Many of wildland fire management's most vexing problems can be mitigated or solved through the application of appropriate social sciences. Social science can be used to solve problems from firefighter safety to defensible space. Community collaboration and fire education, fire economics and large fire cost containment, stakeholder and landowner cooperation in landscape scale fuels treatments, social acceptance of fire, smoke, and fuels treatments, social and economic impacts of fires on communities, and psychological effects of fatigue and situational awareness are some of the fire management issues that fire social science can help manage.

Evidence-based wildland fire management is the application of scientific reasoning principles and the results of fire science to guide fire planning, management, and policy formulation to accomplish fire management goals.

The problems of encouraging and facilitating the application of new ideas and technology in fire management are social problem. Social sciences such as innovation diffusion, social marketing, knowledge utilization, and adult learning are useful to technology transfer specialists.

Raw social science is seldom useful to fire planners, managers, and policy makers. Usually the results of more than one study have to be synthesized to have confidence in a finding or recommendation. Studies vary in quality. Scientific language needs translation into language used by fire managers.

Kinesiology, movement studies, exercise physiology, and related sciences have direct application to firefighter effectiveness, endurance, and training.

This site brings together fire scientists and fire science users. The topics are identified by fire planners and managers working with scientists. Research results are evaluated and synthesized by scientists but applications are developed by teams of scientists and managers in collaboration. Science users can ask questions of scientists and managers, request bibliographies, suggest research questions, connect with researchers to participate as partners in studies, and provide feedback on the usefulness of the resources offered here.