About Fire

Aims & Scope

Fire (ISSN 2571-6255) is an international open-access journal about the science, policy, and technology of fires and how they interact with communities and the environment. Fire serves as an international forum for diverse scientific and practical knowledge to converge in the interest of promoting more safe, effective, and scientifically driven expertise in the policy, community actions, and operational management of fires. Fire was established in 2018 and was originally focused on fire ecology and the role of vegetation fires on the landscape. Today, the journal welcomes include a wider diversity of fire science topics. 

We encourage interdisciplinary submissions from studies that take a pyrogeography perspective of vegetation fires occurring in natural, cultural, and industrial landscapes and how they interact with communities in the science–policy interface. We seek the submission of case studies highlighting significant fire events or examples of governmental or community-based fire management. We also encourage methodological technical notes and data descriptions to enable global cross-comparisons of core science methods, data types, and fires. This journal also encourages submissions related to the historical, policy, and social science aspects of fire science and fire management. Fire science research focused on the inside of buildings (structural response to fire, smoke and heat transport, ignition and fire spread, technical solutions for fire safety) may also be considered. Submissions related to battery fires are welcome.

Fire is particularly interested in submissions that consider the growing challenge of landscape fires occurring in and around the interface between vegetated lands, rural structures, villages, and other residential areas including peri-urban areas. Fire is interested in all forms of fire ecology, including fire impacts on flora, fauna, and human communities from the organism to population scales and evolutionary adaptations. Fire is also interested in research focused on vegetation fires arising from lightning, transportation sources, power lines, munitions, and other natural and human sources. Fire also encourages submissions of papers bridging the areas of vegetation/landscape fires and building fires that focus on environmental consequences of large fires (also in urban environments), protection of buildings against wildfires/landscape fires, and the development of models useful for both fields.

Fires can range from the laboratory scale to regional wildfire events; articles that examine fire issues and challenges at the science-policy interface or fires impacting both unmanaged/managed vegetation and habited areas are encouraged.

In addition to the main journal, Fire currently has two broad Sections that welcome submissions focused on their topical areas:

Fire Science Models, Remote Sensing, and Data

The main aim of this Section is to introduce and describe datasets, models, equipment, and analytical methods used in fire science. This Section publishes all the article types supported by Fire, with particular interest on Technical Notes, Data Descriptions, and articles describing data, models, and equipment, and analytical methods used in fire science. This Section publishes Data Descriptors connected to prior and concurrent Fire submissions as well as for manuscripts published elsewhere. Data Descriptors can include papers that describe metadata, data collection, data archival and access, and data management. Data papers are also welcome that provide an analysis or description of fire science models, remote sensing, and data contained in repositories.

Fire Research at the Science–Policy–Practitioners Interface

The main aim of this Section is to highlight research seeking to assess operational approaches to wildland fire management. We welcome submissions from indigenous, state, and agency land management in additional to academic and non-governmental organizations. All areas of wildland fire science management are welcome, including but not limited to wildland fire policy and planning, fuel treatments, habitat assessments, fire hazard and risk reduction, post-fire hydrology, ecological restoration, smoke reduction approaches, experiences on community-based fire management, etc. One of the goals of this Section is to facilitate the sharing of information between wildland fire managers and scientists, through interacting with a series of international wildland fire science information networks.

In addition to topical Special Issues, Fire also has a series of permanent collections that welcome submissions at any time:

Diversity Leaders in Fire Science

Heritage and Fire

Rethinking Wildland Fire Governance: A Series of Perspectives

Technical Forum for Fire Science Laboratory and Field Methods

In addition to these Sections, the main journal is interested in submissions addressing:

  • Incorporation of fire processes within earth-system, socio-economic, landscape models, and smoke injection/ transport models;
  • Agricultural fires, wildfires, planned / prescribed fires, and laboratory fires;
  • History of fire policy, fire use, and fire impacts;
  • Governmental and community-based fire and fuels management;
  • Management of fire at the science-policy interface;
  • Planning, policy, economics, social, and psychological impacts of fires;
  • Sociology of fire risk/adaptation and global change vulnerability, adaptation, and mitigation;
  • Behavioral sciences, decision support tools, and risk analysis relating to fire management policy and operational incident management;
  • Assessment of tools and technology used in wildfire suppression;
  • Traditional and cultural uses of fire and the role of local and traditional ecological knowledge applied to fire science;
  • Fire ignition sources, patterns, and projections;
  • Applied material sciences and engineering linked to exterior combustion properties at the fuel particle to landscape scale;
  • Applied combustion physics and chemistry including calorimetry, thermochemical reactions, energy apportionment, heat transfer, and ignition characteristics;
  • Fire behavior and modelling focusing on processes and complex biological, physical, and hydrological systems;
  • Development of data integration models, computations fluid dynamics models, pyrolysis models, spread and effects models, wind models, weather datasets, coupled fire–atmosphere models, and climate datasets related to fire science;
  • Fire effects on vegetation, soils, hydrology, food, and fiber;
  • Impact of fires on sensitive or protected environments, refugia, and species diversity;
  • Impacts of fire on seeds and seedlings, including controlled plant nursery experiments
  • Soil biogeochemistry, carbon sequestration, and microbial processes;
  • Paleoecology, dendrochronology, and the role of fire as an ecosystem disturbance variable;
  • Innovative technology for wildland fire suppression, operational planning, or research methods;
  • Model parameterization, testing, and validation
  • Algorithm development and monitoring through the remote sensing of fires with radiometers, unmanned aerial devices, aircraft, and satellite sensors;
  • Fires on dangerous or contaminated landscapes;
  • Health impacts associated with management of vegetation fires, such as smoke;
  • Pyrogenic emissions and emission estimates;
  • Environmental consequences of large fires (including within urban environments);
  • Protection and structural response of structures and building members to wildfires and landscape fires;
  • Smoke and heat transport in buildings (including smoke control systems); and
  • Technical solutions for fire safety.

Fire was founded following discussions with international fire scientists, operational managers, and wildland fire science organizations that include the Global Wildland Fire Network, which is coordinated by the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) and affiliated with the United Nations’ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR). Although Fire is affiliated with the Global Wildland Fire Network, we welcome and encourage international submissions on the science and management of vegetation fires and global change from any groups and individuals.

MDPI Publication Ethics Statement

MDPI is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). MDPI takes the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. MDPI takes such publishing ethics issues very seriously and our editors are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy. To verify the originality of content submitted to our journals, we use iThenticate to check submissions against previous publications.

Book Reviews

Authors and publishers are encouraged to send review copies of their recent related books to the following address. Received books will be listed as Books Received within the journal's News & Announcements section.

MDPI
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Copyright / Open Access

Articles published in Fire will be Open-Access articles distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The copyright is retained by the author(s). MDPI will insert the following note at the end of the published text:

© 2024 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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