Knowledge for Wildfire: improving management of UK wildfire risk through knowledge exchange

The KE Fellowship and associated Knowledge for Wildfire project is funded by the UK’s Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) Knowledge Exchange scheme. The KE Fellow is seconded for a period of three years with a small budget available to support project activities until autumn 2015. The project is hosted by Geography, School of Environment, Education and Development at the University of Manchester, who provide administrative support. It is guided by a Steering Group of academic, Government, Fire Service and land management experts. Wildfire is a cross-cutting issue, so a wider Advisory Panel is being set up through the England and Wales Wildfire Forum to represent cross-sector interests. The project aims are to maximise the use of existing NERC-funded research and promote mutually beneficial new research and KE projects on wildfire. Objectives are to: (i) join up emerging cross-sector, cross-disciplinary interests in wildfire; (ii) apply and adapt NERC's fire-related research to improve the evidence base for managing wildfire risk; (iii) facilitate new partnership research and knowledge exchange projects to fill knowledge gaps. The KE fellow's role is as acentral point of contact and knowledge broker between NERC researchers and wildfire management practitioners and policymakers.The KfWf project developed from the FIRES seminar series – Fire Interdisciplinary Research on Ecosystem Services; fire and climate change in UK moorlands and heaths. The seminars were a lively set of workshops hosted in Edinburgh, Manchester and the Peak District. They drew on wildfire expertise from a diverse range of stakeholders, including firefighters, academics, land owners, gamekeepers and conservation groups and attracted a high level of international participation from Europe and the USA.