Executive Summary

On January 9th, 2025, the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST), in partnership with Professors Alistair Hayden and Corinna Noel of the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health at Cornell University, brought together 30 interdisciplinary experts in Sacramento for the Wildland Fire Smoke and Public Health Convening. The event was held against the backdrop of the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, providing a somber reminder of the urgency of dealing with extreme fires.

The convening aimed to connect the various disciplines working to respond to wildland fire smoke in California, particularly focusing on the roles of land managers and public health practitioners. Land management and public health experts participated in breakout sessions where they discussed current practices in their respective fields and identified gaps in research, policy, and practice that need to be addressed.^Note

Three main themes emerged from the day’s discussions, including:

• The need for increased collaboration and clear communication between public health and land management practitioners to support fire and smoke mitigation and response efforts. Clear communication also extends to the public, who need to be informed early and clearly about mitigation work done in their area. The public must also be equipped with resources for smoke mitigation.
• The need for adequate training of public-facing professionals – such as educators (teachers, school officials) and health officers (clinicians, public health workers) – and providing them with streamlined information to share with the public.
• The importance of using shared language among public health and land management practitioners and for communicating with the public, such as language that recognizes the stewardship of land.

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^{Note: These proceedings are a summary of the discussions that took place during the Wildland Fire Smoke and Public Health Convening on January 9, 2025. The information discussed represents a snapshot of conversations, that occurred during the event, which have been validated by workshop participants, but not formally peer-reviewed or modified. The document does not represent the views or endorsements of any one individual or institution.↩}

<sup>1. Frontline Wildfire Defense. (2020). California Wildfire History & Statistics. Accessed May 2025.↩
2. CAL FIRE Palisades Fire Incident Report.; CAL FIRE Eaton Fire Incident Report (2025). Accessed August 2025.↩
3. Tang et al. (2025). Disproportionately Large Impacts of Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Emissions on Global Air Quality and Human Health. Sci. Adv.11,eadr2616(2025). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adr2616↩</sup>

Introduction

CCST’s Wildfire Findings

In 2020, with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, CCST led a study on the Costs of Wildfires in California. A key finding was that the human health impacts of wildfire smoke were not quantifiable, largely due to gaps in existing data. Since the time of the study, wildfires have burned more than 7.6 million acres across the state.¹

In 2023, an astounding year for wildfires across North America, CCST conducted a follow up study with Blue Forest focused on The Human Health Benefits of Improving Forest Health in California. At the time, wildfires raged in parts of southern Canada while distant communities, from the Great Lakes to the East Coast of the United States, experienced widespread effects of the resulting smoke. In assessing wildfire coordination efforts, the study found channels of communication between land managers and public health practitioners to be limited, drastically impeding timely public health responses to wildfire smoke.

The human health impacts of smoke can be long-lasting and disproportionately impact vulnerable communities. Impacts include respiratory illness, exacerbation of pre-existing obstructive pulmonary diseases, pre-term births, cardiovascular complications, adverse mental health outcomes, and more. In order to anticipate and protect against smoke, communities require proactive interventions and plans.

Palisades and Eaton Fires

Held during the second week of January 2025, the CCST convening coincided with the devastating Palisades and Eaton Fires in Los Angeles County. By January 9, the day of the convening, the Palisades Fire had burned over 17,234 acres while the Eaton Fire had burned over 10,600 acres, destroying homes and buildings, displacing community members, and ultimately taking 30 lives.² These wildfires also exposed residents to particularly hazardous particles and toxins, as smoke from wildfires in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) is significantly more toxic than smoke from wildland fires in remote areas.³ WUI and urban fires produce deadly emissions from burning buildings, vehicles, biomass, and other infrastructure that are three times more likely than wildland fire smoke to cause premature deaths.²

Convening Overview

The convening was designed to connect land managers and public health experts on the subject of wildland fires and smoke, as well as identify gaps in research, practice, and policy that require further study to ensure that both public health and forest health are prioritized by stakeholders in these respective areas.

The day opened with a keynote panel, “Considerations for Both Public Health and Land Management in Managing Smoke for Public Health Protection.” The discussion was followed by six productive breakout sessions that centered on research and policy gaps (see Appendix B). Participants were pre-assigned to breakout rooms based on their expertise, and each session had balanced representation of experts in public health and land management.

Sessions lasted approximately 75 minutes and included a small-group discussion and a gallery walk to allow attendees to engage with the ideas presented by other groups. Attendees voted for ideas that resonated with them. Initial questions in each session focused on current practices under the session’s theme that participants identified. Participants then spent the remaining time discussing research, policy, or practice gaps in that thematic area. During the final segment of each session, participants moved around to different boards to assess ideas about research, policy, and practice gaps in each area and cast votes.

The day concluded with a Lightning Summaries session. Reporters from each breakout session provided summaries of key discussions and recommendations, which are described further in these proceedings.

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Keynote Panel

Considerations for Both Public Health and Land Management in Managing Smoke for Public Health Protection

 

Panelists

Overview

The keynote panel emphasized the importance of collaboration between land managers and public health practitioners, highlighting a successful collaboration in California while examining the communication and resource gaps faced by communities during wildfire and smoke events. The discussion centered on language for communicating risk and how to enable public health and land management connections, including the priorities of both groups, metrics for measuring success, and opportunities for collaboration moving forward.

Panelist Highlights

Cossel highlighted the challenge of managing wildfire smoke and the need for collaboration between public health and forest management professionals:

• “We are handcuffed by the divide between rural and urban.”
• Standardizing burn times and keeping the public informed continue to be challenges due to a lack of capacity and funding.
• Recreational tourists visiting the Stanislaus Forest over a long weekend are generally unaware that a burn may be necessary during that time.

Enstice on planning burns more effectively:

• Emphasized the importance of building channels for cross-sector dialogue.
• Addressed the backlog of fuel accumulation and the need for adaptive management in wildfire response, including the creation of better communication channels between urban and rural communities.

Herrera focused on public health needs, especially in rural areas:

• Emphasized the need for improved communication of health risks associated with wildfire smoke.
• Discussed the challenge of tracking long-term health impacts and the need for clean air zones.

Robbins on the need to put fire back on the land:

Emphasized the need to invest time and energy in putting fire back on the land and protecting public health by providing resources to mitigate the adverse impacts of smoke.

• With the focus on fire suppression, forest health management, and public health practitioners have often operated in silos.
• To break these silos, it is important to understand the role of cultural burns rooted in Indigenous knowledge.
• “If you think about it in terms of the human body, our land is sick. The land will no longer keep us healthy if we don’t take care of it.”

Discussion

In most California ecosystems, fire is unavoidable and can often be beneficial; therefore, panelists emphasized the need to utilize all available tools to address the unique needs of different landscapes and communities across the state. The importance of dialogue, clear lines of communication, and trust to foster a resilient and sustainable response to wildland fires and smoke was also emphasized.

Cossel and Herrera have collaborated on the Social and Ecological Resilience Across Landscapes (SERAL) Initiative since 2023. They coordinate public messaging on prescribed burns that the US Forest Service (USFS) conducts in the area. As land managers, the USFS leverages public health networks by informing and educating local public health officials about their activities. Thus, the public is more aware of their risks and is better equipped with resources to protect themselves. They highlighted the shared public health and land management goals of resilient forests that benefit both the ecosystem and public health.

“We have spent too long in silos focused on studying the science and effects; now we must come together to communicate findings and knowledge.”

Margo Robbins

Cossel warned about the rural-urban divide in understanding fire management. He mentioned that while urban communities understand the need for forest management, rural communities and recreational wildland visitors are often resistant to the use of fire that increases smoke in the air. Addressing this divide requires increased capacity and public education about the need for planned burns, which would necessitate some smoke in the air for a significant portion of the year.

Robbins suggested the analogy of treating cancer using chemotherapy, which has strong short-term adverse effects on the body, but is important in returning the body to health. She advocated using this mindset to treat forests and heal the land.

Metrics, Successes, and Capacity

Concerning metrics and successes, panelists discussed the importance of long-term plans for land stewardship. They highlighted Indigenous metrics, including surveying the land for markers such as the ability to see the horizon and resource reserves, and focusing on the number of homes that can keep smoke out. Public health metrics focused on emergency room visits, injuries, and health outcomes from compromised air quality. Enstice pointed out that measuring the engagement of public health officers with land management staff and prescribed fire work in different communities is also necessary. Given the backlog of fuels in the state due to a historic reliance on fire suppression over fuel treatment, determining the best treatment options for each area to reduce the amount of smoke per acre is key. For Cossel, measuring the remaining wildfire risk after completing a fuels treatment project is an important metric.

Capacity and public perception of fire and smoke were identified as issues that can be solved with funding and dedicated communicators. Panelists noted a lack of public understanding of the connection between forests and public health, which contributes to public resistance to fire as a solution for addressing accumulated fuels. Capacity issues arise because resources are strained with existing fire events, complicating the response to new events. Multiple and overlapping emergencies further complicate coordination and response.

Panelists recognized the strain that a year-long fire season places on the firefighting workforce, so they recommend a separate workforce for starting fires for stewardship purposes. Training centers across the state that teach prescribed and cultural burning would contribute to capacity building. These training centers could also educate landowners and provide them with tools to manage their land effectively. Providing resources to local communities or regions would also be important in building a flexible and adaptive system that can be appropriately applied throughout the state.

Shared Language

The panel also discussed the importance of consistent language that realistically describes practice. They advocated avoiding the use of “cultural burning” as a catchall term to describe both the work of native practitioners and non-native landowners who have managed their land for generations, reserving the term for burning conducted by Tribal members for cultural purposes based on extensive knowledge of the land. Finally, to further inform practitioners’ mindsets, panelists proposed the use of “land stewardship” in place of “land management” to better represent the care for the land that is required in this work.

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Breakout Sessions and Gaps

The activities of the Smoke Convening focused on personal interactions and provided opportunities for attendees to engage in small-group discussions, generating questions that can inform policymakers. Thus, attendees spent most of the Convening in two pre-assigned breakout sessions, each focused on a particular theme.

In each session, attendees were divided into small groups and asked to discuss current practices related to their thematic focus. After identifying key research, policy, and practice needs within their small groups, participants read the ideas generated by the other groups in their breakout sessions through a gallery walk activity. They then voted on the most important needs based on their experiences. This voting method was used to help surface the critical topics and questions that were representative of the experts in the room. The takeaways from each breakout session are summarized below.

Sessions on Current Practices

Attendees in the different breakout sessions answered questions relevant to the themes in their respective sessions.   

Wildland Fire Smoke Management and Mitigation Practices

This session focused on mitigating smoke during wildland fires, considering both wildfires and prescribed burns. Attendees discussed current smoke management and mitigation practices and land managers’ efforts to incorporate public health considerations into their work. These efforts include notifying communities and schools about smoke hazards through social and local media, and communicating recommended practices for staying safe from smoke. Other practices discussed include:

• Distributing portable air purifiers/cleaners or HEPA filters to community members.
• Providing access to masks and home weatherization.
• Providing access to clean air centers.
• Coordinating with local air districts and following smoke management best practices.
• Conducting prescribed burns when the wind direction is away from hospitals and schools, and only when vegetation is dry enough to limit smoke production.

Wildland Fire Smoke Research Gaps: Monitoring, Awareness, and Technology

This session explored smoke research gaps by examining the past (inventories), present (monitoring), and future (modeling) aspects of smoke during wildfires and prescribed fires. The goal was to assess attendees’ current awareness of monitoring and awareness tools and to highlight new tools and opportunities for improving research, policy, and practice. Current practices to monitor and raise awareness about wildland fire smoke include:

• Air quality advisories are issued when smoke impacts are determined.
• Spot forecasts and daily interagency calls about smoke convened by the California Air Resources Board.
• Paleontology samples, such as cores and dendrochronology proxies, are being used to search for signatures of exposure to fire/smoke over time in faunal remains.
• Oral histories and archival data, for example, in photos and journals.
• The group also discussed tools supporting this work, including:
• Prescribed Fire Incident Reporting System (PFIRS) for smoke management.
• AirNow for fire and smoke maps.
• Bluesky Playgrounds and the California and Nevada Smoke and Air Committee (CANSAC) provide information on smoke mixing height and transport.
• Fire models that use historical meteorological data, including air quality forecast models (e.g., smoke dispersion models).
• Regulatory air quality monitors and Purple Air monitors that leverage community science.

Wildland Fire Smoke Research Gaps: Short- and Long-term Health Effects

This session discussed the concentration and locations of smoke impacts in the state, focusing on measuring past, present, and future smoke impacts on public health. Attendees also noted that much of the data is analyzed at the aggregate level, thereby excluding individual data that could be informative. Current practices for measuring effects on public health discussed include:

• Near real-time syndromic surveillance to monitor smoke-related health effects and healthcare utilization.
• Personal sensors for firefighters and other exposed groups used for research purposes.
• Satellite data to track smoke exposure.
• Statewide emergency department, epidemiological, and hospitalization data to study the population impacts and health outcomes associated with wildfire smoke exposure.
• Blood samples and immunologic indicators to measure the health impacts of smoke.
• Machine learning applications to project future smoke and health impacts.
• Data from historical prediction models to conduct retrospective, observational exposure and health impact studies.
• Publicly available data sources and methods for projecting future impacts using scenario-based modeling approaches.
• Environmental data sources, including surveillance, exposure assessments, and scenario-based modeling, to predict and forecast the impacts of smoke and associated health threats.
• Historical hospital administrative data to measure the public health impacts of wildfire smoke.

Public Education, Communication, and Outreach

This session focused on communication between practitioners and the public, and how this can mitigate the impacts of wildfire smoke. The prepared questions focused on tools to educate communities about smoke outside disaster times, warnings about planned burns, and alert tools during wildfire smoke events. In this session, attendees mentioned current practices related to public education, including:

• Town hall meetings, social media, neighborhood groups, road signs, and radio.
• Notices to neighborhoods from Prescribed Burn Associations around planned burns.

Impacts of Wildland Fire Smoke on Vulnerable Populations

This session engaged attendees in discussions about the specific needs of vulnerable and priority populations during smoke events to optimize their health outcomes. Particular interest was given to definitions of vulnerable and priority populations and tools for protecting these populations before, during, and after a smoke event. In this discussion, participants raised some points about vulnerability to smoke events, including:

• Clarification of ‘vulnerable’ as people prone to worse health outcomes from a given level of exposure to smoke. At the same time ‘priority’ alludes to policies used to determine resource allocation.
• Considerations for populations exposed to high levels of smoke, such as first responders, firefighters, and outdoor workers, who are vulnerable to the associated health impacts.
• Factors that impact vulnerability, including access to resources and the capacity to take steps or action during a smoke event. Resource-poor vulnerable groups may or may not overlap with vulnerable groups with preexisting health conditions or those professions that are more impacted by smoke.

Compounding Factors Exacerbating Smoke Impacts

This session provided an opportunity to discuss other issues related to fire and smoke that concern attendees. Some compounding factors discussed include extreme heat, diseases, and ambient air pollution.

Attendees raised several points about compounding factors, including:

• The compounding effect of extreme heat on smoke exposure, exacerbated by deficient home hardening measures, rising night temperatures, and home ventilation needs.
• The mental health impacts of being confined indoors for long periods due to smoke.
• The potential strain on healthcare infrastructure capacity in response to a surge in service demand.
• The boundaryless nature of smoke that impacts far-reaching communities that are not experiencing the fires.
• Smoke as a vector for airborne illnesses.
• Attendees also discussed several scenarios related to smoke impacts that are not currently addressed, such as:
• The onset of chronic trauma exposure and triggers from experiencing wildfire events.
• The need to update screening for cancers such as lung cancer to include considerations for environmental factors, such as wildland fire smoke.
• The expansion of the wildland-urban interface leading to increasing vulnerability to fire and smoke events.
• A need for communication systems to adequately meet public information needs.
• Global ecosystem collapse (e.g., reduction or total loss of permafrost) leading to an increase in fire and smoke impacts.
• Suburban conflagrations.
• Public tolerance of land stewardship practices changing with increasing fires and smoke impacts.

Research Gaps

Across the six sessions, attendees identified research gaps that, if resolved, would improve smoke management and diminish the public health impacts of smoke. The audience for these research gaps includes academic researchers, state government agencies, and practitioners who would work with them. Effective communication and best practices for messaging on burns from land managers and clinicians emerged as themes that participants in most breakout sessions highlighted. For example, studies on assessments of communications that lead to behavioral change in communities are needed. Participants also highlighted the importance of smoke data in informing decision-making, land management, and public health practice. Beyond gaps in communication, several other gaps and challenges were surfaced during the discussion, including:

Smoke-Related Research Gaps

1. Data providing additional baseline monitoring during prescribed burns to better understand smoke exposures. Local agencies can enforce the collection of pre- and post-burn smoke measurements to ensure data collection from these time points.
2. Data on the optimal conditions for prescribed fire, focusing on treatment quality rather than quantity (e.g., acres treated).
3. Researchers can work alongside burn bosses and other land managers to monitor smoke and emissions at burn sites and inform understanding of different burn regimes.
4. Studies on the impact of vegetation and landscape (rural vs. urban) on smoke dispersion can help inform smoke modeling and health impacts research.
5. Noise attributed to the variability and uncertainty in data covering fuels, atmosphere, and health outcomes.
6. Studies on tactical ignition patterns and how they impact smoke dispersion and production.
7. Studies showing the effect of time on smoke composition and toxicity. That is, whether the toxicity and composition of smoke change over time.
8. Data on the smoke deficit from historical fire suppression activities, accumulated fuels, and where and when the smoke would be expected in the state.
9. Comparison of the toxicity of prescribed fire and wildfire smoke—information that would be useful to educate communities and inform policymaking. Given the concentration of smoke and the distance it can travel during burns, it would be important to assess the difference between the two. Firefighters could be a source of this type of data given that they interact with both wild and prescribed fires.

Population-based Research Gaps

10. Studies that show where and how different populations use smoke-related information, including the most effective communications channels and modes, as well as identification of trusted local messengers.
11. Studies that delineate the various smoke-vulnerable populations and the factors impacting their vulnerabilities.
12. Studies identifying the needs of these vulnerable populations before, during, and after smoke events (e.g., education, air filters, home weatherization, etc.).
13. Standardization of qualitative data collection methods in community-engaged work and practices to protect various vulnerable populations.
14. Development of best practices for community-engaged research that inform community actions. Allowing for community agency and buy-in during engagement is crucial, as is ensuring frequent and meaningful interactions.

Health-Related Research Gaps

15. Data on the long-term effects of smoke on populations. Current understanding of the impacts of smoke events is limited to the day of or days following smoke events. Cumulative exposure data (weeks to months) is not captured. Additionally, the effect of long-term, repeated exposure needs to be understood.
16. Long-term health outcomes from exposure to wildfire smoke compared to prescribed fire smoke.

Policy Gaps

Policy gaps pertain to actions that policymakers can take to support building resilience to fires in the state. Attendees highlighted various missing policies supporting research and practice in managing smoke and fires in the state.

Regulatory Red Tape

1. Regulators should provide guidance on the empirical standards under which Air Pollution Control Districts (APCDs) can deny burn permits needed for prescribed burns. Current standards do not provide sufficient guidance on what smoke levels are hazardous (inhalation and visibility) and susceptible to complaints.
2. Policies that exempt smoke from cultural burns from air pollution regulations are needed.

Coordination Across Agencies and Jurisdictions

3. A need for improved coordination at the local government level between land managers and local public health departments and with Boards of Supervisors, cities, and other stakeholders.
4. Smoke forecasting and management should be integrated into prescribed fire operations and planning.
5. Policies that increase capacity and/or infrastructure for state agencies to engage in interagency collaboration are needed.
6. A need for a framework for interdisciplinary, collaborative work that feeds into decision-making.

Workforce Development

7. Policies that expand the capacity for health departments to engage in smoke management and public education.
8. Policies to address the unsustainable stress that multiple, overlapping climate-related disasters have placed on the workforce.

Housing and Insurance

9. Policies to address rising homeowners’ insurance costs and housing insecurity.
10. Engagement of policymakers with the insurance industry more broadly as important stakeholders in the fire space and connecting them to ongoing work.

Local Community Engagement

11. Need for policymakers to engage with stakeholders, including community health workers, non-profit organizations, and county leadership, when discussing policy and developing tailored and actionable public health messaging and risk communication.
12. Leveraging community knowledge for policy making to develop regional solutions.
13. Center equity in policy development while ensuring all relevant stakeholders are involved.

Funding Policy Coordination

14. State funders and other stakeholders should develop a framework for directing state funding toward this work.

• A potential framework could build on the work from science-informed recommendations, such as the recent CCST-Blue Forest report.
• Funding should be tailored to address the health care needs of those with frequent and greater health burdens.

15. Alternative funding frameworks and streams should be created to supplement state-based grant funding. Given the sometimes narrow scope of grant funding, research and practice can be limited.

Practice Gaps

In discussing practice gaps, attendees focused on the actions that land management and public health practitioners can take to mitigate the public health impacts of smoke in the state.

Clear Guidelines and Metrics for the Public

1. Practitioners should develop guidelines to determine exposure risks and indices that enable the public to make decisions.
2. Communication and resources should be streamlined by leveraging resources such as resilience centers, which could serve as designated points for public access to information.
3. Practitioners must identify and proactively educate smoke-inundated communities in the state about the tradeoffs and burdens of smoke and plan for mitigating actions.
4. At the local level, agencies that issue air quality advisories must ensure adequate interagency coordination, provide timely advisories with content appropriate for various audiences, and take advantage of opportunities to educate the public about fire and smoke.

Local Resources and Capacity

5. Inadequate funding and capacity at the local levels are barriers to effective practice, communication, and public outreach.
6. Given compounding events and the predicted higher number of fire events, which will strain suppression workforce resources, creating a dedicated, parallel mitigation workforce to implement prescribed burns would provide a buffer.

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Lightning Summaries Session

At the end of the day, pre-selected representatives from each of the six breakout sessions were invited to provide a summary of the themes and takeaways discussed in their breakout sessions during the Lightning Summaries Session. This was followed by an opportunity for other participants to add to or provide feedback on the ideas covered in each session.

Attendees agreed on the critical need for better publicly available smoke forecasting tools useful for public health and responder communities.

Other highlights from this session included the need for studies on:

• Wildfire locations across the state and whether there is a shift in patterns under climate change conditions.
• The effect of threat fatigue on actions taken by communities.
• The chronic, long-term effects of smoke and, in particular, repeat exposure to smoke events.
• Smoke composition in different scenarios, whether in cases of prescribed burns or wildfires.
• The various types of vulnerabilities to wildland fire smoke.

And policies that:

• Create regulations for indoor air quality.
• Implement known fire and smoke mitigation practices.
• Increase funding for public health practice, research, and communication.
• Facilitate collaborations and break down silos across local governments and organizations working on land management and emergency response.

The convening highlighted the partnerships needed to enable comprehensive and effective responses to wildfires, land management, and public health in the state. Several attendees mentioned being encouraged by the example of the Stanislaus National Forest collaboration with the Tuolumne County Public Health Department. More examples across the state are essential to ensure public health impacts of wild and prescribed fires are managed and avoided when possible.

Download the full proceedings for appendices and additional information.