Fire-adapted Communities Research Articles

The Fire Adapted Communities Pathways Tool: Facilitating Social Learning and a Science of Practice

Abstract Wildfire science, policy, and practice lack systematic means for “tailoring” fire adaptation practices to socially diverse human populations and in ways that aggregate existing lessons. This article outlines the development and initial operationalization of the Fire Adapted Communities Pathways Tool, an inductive set of processes that help facilitate dialogue about needs and priorities for wildfire adaptation strategies across ownership boundaries or partners. We outline the stages and considerations organized by the tool, including how its components build from decades of social science and practitioner experience facilitating fire adaptation choices among communities spanning the United States. We then outline examples for how the pathways tool provides opportunities to reflect and respond to the needs of diverse human populations implementing fire adaptation in distinct places. Finally, we discuss how the tool can help advance a “science of practice” for wildfire adaptation by promoting social learning or gathering monitoring information at multiple scales. Study Implications: The pathways tool provides a series of empirically informed processes, choices, and engagement tactics designed to foster shared agreement about the best practices for wildfire adaptation across site-specific local conditions. We outline how the tool can advance adaptation processes for a variety of users, including (1) a community oriented planning process that will help reinforce or catalyze collective action about fire management, (2) a systematic approach for monitoring differential progress toward development of fire-adapted communities, and (3) a potential feedback mechanism that informs programmatic foci or allocation of future resources across potential actions designed for diverse social conditions.

Creating Fire-Adapted Communities Through Recovery: Case Studies from the United States and Australia

Wildfires can be devastating for social and ecological systems, but the recovery period after wildfire presents opportunities to reduce future risk through adaptation. We use a collective case study approach to systematically compare social and ecological recovery following four major fire events in Australia and the United States: the 1998 wildfires in northeastern Florida; the 2003 Cedar fire in southern California; the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, southeastern Australia; and the 2011 Bastrop fires in Texas. Fires spurred similar policy changes, with an emphasis on education, land use planning, suppression/emergency response, and vegetation management. However, there was little information available in peer-reviewed literature about social recovery, ecological recovery was mostly studied short term, and feedbacks between social and ecological outcomes went largely unconsidered. Strategic and holistic approaches to wildfire recovery that consider linkages within and between social–ecological systems will be increasingly critical to determine if recovery leads to adaptation or recreates vulnerability.

Wildfire Planning Guide for Idaho Communities: Final Draft

This guide provides practical advice for those seeking to use land use planning and incentives to address wildfire in the wild-land-urban interface, especially in Idaho and the Western United States. The guide offers a conceptual framework that local communities — governmental and non-governmental — can use over time. The framework, which this guide calls the “WUI Wildfire Planning Process,” consists primarily of a four-step, cyclical planning process that revolves around the inter-governmental National Cohesive Strategy Vision and Goals for wildfire, and is supported at all times by education and outreach. Although little known outside of the fire community, the National Cohesive Strategy Goals are simple, but important, goals established through a five year planning process (2009 to 2014) in which federal agencies, state, tribal and local governments, as well as non-governmental partners, built a common vision of how the country could address wildfire. The three goals of the Cohesive Strategy are maintaining landscapes; developing fire-adapted communities; and developing a multi-jurisdictional wildfire response based upon risk-based decision-making. These Cohesive Strategy Goals are the core around which the WUI Wildfire Planning Process revolves. The four active steps of the WUI Wildfire Planning Process, which the guide discusses in great depth, are: draft and adopt a community wildfire protection plan (CWPP); regulate and incentivize the built environment at all scales; implement, maintain and enforce regulations and incentives; and respond to substantial changes such as wildfires or the passage of time. Numerous examples and best practices are provided for each of these steps throughout the guide. The guide’s discussion of wildfire law and policy is also enriched by the inclusion of a robust risk perception survey, which was conducted by surveying nearly 20,000 Idaho households in wildfire priority areas throughout the state in Fall, 2015 and Winter, 2016. The guide provides significant helpful data worthy of investigation. The guide is further supplemented by a robust appendix of over 30 wildfire code provisions from throughout Idaho and the West that provide a start for any local government seeking a resource of models from which to draft wildfire codes. While the guide is intended to further wildfire planning specifically in Idaho, many of the techniques discussed, including the WUI Wildfire Planning Process outlined by the guide, are potentially valuable references for local communities throughout the West. This final version of the guide updates a previous draft version and responds to comments by those participating in community meetings held throughout the State of Idaho in 2019.

Variable Forest Structure and Fire Reconstructed Across Historical Ponderosa Pine and Mixed Conifer Landscapes of the San Juan Mountains, Colorado

Late-1800s land surveys were used to reconstruct historical forest structure and fire over more than 235,000 ha in ponderosa pine and mixed conifer landscapes of the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, to further understand differences among regional mountain ranges and help guide landscape-scale restoration and management. Historically, fire-resistant ponderosa pine forests with low tree density and relatively frequent fire, the most restorable forests, covered only the lower 15%–24% of the study area. The other 76%–85% had dominance by mixed- to high-severity fires. Both ponderosa pine and dry mixed conifer had generally pervasive, often dense understory shrubs, and ~20% of pine and ~50%–75% of mixed conifer forests also had high historical tree density. Intensive fuel reduction and mechanical restoration are infeasible and likely ineffective in the upper part of the pine zones and in mixed conifer, where restoring historical fire and creating fire-adapted communities and infrastructure may be the only viable option. Old-growth forests can be actively restored in the lower 15%–24% of the montane, likely increasing landscape resistance and resilience to fire, but mixed- to high-severity fires did also occur near these areas. This imperfect resistance suggests that fire-adapted human communities and infrastructure are needed throughout the study area.

Wildfire recovery as a “hot moment” for creating fire-adapted communities

Recent decades have witnessed an escalation in the social, economic, and ecological impacts of wildfires worldwide. Wildfire losses stem from the complex interplay of social and ecological forces at multiple scales, including global climate change, regional wildfire regimes altered by human activities, and locally managed wildland-urban interface (WUI) zones where homes increasingly encroach upon wildland vegetation. The coupled nature of the human-ecological system is precisely what makes reducing wildfire risks challenging. As losses from wildfire have accelerated, an emerging research and management objective has been to create fire-adapted communities where ecologically functional levels of wildfire are preserved but risks to human lives and property are minimized. Realizing such a vision will require widespread and decentralized action, but questions remain as to when and how such a transformation could take place. We suggest that the period following a destructive wildfire may provide a “hot moment” for community adaptation.Drawing from literature on natural hazard vulnerability, disaster recovery, and wildfire ecology, this paper proposes a linked social-ecological model of community recovery and adaptation after disaster. The model contends that changes during post-wildfire recovery shape a community's vulnerability to the next wildfire event. While other studies have highlighted linked social-ecological dynamics that influence pre-fire vulnerability, few studies have explored social-ecological feedbacks in post-fire recovery. This model contributes to interdisciplinary social science research on wildfires and to scholarship on community recovery by integrating hazard vulnerability reduction with recovery in a cyclical framework. Furthermore, it is adaptable to a variety of hazards beyond wildfire. The model provides a basis for future empirical work examining the nature and effectiveness of recovery efforts aimed at long-term vulnerability reduction.

Exploring the Influence of Local Social Context on Strategies for Achieving Fire Adapted Communities

There is a growing recognition that the social diversity of communities at risk from wildland fire may necessitate divergent combinations of policies, programs and incentives that allow diverse populations to promote fire adapted communities (FACs). However, there have been few coordinated research efforts to explore the perceived utility and effectiveness of various options for FACs among residents, professionals, and local officials in disparate communities with different social contexts. The research presented here attempts to systematically explore the combination of local social factors that influence support for coordinated wildfire risk management across locations. We conducted 19 interactive focus groups across five communities spanning five Western U.S. states using a mixed-method design that allowed for the collection of quantitative and qualitative data. Results indicate a number of significant differences in effectiveness ratings for adaptation approaches across communities, including requirement of vegetation mitigations on private properties, fostering Firewise communities, and zoning efforts in fire-prone areas. We used qualitative data to help explain the differences between communities as a function of unique local social context operating in each location. We also compare our results with existing frameworks promoting community “archetypes” to evaluate their continued use in wildfire management planning or response.

Towards a comprehensive wildfire management strategy for Mediterranean areas: Framework development and implementation in Catalonia, Spain

Southern European countries rely largely on fire suppression and ignition prevention to manage a growing wildfire problem. We explored a more wholistic, long-term approach based on priority maps for the implementation of diverse management options aimed at creating fire resilient landscapes, restoring cultural fire regimes, facilitating safe and efficient fire response, and creating fire-adapted communities. To illustrate this new comprehensive strategy for fire-prone Mediterranean areas, we developed and implemented the framework in Catalonia (northeastern Spain). We first used advanced simulation modeling methods to assess various wildfire exposure metrics across spatially changing fire-regime conditions, and these outputs were then combined with land use maps and historical fire occurrence data to prioritize different fuel and fire management options at the municipality level. Priority sites for fuel management programs concentrated in the central and northeastern high-hazard forestlands. The suitable areas for reintroducing fires in natural ecosystems located in scattered municipalities with ample lightning ignitions and minimal human presence. Priority areas for ignition prevention programs were mapped to populated coastal municipalities and main transportation corridors. Landscapes where fire suppression is the principal long-term strategy concentrated in agricultural plains with a high density of ignitions. Localized programs to build defensible space and improve self-protection on communities could be emphasized in the coastal wildland-urban interface and inner intermix areas from Barcelona and Gerona. We discuss how the results of this study can facilitate collaborative landscape planning and identify the constraints that prevent a longer term and more effective solution to better coexist with fire in southern European regions.

Adapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes

Wildfires across western North America have increased in number and size over the past three decades, and this trend will continue in response to further warming. As a consequence, the wildland–urban interface is projected to experience substantially higher risk of climate-driven fires in the coming decades. Although many plants, animals, and ecosystem services benefit from fire, it is unknown how ecosystems will respond to increased burning and warming. Policy and management have focused primarily on specified resilience approaches aimed at resistance to wildfire and restoration of areas burned by wildfire through fire suppression and fuels management. These strategies are inadequate to address a new era of western wildfires. In contrast, policies that promote adaptive resilience to wildfire, by which people and ecosystems adjust and reorganize in response to changing fire regimes to reduce future vulnerability, are needed. Key aspects of an adaptive resilience approach are (i) recognizing that fuels reduction cannot alter regional wildfire trends; (ii) targeting fuels reduction to increase adaptation by some ecosystems and residential communities to more frequent fire; (iii) actively managing more wild and prescribed fires with a range of severities; and (iv) incentivizing and planning residential development to withstand inevitable wildfire. These strategies represent a shift in policy and management from restoring ecosystems based on historical baselines to adapting to changing fire regimes and from unsustainable defense of the wildland–urban interface to developing fire-adapted communities. We propose an approach that accepts wildfire as an inevitable catalyst of change and that promotes adaptive responses by ecosystems and residential communities to more warming and wildfire.

Planning for Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface: A Resource Guide for Idaho Communities

The price of wildfire has never been higher. Why? And what can local communities do about it? One way to measure the price of wildfire is the dollars spent on suppression alone. In 1995, fire made up 16 percent of the U.S. Forest Service’s annual appropriation budget; in 2015, wildfire consumed more than 50 percent of the agency’s budget, a benchmark reflective of steadily rising costs. A recent study of wildfires in Wyoming found that protecting just one isolated home can add $225,000 to the overall cost of fighting a fire. But the price of fire is also told in lost recreational opportunities, scarred landscapes adjacent to city centers, loss of wildlife habitat, presence of invasive species, and increasingly, after-effects such as flood and landslides, that can cause even greater long-term harm to a community that the initial fire.This guide is focused on wildfires that occur in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI. The WUI is both a sociological and legal term that is fluid based upon context; however, a common definition used is that the WUI is where “humans and their development meet or intermix with wildland fuel.”Although fewer wildfires occur in the WUI compared to timberlands or rangelands, they are of increasing concern for several reasons. First, WUI fires are expensive to fight. Six of the ten most expensive fires in the past 100 years were WUI fires. Further, the WUI is relatively undeveloped. By one account, just 14 percent of the WUI is developed, leaving a vast potential region of growth that, if developed without wildfire in mind, could yield staggering costs as the West grows. Finding ways to prevent “locking in” long-term, high cost development patterns, while still encouraging such development and growth, is a threshold issue facing Western property owners, taxpayers, and governments.The amount of science and technology dedicated to addressing wildfire in the WUI issues is substantial: decades of research provide a rich array of knowledge about fire from which to draw. The missing piece of the puzzle is the planning and legal framework that would apply that knowledge to protect property and lives from fire. How can we use planning, law and incentives to implement what we already know about wildfire and keep our communities safe?The proposal offered by this guide is a conceptual framework that local communities — governmental and non-governmental — can use over time. The framework, which this guide calls the “WUI Wildfire Planning Process,” consists primarily of a four-step, cyclical planning process that revolves around the inter-governmental National Cohesive Strategy Vision and Goals for wildfire, and is supported at all times by education and outreach. Although little known outside of the fire community, the National Cohesive Strategy Goals are simple, but important, goals established through a five year planning process (2009 to 2014) in which federal agencies, state, tribal and local governments, as well as non-governmental partners, built a common vision of how the country could address wildfire. The three goals of the Cohesive Strategy are maintaining landscapes; developing fire-adapted communities; and developing a multi-jurisdictional wildfire response based upon risk-based decisionmaking. These Cohesive Strategy Goals are the core around which the WUI Wildfire Planning Process revolves.The four active steps of the WUI Wildfire Planning Process, which the guide discusses in great depth, are: draft and adopt a community wildfire protection plan (CWPP); regulate and incentivize the built environment at all scales; implement, maintain and enforce regulations and incentives; and respond to substantial changes such as wildfires or the passage of time. Numerous examples and best practices are provided for each of these steps throughout the guide.The guide’s discussion of wildfire law and policy is also enriched by the inclusion of a robust risk perception survey, which was conducted by surveying nearly 20,000 Idaho households in wildfire priority areas throughout the state in Fall, 2015 and Winter, 2016. The guide provides significant helpful data worthy of investigation.The guide is further supplemented by a robust appendix of over 30 wildfire code provisions from throughout Idaho and the West that provide a start for any local government seeking a resource of models from which to draft wildfire codes.While the guide is intended to further wildfire planning specifically in Idaho, many of the techniques discussed, including the WUI Wildfire Planning Process outlined by the guide, are potentially valuable references for local communities throughout the West.

Using community archetypes to better understand differential community adaptation to wildfire risk

One of the immediate challenges of wildfire management concerns threats to human safety and property in residential areas adjacent to non-cultivated vegetation. One approach for relieving this problem is to increase human community 'adaptiveness' to deal with the risk and reality of fire in a variety of landscapes. The challenge in creating 'fire-adapted communities' (FACs) is the great diversity in character and make-up of populations at risk from wildfire. This paper outlines a recently developed categorization scheme for Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) communities based on a larger conceptual approach for understanding how social diversity is likely to influence the creation of FACs. The WUI categorization scheme situates four community archetypes on a continuum that recognizes dynamic change in human community functioning. We use results from the WUI classification scheme to outline key characteristics associated with each archetype and results from recent case studies to demonstrate the diversity across WUI communities. Differences among key characteristics of local social context will likely result in the need for different adaptation strategies to wildfire. While the WUI archetypes described here may not be broadly applicable to other parts of the world, we argue that the conceptual approach and strategies for systematically documenting local influences on wildfire adaptation have potential for broad application.This article is part of the themed issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'.

Unraveling the relative importance of factors driving post-fire regeneration trajectories in non-serotinous Pinus nigra forests

In the Mediterranean, non-serotinous pinewoods are suffering an increasing occurrence of high-severity crown fires that usually drive vegetation shifts to fire-adapted communities and a decrease in pine-dominated area. Here we used a case-study approach on a large area dominated by Pinus nigra Arn. ssp. salzmannii burned in 1998 to gain further understanding of the relative importance of different factors related to local topography (elevation, aspect, slope, curvature), pre-fire vegetation (land-use history, canopy cover) and fire behavior (burn severity, presence of unburned patches) as drivers of post-fire regeneration dynamics. The results find that pine shows locally resilient responses driven mainly by factors related to fire effects (presence of unburned patches) and the characteristics of the pre-fire vegetation (i.e. stable forest areas). When fire-induced changes from pine dominance to other types of vegetation occurred, landscape 15years post-fire was dominated by woody vegetation, with some rare grassland communities emerging under very specific conditions (mountain ridges, hilltops and rocky sites). Conversion from forest to shrubland occurred mainly in the most xeric sites (south-facing areas, in some cases with steep slopes) and areas dominated by young pine stands prior to the fire. We found manageable factors such as the pre-fire structure and composition of the vegetation strongly determine the occurrence of post-fire regeneration trajectories dominated by tree species regeneration. This knowledge can be used to define preventive management strategies oriented to direct regeneration dynamics in anticipation of fire occurrence. At landscape level, managing forest fuels to favor the occurrence of unburned patches and modify their spatial distribution along the burned landscape will favor a more resilient pine response. At stand level, adjusting silvicultural interventions to favor the natural establishment of late-successional tree species will favor post-fire oak regeneration.

Developing Custom Fire Behavior Fuel Models for Mediterranean Wildland–Urban Interfaces in Southern Italy

The dramatic increase of fire hazard in wildland-urban interfaces (WUIs) has required more detailed fuel management programs to preserve ecosystem functions and human settlements. Designing effective fuel treatment strategies allows to achieve goals such as resilient landscapes, fire-adapted communities, and ecosystem response. Therefore, obtaining background information on forest fuel parameters and fuel accumulation patterns has become an important first step in planning fuel management interventions. Site-specific fuel inventory data enhance the accuracy of fuel management planning and help forest managers in fuel management decision-making. We have customized four fuel models for WUIs in southern Italy, starting from forest classes of land-cover use and adopting a hierarchical clustering approach. Furthermore, we provide a prediction of the potential fire behavior of our customized fuel models using FlamMap 5 under different weather conditions. The results suggest that fuel model IIIP (Mediterranean maquis) has the most severe fire potential for the 95th percentile weather conditions and the least severe potential fire behavior for the 85th percentile weather conditions. This study shows that it is possible to create customized fuel models directly from fuel inventory data. This achievement has broad implications for land managers, particularly forest managers of the Mediterranean landscape, an ecosystem that is susceptible not only to wildfires but also to the increasing human population and man-made infrastructures.

Adapting to Wildfire: Rebuilding After Home Loss

Wildfire management now emphasizes fire-adapted communities that coexist with wildfires, although it is unclear how communities will progress to this goal. Hazards research suggests that response to wildfire—specifically, rebuilding after fire—may be a crucial opportunity for homeowner and community adaptation. We explore rebuilding after the 2010 Fourmile Canyon Fire from Boulder, CO, that destroyed 165 homes, to better understand individual and community adaptation after wildfire. We examined changes in perception of fire risk and structural characteristics and vegetation mitigation of rebuilt homes, to examine how homes, homeowners, and communities changed after fire. We found evidence that adaptation is occurring, as well as evidence that it is not. Overall, rebuilding was slow. More than 3½ years after the fire, only 30% of those who had lost homes had rebuilt. Postfire rebuilding will only change a fraction of homes, but it is a critical process to understand.

Synthesis of the conservation value of the early-successional stage in forests of eastern North America

As a result of changes in natural and anthropogenic disturbance regimes, the extent of early-successional forest across much of eastern North American is near historic lows, and continues to decline. This has caused many scientists to identify the conservation of early-successional species as a high priority. In this synthesis, we discuss the conservation implications of this loss of early-successional habitats using examples from the literature on songbirds. Early-successional “shrubland” bird species require conditions and resources present in recently disturbed sites. These conditions are ephemeral and change rapidly over time as sites become dominated by later-seral species. Historical disturbance regimes such as wind-throw, fire and flooding have been altered or suppressed in eastern forests through human activity such as conversion of forests to younger aged stands more resistant to wind, fire suppression and mesophication of fire-adapted communities, and suppression of beaver activity and flooding. Furthermore, anthropogenic disturbance has shifted over much of the region to types of land use that provide less shrubland habitat of lower quality than historically. Despite scientific evidence in support of this concern, there is still misunderstanding about the role of disturbance in maintaining biodiversity, and public opposition to management remains a challenge to conserving these communities. Contemporary approaches use natural disturbance regimes to inform management practices that employ historical agents where possible or surrogates when necessary to achieve desired future conditions defined on the basis of regional population or community status. Conservation of early-successional communities occurs within the context of other potentially conflicting ecological values, such as the conservation and enhancement of biologically mature forest. Recent findings, however, show shrubland habitat can augment diversity in forested landscapes by providing seasonal resources for mature-forest species, such as food or predator-free space for juvenile forest songbirds that seek out early-successional habitats during the transition to independence. Balancing the conservation of early-successional shrubland species with other, sometimes conflicting values is an active area of current conservation research. In some cases the conservation of shrubland birds can be coordinated with commercial activities like silviculture or maintenance of infrastructure (e.g. powerline corridors), although our work indicates that deliberate efforts expressly directed at conservation of early-successional shrubland species are more effective.

Land Development Patterns and Adaptive Capacity for Wildfire: Three Examples from Florida

“Fire-adapted” human communities have been promoted as essential for decreasing the costs of wildfire suppression while enhancing the ability of human populations to live with wildfire. We argue that achievement of fire-adapted communities will be improved by understanding how social elements of adaptive capacity for wildfire interact with structural conditions at the local level. Insights from focus groups conducted with local leaders and professionals are used to differentiate between the types/degrees of wildfire adaptation demonstrated in Lee County, Florida. We use structuration theory to explain how different manifestations of community action might be needed for adaptation to wildfire given different structural conditions. Results suggest that structural conditions (development patterns, biophysical conditions, and demographics/socioeconomics) influence adaptive capacity and identify local social characteristics and processes that support adaptation (interactional capacity/horizontal networks, local knowledge/skills, vertical information/resource networks, and organizational capacity). Assessing structural conditions and existing capacities of localities is a first step in fostering local adaptation.

Wildfire evacuation and its alternatives in a post-Black Saturday landscape: Catchy slogans and cautionary tales

Prior to 2009 the United States and Australia were seeing increased interest, implementation and research support for alternatives to evacuation during wildfire – a broad class of strategies that would enable residents to remain in their homes or other designated safe areas during the pass of a flame front. Yet policy discussion of alternatives to evacuation in both countries shifted in the wake of Australia's 2009 Black Saturday Fires, which resulted in 173 deaths and burned approximately 430,000 ha. Soon after, the United States and Australia began implementing new approaches to public and property safety during wildfire events. The goal of this manuscript is to discuss key provisions of these emerging approaches to public safety during wildfire and evaluate their possible legacies. We do so by contrasting approaches in both countries with research insights on alternatives to evacuation during wildfire events. Insights are also paired with broader lessons from research on hazard, risk communication and wildfire. Our analysis provides insight on how emerging approaches could impact broader policy objectives for ‘creating fire-adapted communities’ and/or affect resident responsibility for personal wildfire protection. We suggest ways to influence these possible legacies through careful implementation and possible revision of emerging approaches to public safety during wildfire.

Effects of Disturbance Frequency on Canopy Age Structure and Species Composition in a Managed Midwestern Oak Savanna

In the Midwest, the oak savanna is a unique plant community located between the western prairies and northern forests, but, once the most common plant community in Wisconsin, it is now one of the region's rarest plant communities. To assess the success of varying intensities of management practices, standard dendrochronology and vegetation surveying methods were used to determine the age structure and species composition in oak savanna sites that varied from intensely managed to unmanaged. Size and age distributions revealed that the number of distinct cohorts of oaks increased in less managed sites. Seedlings and saplings were present in high frequencies in all sites; however, management practices such as fire applications that were too frequent apparently decreased oak survivorship, as did the competition in the closed canopies of the unmanaged sites. A fire frequency of 2-3 years eliminates competition, but a frequency of 4-6 years, typical of fire-adapted forest communities, allows for slower-growing species and younger oaks to survive, while still maintaining a low density. In these conditions, where growth rates vary in time, the use of dendrochronology is necessary to obtain an accurate canopy structure for fire-adapted forest communities. Quercus macrocarpa was dominant in the more managed sites, but shade-tolerant species were dominant in the unmanaged site. At present, the canopy composition in the managed sites represented an oak savanna assemblage; however, the unmanaged composition was shifting to a woodland assemblage. Thus, remnant oak savanna can be over- or under-managed, and unmanaged oak savanna can be overlooked as woodlands.

Where there's smoke... There's Germination?

Seeds of many fire-adapted plants are very difficult to germinate, and some species have been impossible to propagate by seed. Recent research has shown that fumigating seeds with smoke or soaking them in smoke solutions improves germination of many species. The exact physiological mechanism for this response is unknown but using smoke as a pre-sowing seed treatment holds considerable promise for propagating plants for restoration of fire-adapted communities. In particular, smoke treatments can be used to germinate seeds of recalcitrant species. This paper reviews the current literature on smoke treatment of seeds with the purpose of encouraging these treatments on other species.