Wildfire preparedness in the United Kingdom is decades behind others – and we are running out of time to catch up.
In New Zealand where I grew up, I was part of a volunteer rural fire brigade that specifically fought wildfires, and a national Fire Danger Rating System communicated elevated wildfire danger warnings (think road signs of wildfire danger level, like Australia and the USA have).
Given the similarities between New Zealand’s and the UK’s maritime climate and vegetation, I had imagined the UK was similarly equipped to deal with wildfires.
When I moved to the UK in 2020, I learned this was not the case at all – despite the fact that the UK experiences more vegetation fires (~30,000 annually) and has a much higher population density within the ‘rural-urban interface’ where vegetation and people, property and critical infrastructure co-exist.
Wildfire wave
Historically, the UK’s temperate, humid climate and vegetation have protected us from vegetation drying out enough to produce large and intense wildfires. But we are increasingly seeing years with hot, dry extremes that prime our vegetation for wildfires to spread. The UK has been experiencing a ‘wildfire wave’ in 2026 amidst heatwave and drought conditions, with extensive wildfires across the full length of the country. This comes off the back of the UK’s worst wildfire year on record in 2025 that burned nearly 48,000 hectares.
For decades, fire behaviour prediction tools have been a cornerstone of wildfire management in many countries. These tools forecast how a fire will behave – its probability of ignition, flame length, rate of spread – and that information underpins everything from firefighter training and suppression tactics to prescribed burn planning and long-term mitigation strategy. Countries with serious wildfire exposure have invested accordingly: Australia, Canada, the USA, several Mediterranean nations and NZ have each developed fire behaviour models built for, or adapted to, their own landscapes and fuels. However, until recently, the UK has lacked such tailored fire behaviour prediction tools.
University of Birmingham researchers with fire fighters, United Kingdom.
Wildfire tools
To address this critical gap in decision-making support, wildfire researchers across the UK came together to create FireInSite – the UK’s first fire behaviour prediction system. FireInSite is specifically designed for the UK’s vegetation, having been built on over four years of UK-wide intensive data collection. The freely accessible web interface overcomes barriers to accessing fire behaviour predictions, by integrating geolocated weather forecasts, topography and in-built fuel models. FireInSite was developed closely with groups like the UK’s Wildfire Tactical Advisors to meet their user needs from a wildfire behaviour prediction tool. It has been used operationally since 2025, with user feedback and validation demonstrating its success across the 2025 and 2026 extreme wildfire seasons.
This work sits within a wider effort at the University of Birmingham to take natural hazard risk seriously. Our Network for Emerging Systemic and Multi-Hazard Risk brings together researchers from engineering, climate science, economics, and social sciences to understand how hazards like wildfire don’t just burn land – they can cascade into failures of power networks, water supply, and transport infrastructure. Real disasters rarely respect disciplinary boundaries, and neither should our research.
Consecutive extreme wildfire years in the UK have provided the awareness of and momentum to address the UK’s wildfire preparedness, and we are starting to make significant progress, FireInSite being one aspect of that.
The challenge is to sustain this momentum to keep pace with a threat that isn’t waiting for us to catch up.
Dr Kerryn Little, is a Postdoctoral Researcher in PyroGeography at the University of Birmingham, and a Director on the Board of the International Association of Wildland Fire.
Here are the four keynote speakers for the Wildland Fire Canada Conference and Canadian Smoke Forum 2026 who will share their knowledge and experience on different wildfire communities around the world.
Register now for the Wildland Fire Canada Conference and Canadian Smoke Forum 2026.
#WFCC26 is in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada from 19-23 October 2026.
Edward Alexander represents the Gwich’in on the Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response working groups of the Arctic Council and is Co-Chair of the Arctic Council’s Initiative on Wildland Fire.
Erin Tassell is Fire Aviation Manager for the Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions and is the state’s first female State Duty Officer. She started her fire career in northern Alberta and has worked in fire management, operations and strategic planning as well as frontline firefighting.
Loressa Mike is the Emergency Management Coordinator Beardy’s & Okemasis’ Cree Nation. She oversees fire and emergency services for the Nation, working to enhance preparedness, response, recovery and resilience. Her commitment to safety and self-determination is rooted in a belief that Indigenous Nations are best positioned to lead and manage their own emergency services.
Mathieu Bourbonnais is Director of the Canadian Prescribed Fire Training Program and Principal’s Research Chair in Wildfire Risk and Fire Management at the UBC Centre for Wildfire Coexistence.
The full program is ready!
The last WFCC was in 2024 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The first was in 2010 in Kitchener, Ontario.
The theme for 2026 is Connecting Operations, Research and Community Action.
Registrations are OPEN for the Wildland Fire Canada Conference and Canadian Smoke Forum 2026.
#WFCC26 is in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada from 19-23 October 2026.
#WFCC26 will bring together wildland fire management agencies, Indigenous knowledge holders and experts, scientists, partners, and collaborators from across Canada and around the world.
This biennial conference focuses on wildland fire management, science and knowledge-sharing.
Don’t forget to choose a Workshop and a Field Trip.
• 11 Workshops – with most over half a day.
• 3 Field Trips – including one overnight.
The full program is ready!
The last WFCC was in 2024 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The first was in 2010 in Kitchener, Ontario.
The theme for 2026 is Connecting Operations, Research and Community Action.
WFCC26 is in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada from 19-23 October 2026.
As California’s population boomed — from 10 million in 1950 to over 40 million today — the number of people living in fire-prone areas multiplied. Over the decades, millions of new homes and commercial buildings sprang up to accommodate the needs of the state’s growing population, and many of those structures stand in areas prone to wildfires.
As a result, more communities are now in harm’s way. The 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles show exactly how destructive urban wildfires can be. More than 16,000 buildings were destroyed, and 31 people lost their lives. By the time the recovery is complete, the cost of repairing the damage from those wildfires could approach a quarter of a trillion dollars.
“We are front and center in the wildfire crisis,” says Michael Gollner, associate professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley. “California is beautiful, but everything aligns for fires here. We need to learn to adapt, to limit the damage that wildfires cause. A lot of people live in fire-prone areas, and most of the country’s major urban wildfire disasters have happened in California.”
Despite the thousands of wildfires in California each year, we still don’t know that much about them — especially when it comes to how they spread in urban areas. The wildland-urban interface is the zone in which buildings and infrastructure border natural areas. Homes in this zone are at higher risk of burning, but quantifying that risk is challenging.
Until recently, the mathematical models used to predict wildfire spread largely ignored these areas. Where a simulated wildfire reached a developed community, the models treated the land as unburnable. Which, of course, it’s not.
“Understanding fire spread between built structures is a totally different equation than understanding fire spread in wildlands,” says Gollner. “It’s different physics, and until recently, it was not well enough understood to be integrated into the parameters of mathematical models. We still can’t do everything at scale, but we’ve begun to be able to simulate wildfires in urban areas.”
In the wildland-urban interface, fires will move freely between natural landscapes and developed lands. And the 2025 Palisades fire did exactly that. What began in the brush of the Santa Monica Mountains swept through residential neighborhoods in Pacific Palisades, before it crossed Mandeville Canyon and burned other parts of Greater Los Angeles. But predicting, and ultimately slowing, this kind of fire behavior remains a complex problem.
“To make good decisions about the risks communities face, we need more science,” Gollner says.
Professor Michael Gollner with a fire whirl in his lab. (Photo by Adam Lau/UC Berkeley Engineering)
Evolving science for a changing landscape
The increase in wildfires tearing through California communities isn’t just due to population growth. Historically, much of California burned every 7–15 years, a natural process that thinned forests and removed accumulated ground fuel.
“It’s actually restorative,” says Scott Stephens, a professor in the Rausser College of Natural Resources. These periodic fires created forests that were more fire resistant. Over time, California’s forests came to be dominated by fire- and drought-resistant pine trees, which shade the forest floor.
But a century of fire suppression policies and logging has changed the composition of our forests. As many of the largest pines were felled, forests grew thicker and less fire-resistant tree species flourished. Now, California’s forests are much more flammable than they once were.
“The effects have been profound,” says Stephens. “The fires we have today would have been unimaginable 50 years ago. In California, we put out more than 98% of wildfires, but the 2% that we can’t put out are responsible for burning 95% of the land.”
And the amount of land that has burned in California is mind-bending: more than 12 million acres since 2013. That’s an area more than twice the size of New Jersey. The damage hasn’t been confined to forests and chapparal, but has also torn through some of California’s largest cities.
As wildfires push into urban areas, they behave in ways scientists are only beginning to understand. But Gollner is figuring out how to predict what urban wildfires will do next — by turning fire modeling into a complex, evolving problem.
“There are so many things that go into modeling a fire; you need to account for the weather, the fuel chains and the fire itself,” Gollner says. “We are working on how to do those calculations for urban areas, but there are so many unknowns and uncertainties. Sometimes, we are just revealing what those uncertainties are. Other times, we are starting to put numbers to them.”
“Other models treated them separately, but ours seamlessly couples the two,” says Dwi Marhaendro Jati Purnomo, a post-doctoral scholar in Gollner’s lab who led the development of the model. “It’s driven by the key mechanisms of fire spread in the wildland-urban interface: direct flame contact, radiation and firebrands — airborne pieces of burning material that are responsible for igniting many of the buildings that burn in wildfires. Our modeling framework also incorporates heat flux — the amount of heat that travels through materials. That allows us to quantify the hazard to nearby houses.”
Gollner and Purnomo tested their model using data from two highly destructive events from California’s recent past — the 2017 Tubbs and Thomas fires. And they were able to fine-tune the model to make predictions with a high degree of accuracy. Their model predicted the extent of the fires with more than 85% accuracy and the number of damaged houses with roughly 70% accuracy. Importantly, the researchers found that nearly a third of house ignitions were caused by embers, something ordinary Californians can take meaningful steps to guard against.
“There are two basic types of mitigation. The first is defensible space — basically clearing flammable things away from a house and reducing the amount of fuel available to a fire,” says Gollner. “The other is to harden a house, to make it more difficult for the building to ignite by changing the windows and siding or by installing ember-resistant vents. These are simple-ish things, but hardening a house can be expensive.”
Fire-resistant siding is made of non-combustible materials like stucco or metal, and installing it in a new build doesn’t cost that much more than traditional wooden siding does. But the costs of replacing the siding on existing houses can be high, especially when you multiply those costs across millions of houses. Gollner’s modeling is helping identify in which areas this type of mitigation will have the greatest impact.
“That’s the billion-dollar question,” he says. “We don’t have all the tools yet, but we do know that if you did all these things and have good spacing between your house and your neighbour’s house, you will be way better protected. But it takes money and time, so there is a question of exactly how much needs to be done. A house right next to the forest? Sure, we need to do that. But how far into a community do these mitigations need to go? We still don’t know exactly in which areas these investments will have the biggest payout.”
Developing a playbook to fight fire in urban areas
Gollner’s ultimate goal is to craft a playbook for wildfires that communities can use to protect themselves. Right now, there isn’t one. But Gollner’s work to quantify wildfire risk is giving communities the data they need to set priorities. And one of the communities doing that is Berkeley.
“Berkeley is in a fire-prone landscape,” he says. “We had major fires in 1991 and 1923, and we have mostly forgotten about them. But the weather conditions that happened during those fires will happen again; we just don’t know when those conditions will occur.”
Even the tiniest spark can generate an inferno, he adds. And whether one does is largely a matter of luck. In the right conditions, a fire can spread rapidly. Right now, there’s little to stop a fire from spreading through the tightly packed wood-framed buildings that line Berkeley’s narrow streets.
“How destructive a fire is depends a lot on the direction and the timing of the winds,” Gollner says. “If the winds only last a few hours, the fire might stop, but when a wildfire is raging at peak intensity, there is just not a lot that humans can do about it.”
When a wildfire enters a city, it sends embers flying everywhere, and they can ignite buildings by the thousands. No fire department in the world can handle a hundred burning buildings, much less a thousand, and no amount of investment in firefighting will allow us to extinguish urban fires on this scale.
“There is just no way to tackle this problem with an active approach,” says Gollner. “We need to limit the ways fire can spread. If we can do those simple things, we can make a difference.”
But you need to get people on board, and that isn’t always easy. In January 2026, the City of Berkeley implemented an ordinance called Effective Mitigations for Berkeley Ember Resilience (EMBER). It mandates a five-foot vegetation-free buffer zone around houses and also identifies areas at the highest risk from wildfires as priorities for enforcement.
Under EMBER, fines for non-compliance can reach up to $500 per day, and some local opponents have argued that EMBER is overly intrusive. But Gollner’s research highlights the value of defensible space. In a paper published in 2025, he found that houses with a five-foot, vegetation-free buffer were much less likely to be destroyed in a wildfire.
Gollner conducted a machine learning analysis of data collected on the ground after five major historical fires in California’s wildland-urban interface — the 2017 Tubbs, 2017 Thomas, 2018 Camp, 2019 Kincade and 2020 Glass fires — and found that houses with a vegetation-free buffer area were much more likely to survive a wildfire. The difference is stark. Just 20% of houses without a buffer survived these wildfires, while 37% of houses with a buffer did. In a major urban wildfire, that 17% difference could add up to hundreds or even thousands of houses saved.
“Clearing the vegetation that is closest to the house isn’t perfect, but it is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to reduce risk,” Gollner says. “The vegetation that’s right there has the highest likelihood of igniting a house. But people can be really protective of their plants, and some people are just opposed to doing it.”
But retired fire chief Dave Winnacker is using the data to convince people of the value in compliance. Winnacker spent about 20 years in the fire service in Fresno, Alameda County and the Moraga-Orinda Fire District. And now, he’s returned to his hometown of Berkeley to help the city implement EMBER.
“Dr. Gollner’s research has really given Berkeley a theoretical grounding to operationalize this initiative,” says Winnacker.
In the same 2025 paper, Gollner calculated that implementing both house hardening and defensible space could prevent the loss of 52% of all the structures lost in the major urban wildfires he studied.
“Fire is opportunistic,” Winnacker says. “And it will find a way to spread. But when you take mitigation measures, communities won’t burn. In the last 20 years, 80,000 homes in California burned, give or take. Halving that number to 40,000 homes still would not be great. But it sure would be a lot better than 80,000.”
When more people adopt defensible space and harden their houses, the effect is amplified. Each house that doesn’t burn breaks a chain of ignitions — it means fewer houses burn overall. That’s a message that Winnacker has taken to the public.
“Urban fire is a big macro-phenomenon, and it is hard for people to connect the dots between these micro-mitigations, which can seem inconsequential, and this huge destructive thing,” Winnacker says. “But Dr. Gollner’s work allows us to do that. It helps us understand the drivers of loss in the urban environment. And from there, we can prioritize mitigations, so that we get the greatest value from a risk reduction standpoint. Otherwise, we would just be guessing.”
Smoke travels from one accessory dwelling unit to another during a controlled burn experiment. (Image courtesy Michael Gollner)
As we come into the north-flowing warmth of the North American spring, the impacts of snow drought and heat dome are prepping wildland fuels for what may be a transition to a “super” El Nino.
Yet it is spring, and reading the North American Seasonal Fire Assessment and Outlook for April through June we note that there is something assuring in the calm, expert insights from nearly a dozen analysts from Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (Mexico), the National Interagency Fire Center (United States) and Natural Resources Canada.
This is not to downplay a winter with extraordinary fire activity — for the U.S., the latest national Situation Report counts 22,000 fires year-to-date (150 percent of the 10-year average) and nearly 1.8 million acres burned (190 percent of average).
Moving into the spring, the Seasonal Fire Assessment identifies numerous regions likely to see above-normal fire activity (and some will be very active), but overall there are broad regions enjoying what may be a truncated spring green-up with the potential to transition too quickly into what many fear will be a quite literal (and potentially tragic) barn-burner of a summer.
In the Seasonal Fire Assessment, released April 15, the authors observe that what North America faces is both global and as local as the dry dirt under our feet: “The critical factors influencing significant fire potential for this outlook period are global climate patterns related to sea surface temperatures, particularly in the Pacific Ocean, and large scale, longer-term soil moisture deficit.”
It’s the soil moisture deficit that’s a challenge to overcome … with the current Drought Outlook for mid-April highlighting the drought in the US West (with growing dry holes in the central Rockies) and in much of the Southeast.
A 12-week drought animation, closing out on April 14, illustrates the expanding deficit, with at least 70% of the U.S. in drought since the beginning of February.
This drought impact has already been noted in a Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisory for the Southeastern United States, issued April 16 for the southern Appalachians, Piedmont and coastal Southeast — basically, a swath from New Orleans to Cincinnati, Ohio to Washington, D.C., to Florida.
The Southern Area analysts caution that “normal” fire conditions may not moderate the extraordinary dry fuels …
Typical fire weather thresholds may not apply when record high fire danger and record heat align – critical conditions may occur with RH 5% above and winds 5 mph below regional thresholds
Do not be fooled by fuels that appear to be green – fire will spread readily under current conditions
Back to the North American Seasonal Fire Assessment, we note that the above normal activity for the southeast U.S. is also appearing in Mexico’s active fire season.
As summarized by the analysts: “Considering current temperature and precipitation patterns, national drought status, and seasonal forecasts, wildfire activity is expected to escalate across most of Mexico during April and May.”
While they note that spring is “projected to be comparatively less warm due to slightly above average rainfall, which will enhance soil moisture and effectively modulate fire intensity.” With the potential for warmer and moister conditions, they also note the impacts of variability: “the transitioning to ENSO-neutral in May keeps the potential for extreme dry or wet events … a highly unstable and wetter than normal spring is expected compared to previous years, though significant heat will still characterize the season.” Moving into June, fire activity will move north into northern Baja and moderate in the south.
Moving north, the U.S. is likely to parallel the seasonal north-ward green-up, with notable exceptions:
In June, above normal potential will continue in much of the Southwest, while also expected into much of southern Nevada, southern Utah, and the Colorado West Slope. Above normal potential will also expand across much of northern California and the Inland Northwest. In the Southeast, above normal potential is forecast to persist for South Georgia and Florida, while also expected for portions of East Texas and Louisiana.
The western U.S., is expecting a summer-long impact from the dire lack of snow water equivalent (SWE). The combination of a record snow drought followed by record heat dome has left key watershed regions at 9 to 53 percent SWE of normal.
Canada, however, is likely to benefit from a winter snowpack more robust than the U.S., with fire activity increasing in June — though the analysts note “minimal skill” in some of the outlooks, due to the movement from La Niña and into ENSO-neutral conditions.
For June, much of the country [Canada] shows at least a moderate probability of positive temperature anomalies, but these are particularly evident throughout British Columbia and Labrador as well as areas surrounding Hudson’s Bay. Precipitation outlooks offer no clear signal and minimal skill. That, combined with likely ENSO-neutral conditions supports higher fire potential in June throughout British Columbia and areas surrounding James Bay, west of Hudson’s Bay, and extending into the eastern Northwest Territories. Near-normal activity is expected in the rest of Canada in June.
After June, the impact of ocean-warming may lead us into a “super” El Niño, with the El Niño outlook moving from moderate to strong to very strong over the next few months.
Beginning in June, there is 79 percent likelihood of some stage of El Niño ocean warming. By August, the probability rises to 90 percent, with 63 percent likelihood of Moderate to Very Strong conditions. For much of the U.S, outlooks suggest warmer than normal temperatures and variable precipitation effects. An analysis from Severe Weather Europe expands the impacts and predicts “global weather disruption” for 2026 into 2027.
For now, the North American seasonal fire assessment maps offer a view of our immediate fire future, April through June. Of note: in the three months of continent-wide fire assessments, only two relatively small regions in Canada indicate below-normal fire activity.
The European Commission’s integrated wildfire strategy covers prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. It cites European Environment Agency’s European Climate Risk Assessment on how fire risk is spreading well beyond the Mediterranean, to Scandinavia, central Europe and the northwest. What was once a regional seasonal threat is becoming a continent-wide, year-round reality.
Wildfire damage to property and infrastructure costs Europe an estimated €2.5 billion (USD 2.9 billion) every year. The likelihood of such extreme fires is expected to more than double by the end of the century.
The action plan for the EU is long and detailed, and includes many steps on landscape management and restoration, support for prescribed burning, promotion of grazing and forestry to reduce wildfire risk, enhancement of the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System for fuel mapping, more opportunities for research through Horizon Europe, initiatives to raise community awareness and education through its European Citizens Panel, increase coordinated response across Europe, and support post-fire recovery of communities and landscapes. The list goes on.
Two highlight actions include:
A new European firefighting hub in Cyprus, serving as a centre of excellence for training and seasonal readiness across the region. The new European firefighting hub will have a dual role: operational, to respond to wildfire emergencies; and capacity building. It is expected to host a centre of excellence, focusing on capacity building, training, exercises, and seasonal readiness, relying on the technical expertise and resources of the EU. Cyprus media is reporting that the EU has confirmed the hub will be co-financed between the EU and Cyprus. “Cyprus is responsible for the infrastructure, while we contribute through the Union Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM) in training, exchange of best practices, preparedness and so on,” the EU said.
An expanded EU firefighting fleet, known as rescEU, with 12 new “medium amphibious” firefighting planes and five helicopters. The planes will be hosted by six EU countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, and Greece. The 5 helicopters will be hosted by Czechia, Slovakia, and Romania. The first new helicopters will be operational in 2026 and the first new airplanes by 2028. The first helicopter has already been delivered to Romania.
The statement makes it clear that this announcement poses no new costs. “Today’s communication does not impose any costs on Member States. On the contrary, it seeks to promote more efficiency in wildfires management.”
Roxana Mînzatu, the Executive Vice-President for Social Rights and Skills, Quality Jobs and Preparedness at the European Commission, explained the need for the statement.
“Europe must be ready before the first fire starts. That means building a real culture of preparedness: equipping people with the right skills, supporting firefighters and first responders, and helping communities understand the risks they face. Today’s strategy shows that prevention, preparedness and solidarity must go hand in hand if we want to save lives and strengthen Europe’s resilience against worsening wildfire threats.”
With many significant wildfire events across the United Kingdom in recent years the scale and impact of these events are increasingly straining the ability to prepare and respond. With that in mind, the 2026 UK Wildfire Conference has launched with the theme New Perspectives, Shared Solutions.
The 2026 UK Wildfire Conference is from 10-11 November at Headingley Stadium in Leeds. The website has details on how to participate as a delegate, a speaker, a poster presenter or as a sponsor. The deadline is 24 April 2026 for speaker submissions.
Photo above. The devastating effects of wildfire on Dava Moor in the Scottish Highlands 2025 is a scene that is becoming more frequent across the UK. Credit The Heather Trust.
Professor Gareth Clay, Chair of the 2026 Wildfire Conference Steering Group, explained why this event will appeal to a wide audience:
“The conference will appeal to anyone who has an interest in UK wildfires, how we can learn from international examples and how lessons from the UK can be applied elsewhere. We welcome attendance from across sectors from those who currently work on wildfires, or who are looking to expand their activities and knowledge of wildfire – which is an increasing threat to both rural and urban communities and landscapes. You may be a conference regular, or this may be your first time – all are welcome.”
Delegates will hear from experts about the latest research and innovations in prevention, preparedness, response and recovery, and have the opportunity to discuss with colleagues, ways to enhance working together.
Event hosts – the England and Wales Wildfire Forum (EWWF) – are keen to encourage collaborative thinking and promote cross-sector planning and preparedness. “The conference will be a showcase for the whole UK wildfire community,” said Prof Clay. “We hope that all delegates leave the event with a greater understanding of the latest research and practice and an increased awareness of opportunities to share knowledge across different sectors.”
The conference is being organised by The Heather Trust charity on behalf of EWWF.
This biennial conference focuses on wildland fire management, science and knowledge sharing with the latest research, technology and practices. The last WFCC was in 2024 in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The first was in 2010 in Kitchener, Ontario.
The theme for 2026 is Connecting Operations, Research and Community Action.
Get involved. Contribute. Participate. 👩🦱As a Presenter – share your work, your experience, your knowledge. 👨👨👧 As a Workshop host – create a forum to exchange ideas and knowledge. 🚒As a Sponsor or Exhibitor 🚁 – show your support and get access and exposure to the decision makers.
Submit presentation and workshop proposals by March 30, 2026.
WFCC26 is in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada from 19-23 October 2026.
The four day program for the 8th International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference in Hobart, Tasmania, in April, is now online.
Following on from the success of the 2024 conference in three cities across three countries – Canberra/Australia, Tralee/Ireland and Boise/US – the 2026 conference will be held only in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 28 April to 1 May 2026.
After an overwhelming response to the Call for Presentations, conferences organisers have sorted through the abstracts to settle on a full program for the week. It includes a three-day conference schedule of keynote speakers, panel sessions and topical presentations over four streams.
Here are the three keynote speakers:
Amanda McKenzie – CEO of the Climate Council
Prof David Bowman – Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Director of the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania
Robb Clifton – Director Field and Traverse Operations at the Australian Antarctic Division
A fourth day offers the choice of four workshops and three field trips to get a deeper understanding of the application of the science to fire behaviour and fuels management.
Sponsorship and exhibition opportunities are still available at a range of levels.
Early registrations have now opened for the 8th International Fire Behaviour and Fuels conference in Hobart, Tasmania next year.
Following on from the success of the 2024 conference in three cities across three countries – Canberra/Australia, Tralee/Ireland and Boise/US – the 2026 conference will be held only in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 28 April to 1 May 2026.
After an overwhelming response to the Call for Presentations, conferences organisers are now sorting through the abstracts. The full program will be out early in the new year. It will include a three-day conference schedule of keynote speakers, panel sessions and topical presentations over four streams.
Here are the three keynote speakers:
Amanda McKenzie – CEO of the Climate Council
Prof David Bowman – Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Director of the Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania
Robb Clifton – Director Field and Traverse Operations at the Australian Antarctic Division
A fourth day offers the choice of four workshops and two field trips to get a deeper understanding of the application of the science to fire behaviour and fuels management.
Sponsorship and exhibition opportunities are now available at a range of levels.
Mark your calendars for this important event and stay tuned for more details.
