A Surprising New Wildfire Threat Emerges
New research reveals a startling trend—wildfires are occurring with greater frequency in the eastern United States, posing potentially greater risks due to higher population density.
When we imagine wildfires, our minds typically conjure images of the American West—the sprawling, drought-parched landscapes of California, Oregon, and Colorado, where massive blazes dominate headlines. But a quiet, equally concerning threat is igniting where few expected it: in the lush, seemingly fire-resistant forests of the eastern United States.
New research reveals a startling trend—wildfires are not only occurring with greater frequency in the East but also pose a potentially greater risk to human life due to the region's higher population density.
This shift represents a fundamental change in our understanding of wildfire ecology and threat assessment, forcing scientists, policymakers, and communities to confront a danger that was largely overlooked. The story of fire in the East is one of ecological imbalance, human intervention, and a pressing need to re-learn the ancient relationship between flame and forest.
Increase in large wildfires in the East since 2005
Of eastern wildfires are human-caused
Of U.S. population lives in eastern and southern regions
For thousands of years, fire was a constant and essential architect of eastern landscapes. Before European settlement, diverse arrays of fire-adapted plant communities covered the region, from the tallgrass prairies to the vast oak-pine forests 6 . These were largely pyrogenic systems—ecosystems that assembled under and were maintained by recurrent fire.
Beginning around the 1920s, the official stance became that all fire was an enemy to be defeated 6 . This policy was initially successful but had unforeseen ecological consequences.
Mesophication is a positive feedback cycle initiated by fire suppression that ecologists Gregory Nowacki and Marc Abrams have termed the driving force behind eastern forest changes 6 .
Open, sun-drenched ("heliophytic") lands quickly convert to closed-canopy forests.
The dense canopy creates cool, damp, and shaded conditions on the forest floor.
These conditions are ideal for shade-tolerant, fire-sensitive species (like maple and beech) but deteriorate for shade-intolerant, fire-adapted species (like oak and pine).
The resulting forest develops less flammable fuel beds, making it harder for fire to spread and further reinforcing the new, fire-intolerant system.
The result is a rapid and ongoing homogenization of the landscape. Stand-level species richness is declining as numerous fire-adapted plants are replaced by a limited set of shade-tolerant, fire-sensitive species. The ecosystems we see today in the East are, in many cases, undergoing rapid changes with no ecological antecedent 6 .
For years, anecdotal evidence suggested fires were becoming more common in the East, but a pivotal scientific study provided the hard data to confirm this alarming shift.
Published in Geophysical Research Letters, a team of researchers led by ecologist Victoria Donovan undertook a comprehensive analysis of wildfire data across the eastern United States over a 36-year period 3 .
The study compared two distinct time periods: the two decades prior to 2005 and the years from 2005 to 2018. The goal was to identify whether wildfires were growing in frequency and scope, not just as a result of random bad years, but as a sustained trend.
The study's findings were stark. The data showed that large wildfire numbers had doubled in the 2005-2018 period compared to the two decades prior 3 . This was not a minor fluctuation.
The increase was attributed to climate change, fuel proliferation, invasive species, and human ignition sources.
Restoring healthy fire regimes and studying wildfire behavior requires a specific set of tools and knowledge.
A planned fire used to meet specific management objectives, such as reducing hazardous fuels, restoring fire-adapted ecosystems, and managing wildlife habitat .
The study of scars left on trees by past fires. This is a primary method for understanding historical fire regimes, including their frequency and severity 6 .
The continued practice of Indigenous fire stewardship, recognized as a critical tool for maintaining specific habitats like coastal prairies and oak savannas .
Geospatial data layers used by ecologists to map past and current fire regimes and vegetation types across large scales, helping to quantify changes 6 .
The wildfires menacing the East may not burn the same vast acreage as their western counterparts, but they present a unique and potentially deadlier set of risks.
The core of the danger lies in the wildland-urban interface (WUI)—the zone where houses and wildland vegetation intermingle 3 . The eastern and southern United States are far more densely populated than the West; 56% of the U.S. population lives in these regions, compared to just 24% in the West 3 .
This population density creates a "double whammy" of risk 3 . First, when a fire ignites, it immediately threatens a greater number of people and homes, making it harder to defend property and safely evacuate residents. Second, the presence of more people directly increases the likelihood of ignitions, both accidental and intentional.
The devastating 2016 Gatlinburg fire in Tennessee serves as a tragic case study. Although the fire was less than a tenth the size of California's infamous Camp Fire, it destroyed nearly 2,500 structures and killed 14 people 3 . This event illustrated with terrible clarity that the scale of a disaster is not measured in acres alone, but in the proximity of flame to community. The East, with its extensive WUI, is uniquely vulnerable to this type of tragedy.
Confronting the rising threat of eastern wildfires requires a paradigm shift. The strategy cannot be simply to double down on suppression—that was the policy that created the current crisis.
Instead, the solution lies in reintroducing fire to the landscape in a careful, controlled, and informed way.
Dramatically scaling up the use of prescribed burning to reduce the dangerous fuel loads that have accumulated over decades of suppression 6 .
Embracing cultural burning practices and the deep ecological knowledge held by Indigenous communities 7 .
Developing sophisticated evacuation plans and implementing fire-wise landscaping codes for homes in the WUI.
The challenge is immense, but the cost of inaction is even greater. As the mesophication process continues, the effort and expense required to restore fire-adapted ecosystems escalate rapidly 6 . The "Fire in the East" is no longer a distant theory; it is a present-day reality. How we choose to respond will determine the safety of communities and the health of eastern forests for generations to come.
The phoenix of legend was reborn from its own ashes; our task is to learn how to tend the fire so that our forests and communities can also rise, resilient and renewed.