 EastFIRE Conference was held 5–8 June 2007 in Fairfax, Virginia, with 138 presentations made during 26 plenary, concurrent and poster sessions before 168 registered participants and a large student body. The 10 papers gathered in the present IJWF issue derive from those presentations. The Conference Steering Committee (John Stanturf, John Jianhe Qu, Stephen D. Ambrose, Erik Berg, Stan Coloff, Sue Conard, George Pouliot, John Hom, Eli Jacks, John G. Lyon, Allen R. Riebau, Jun Wang, Ruixin Yang) oversaw the technical content of the conference and the Conference Advisory Committee (William T. Sommers, Peggy Agouris, Jim Hubbard, Eli Jacks, Mike C. Long, Dick Managan, Roy Patton, S.T. Rao, Jim Reaves, Peter J. Roussopoulos, Robert Szaro, Teresa Fryberger) provided sponsoring agency, association and university guidance. The Committees thank conference sponsors (US Forest Service (Southern Research Station, Northern Research Station, Research & Development, State & Private Forestry); US Environmental Protection Agency, Joint Fire Science Program, US Geological Survey, US Fish & Wildlife Service, US Weather Service in partnership with University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education and Training (COMET), National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF)) who made the conference and the continuing forum for fire science information exchange possible. The next EastFIRE conference is planned for June 2010. The 1