As California fires burn, the Natural Hazards Center has compiled reports with lessons learned from previous wildfires as well as a list of funding opportunities, tools, and other resources for resear...

Read chapter Front Matter: Wildfires in America are becoming larger, more frequent, and more destructive, driven by climate change and existing land manag...

It’s widely used because it can slow flames in ways that water can’t. But it also contains heavy metals and other harmful compounds.

Abstract The impacts of wildfires along the wildland urban interface (WUI) on atmospheric particulate concentrations and composition are an understudied source of air pollution exposure. To assess the...

Wildfires at the wildland–urban interface (WUI) have been increasing in frequency over recent decades due to increased human development and shifting climatic patterns. The work presented here focuses...

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Wildfires at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) are increasingly common. The impacts of such events are likely distinct from those that occur strictly in wildland areas, as we would expect an elevated likelihood of soil contamination due to the combustion of anthropogenic materials. We evaluated the impacts of a wildfire at the WUI on soil contamination, sampling soils from residential and nonresidential areas located inside and outside the perimeter of the 2021 Marshall Fire in Colorado, USA. We found that fire-affected residential properties had elevated concentrations of some heavy metals (including Zn, Cu, Cr, and Pb), but the concentrations were still below levels of likely concern, and we observed no corresponding increases in concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The postfire increases in metal concentrations were not generally observed in the nonresidential soils, highlighting the importance of combustion of anthropogenic materials for potential soil contamination from wildfires at the WUI. While soil contamination from the 2021 Marshall Fire was lower than expected, and likely below the threshold of concern for human health, our study highlights some of the challenges that need to be considered when assessing soil contamination after such fires.

The Marshall Fire was a wildland urban interface (WUI) fire that destroyed more than 1000 structures in two communities in Colorado. High winds carried smoke and ash into an unknown number of building...