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Fire severity measures vegetation death caused by fire. In forests, high-severity forest fire kills essentially all trees. Many western US forests are not well adapted for this. We used satellite imagery to make high-resolution maps of fire severity for >4,300 forest fires in California from 1985-2024. We found that as the annual forest area burned increased 10-fold during this time, which was already known, the area burned by high-severity fire increased more than 30-fold. High severity fire shifted from the least common fire-severity class in California’s forests to the most common. These trends were linked to atmospheric drying and warming. The ability of drying and warming to drive increases in fire severity were strongest in more densely forested areas.
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This page is a summary of: High-severity fire now dominant in California forests, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2532829123.
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