This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The western U.S. is facing parallel and escalating hazards in the form of ongoing drought and increasingly frequent wildfires. Although the region's ecosystems have evolved with wildfires, the intensity and frequency of blazes where people live and recreate remain a persistent challenge for communities.
New research examines trade-offs in wildfire resilience when western communities face hard decisions about adaptation strategies to drought, such as retiring or converting irrigated cropland. The question has widespread implications across the region, with more than 4 million hectares (9.9 million acres) of cropland loss across the western U.S. over the last 40 years. The research, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, was co-led by Austen Lorenz and DRI's Bea Gordon alongside colleagues including fire managers.
They examined wildfire perimeter data for nearly 10,000 fires from 1985 to 2024 to create the first regional assessment of cropland's association with where wildfires stop. The study's results found that cropland serves as a landscape-scale buffer to wildfire as demonstrated across 11 western states. When compared to other land uses like wildlands, urban communities and forests, cropland is less likely to end up inside a wildfire burn scar.
The research has implications for improving management of both water-saving strategies and wildfire risk reduction, which the authors suggest should be managed jointly, rather than in isolation. "As a hydrologist, I think a big focus for our community is looking at how much water crops use, and how much water can be conserved by changing or reducing crop production in drought-stricken areas," Gordon said. "I've thought a lot less about what those changes mean after the land use has changed.
After working with wildfire managers, it became clear that drought adaptation strategies that alter cropland can influence how wildfire moves through the landscape. It's a reminder that out here in the West, we don't have the luxury of thinking of just one hazard anymore." The researchers propose that well-irrigated crops may hold enough moisture that they act as an effective barrier to wildfire progression. The wide-open spaces can also serve as staging points for firefighters during active blazes, reinforcing their use as a landscape-scale buffer.
This effect is amplified where irrigation overlaps with fire season, as observed in California's Central Valley, Washington's Columbia Basin and Idaho's Snake River Plain. The study focused on areas where wildfires and cropland converged in the western U.S., finding that approximately 10.6 million acres (4.3 million hectares) of cropland have transitioned to other uses in these regions since 1985—an area about the size of Switzerland. Much of it converted to scrubland or other low-lying vegetation that is more flammable than irrigated farmland.
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