How Mobility Changes Impact Fire Ignition and Suppression Rates

Wildfire behavior shifted across the globe as human mobility dropped during pandemic restrictions, Cell Reports Sustainability reported in 2026.

The Tech TL;DR:
• Global wildfire patterns shifted during mobility restrictions, revealing two distinct regional trends driven by human activity.
• Prescribed burning areas dropped by half in 2020 compared to the 2013-2019 average across 12 studied countries.
• Future fire-risk projections must account for human behavior alongside weather and societal shifts.

Researchers tracked how fires reacted to different levels of mobility loss using fire counts in 0.5-degree grid cells. In countries with fewer fires, fire declined in almost a straight line as mobility decreased.

As movement dropped, nations with a higher frequency of fires displayed a gradual rise that eventually plateaued at roughly a 27 percent average. The researchers interpreted this as a sign that different mechanisms were at work.

The steady decline fits fewer human-driven ignitions, while the gradual rise points to weakened suppression. Wang mentioned that there could be other reasons, such as changes in local land use.

Fire management activities may have also been interrupted by mobility restrictions, potentially resulting in fewer fires being intentionally ignited for management purposes. The researchers examined 12 countries with records of prescribed burning.

Compared to the 2013–2019 baseline average, the acreage covered by prescribed fires in 2020 dropped by nearly half. Naturally, land-management cycles and fire return intervals also cause the placement and extent of prescribed burns to fluctuate annually, making this evaluation more complex.

When areas subjected to prescribed burning were excluded in those 12 countries, the drop in fires there shifted from 45.3 percent down to 27.8 percent. This research has limits partly because it relied on mobile phone data to track human movement.

This kind of data might not capture human activity in rural areas where coverage may be limited. Additionally, because the study concentrated solely on the initial six months of each year, the effects on territories where blazes occur more frequently during the second half of the year, such as the western United States, may not have been fully captured.

Wang explained that this quasi-experimental design provides strong associational evidence but is not a controlled experiment. Wang emphasized that the study is not an evaluation of fire policies.

The analysis does, however, suggest that there’s no single ideal policy response. Where fires decreased, human ignition seems to dominate. In those areas, reducing accidental ignitions through public education and maintaining beneficial prescribed burning can be important.

On the other hand, areas where fires increased might need to address reduced monitoring and suppression. Maintaining firefighting and patrol capacity during disruptions can be important there.

Wang added, “Overall, a uniform policy is unlikely to work, and strategies should be tailored to local human-fire relationships.”

Fire-risk projections might benefit from accounting for human behavior. That way, more accurate fire projections can be made even as weather and society change.

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