Wildfires & Climate Change
The Feedback Loop: Wildfires Mitigation and Breaking a Large CO2 Emissions Cycle
Wildfires are no longer just seasonal events — they are a growing global force reshaping ecosystems, economies, and the climate itself. They are both a consequence and a driver of climate change, locked in a dangerous feedback loop.
As global temperatures rise, shifting weather patterns impact vegetation growth and drought, which influences wildfire behavior and contributes to further climate change. The heat produces ideal conditions for wildfire ignition and spread. In turn, these fires release vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂), further fueling global warming.
This self-perpetuating cycle is intensifying. But it’s also one of the most solvable parts of the climate crisis.
This is a feedback loop humans can effectively disrupt. Unlike hurricanes or earthquakes, wildfires do not strike randomly. Their risk is geographically predictable — and critically, reducible.
Using geospatial intelligence, humans can identify where wildfires are likely to ignite, where they are likely to spread, and how to strategically disrupt their progression. Athena Intelligence, through its Voice of the Acre® platform, equips municipalities, utilities, homeowners associations and land managers with precisely this kind of foresight.
By mapping both the probability of wildfire and the conditional factors that worsen fire behavior (like slope, vegetation, and historical fire patterns), cities and utilities can take focused action — protecting lives, infrastructure, and the climate.
The Science Behind the Cycle
Unlike many climate feedback loops that are complex or hard to visualize, the wildfire loop is straightforward: rising temperatures alter weather and vegetation patterns, which increase wildfire activity — releasing more carbon and accelerating climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that Earth’s average temperature has risen by roughly 1.2°C since the pre-industrial era. This warming has altered rainfall patterns — some regions are wetter, but many are drier for longer. The combination of heat, drought, and biomass sets the stage for uncontrolled mega-fires.
As wildfires burn, vegetation shifts from carbon sinks to carbon sources. Carbon that was sequestered over years, decades or even centuries is released into the air. The land is left scorched, erosion-prone and with a reduced sequestration capacity. The once lush ecosystem needs time to heal and rebuild.
Higher temperatures and altered precipitation patterns may hinder the regrowth of certain plant species, leading to shifts in ecosystem structure and function. These changes can reduce the resilience of ecosystems to future disturbances, perpetuating the cycle of wildfire vulnerability.
In places like the Western U.S., Australia, and the Mediterranean, these dynamics have led to record-breaking fire seasons. Wildfires are hotter, larger, more frequent and arriving in places which historically have not had significant fires.
Long-Term Damage to Ecosystems and Communities
The damage doesn’t stop at emissions. Wildfires reshape entire landscapes.
Recovery takes decades — if it happens at all. Many communities take a decade or more to return to their former state. Burned ecosystems may take even longer to return to their former biodiversity or climate functions.
The increase in wildfires has profound human and economic impacts. Wildfires destroy homes, infrastructure, and crops, leading to significant economic losses. The health effects of wildfire smoke, which contains harmful pollutants, are also a major concern. Prolonged exposure to smoke can cause respiratory and cardiovascular problems, affecting millions of people worldwide.
And the financial costs are staggering. In the U.S. alone, fighting wildfires cost hundreds of millions, with the full impact, including property value and public health declines, estimated at over half a Trillion dollars annually, including suppression, property damage, healthcare impacts, and lost productivity.
Communities Turn Wildfire Risk Intelligence Into Local Action
To interrupt the wildfire-climate feedback loop, we must act before the flame.
Athena Intelligence helps municipalities, utilities, and conservation agencies make data-backed decisions that reduce wildfire frequency and severity:
- Risk Forecasting: Identify areas predisposed to wildfire based on terrain, vegetation, and past burn patterns
- Asset-Level Prioritization: Pinpoint which utility infrastructure — power poles, substations, water tanks — is most at risk
- Informed Mitigation: Align fuels management strategies (thinning, biochar, composting, fire-resistant planting) to the areas where it will have the highest impact
- Climate Funding Readiness: Working with Bintel, a firm that writes CWPP and works with cities to post this information online for community access. Working with investment bankers on resilience bonds, and climate disclosure requirements with defensible, spatially explicit data (See our article on Funding Climate Resilience with SHIELD Bonds.)
Whether it’s prescribed burns, composting excess biomass, replanting fire-adapted species, or strategically hardening infrastructure, the key is knowing where to focus limited time and funding. Athena makes that possible.
Wildfire Strategy is Climate Strategy
Adaptation strategies focus on enhancing the resilience of communities and ecosystems to wildfire impacts. This includes developing early warning systems, improving emergency response capabilities, and designing buildings and infrastructure to withstand wildfires. Public awareness and education campaigns can also play a crucial role in reducing the human impact of wildfires.
Reducing wildfire risk isn’t just about preserving forests — it’s about reducing one of the largest unregulated sources of greenhouse gas emissions on Earth. Breaking the feedback loop It’s about making cities safer, ecosystems healthier, and global climate goals more achievable.
Unlike many climate challenges that require vast systemic shifts, wildfire risk can be measured, mapped, and mitigated. Municipalities are on the front lines — and with the right tools, they can lead the way.
Let’s stop the burn before it starts.
The surge in wildfires is not only a symptom of climate change but also a significant contributor to its progression. Understanding the feedback loop between wildfires and climate change encourages those of us interested in community resiliency to push for adaptation strategies and effective wildfire mitigation.
If you’re a local planner, utility manager, or climate policy advisor, learn how Athena’s Voice of the Acre® can help your community break the wildfire-climate cycle.
Athena Intelligence is a data vendor with a geospatial, conditional, profiling tool that pulls together vast amounts of disaggregated wildfire and environmental data to generate spatial intelligence, resulting in a digital fingerprint of wildfire risk.
Our primary clients are electric utilities, especially municipal utilities, community owned cooperative electrical companies and community aggregators. Athena’s geospatial intelligence incorporated into multiple products that can be accessed through an online portal.
Athena’s data is currently used in wildfire mitigation plans (WMP) and public safety power shutoffs (PSPS), Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP), Risk Spend Efficiency reporting to PUCs and other stakeholders.
You can reach out to me at Elizabeth@AthenaIntel.io or follow us on LinkedIn or Energy Central
