Facing The Future of California Fire with Geographer Obi Kaufmann
“The future of humanity’s relationship with fire is dependent on humanity’s relationship with itself,” writes the geographer, artist and author Obi Kaufmann in his 2024 book, “The State of Fire.” Kaufmann knows California like Kevin Starr or Mike Davis. He’s authored six books in the last 8 years and his interdisciplinary work addresses ecology, biodiversity and geography while using his own hand-painted watercolor maps to tell the story.
Through mapping fire habitats, he points the way toward a more harmonious relationship with fire by sharing a vision that combines traditional ecological knowledge, scientific innovation and land management. The verisimilitude of his work is what you’d expect from someone whose astrophysicist father was the Director of the Griffith Observatory in the early 1970s. I spoke with Kaufmann via Zoom about our recent firestorm and what we can do to be more prepared.
What Causes Fires?
Most large California fires happen in the “wildland-urban interface.” This is, as Kaufmann writes, “where the built world of infrastructure meets untended landscapes in which few humans currently live.” Kaufmann presents functional definitions to bring science down to earth. “Climate whiplash” is another leading factor. Climate whiplash is exactly what it sounds like and exactly what Southern California has recently had: two years of heavy rain followed by a year with almost none. When the overgrown vegetation meets dryness, it's the perfect recipe for fire. Then combine climate whiplash with 100-mile per hour Santa Anas or Northern California’s version — the Diablo winds — and fire is almost inevitable.
In our conversation, Kaufmann said that the Eaton Fire (14,201 acres) and the Palisades Fire (23,713 acres) were relatively small compared to Northern California fires like the 2020 August Complex Fire which burned over six counties ravaging 1,032,648 acres and the 2021 Dixie Fire which burned five counties across 963,309 acres. These areas are much less densely populated than the Palisades or Altadena, but Kaufmann said that the Eaton and Palisades Fires are both among the deadliest California fires ever.
Kaufmann argues that frequent disruptions to our biodiversity create more fire, climate change and further ecological collapse. Moreover, he declares, “California’s biodiversity largely exists as it does because of fire and not despite it.” In our Zoom conversation, he said, “California is fire.”
As wildfires impact our communities, your trusted public media organizations have come together to deliver free, reliable, and essential news and updates.
Geographic Literacy: Know Where You Live
One solution to harmonizing with fire Kaufmann proposes is what he calls, geographic literacy. “Geographic literacy,” as he says in his 2017 book, “The California Field Atlas,” “involves a basic knowledge of one’s place: its systems of ecology, its historic narrative, and its political trajectory. Geographic literacy is the baseline for any plan of collective sustainability.” This thread continues through all of his work. For example, if more Californians knew about California native plants, they would plant natives that are more resilient to fire and more harmonious with our ecology than an invasive, highly flammable eucalyptus.
“There is a lot of magic in the naming of things,” Kaufmann contends. “The more we know of nature’s secrets, the more we can enjoy it. Simply being able to call the elements of nature by their proper names helps us to experience them and allows their beauty to unfold, both intellectually and emotionally.” In “The State of Fire,” Kaufmann dives deep into California fire history, where they occurred and how we can be more prepared. He defines key terms like biodiversity and the wildland-urban interface. Biodiversity, he writes, “is the measure of the amount of species and is also related to the resiliency of any ecosystem’s ability to withstand disturbance or damage.” California is a global biodiversity hotspot with a greater variety of plant and animal species than almost any other place globally.
After discussing biodiversity, he presents a complete list of almost 40 plant families including the maple, mustard, sumac and sunflower families. “Every one of these families is important,” he says. “Every one of these families has an ancient relationship with fire. Whether that fire is measured by intensity (how hot it burns), its severity (how much damage it does), or its return (how often it comes back), fire dictates the local population, the configuration, and the distribution of all plant communities — and therefore all animal communities.”
Our Future Depends on How We Adapt
Kaufmann’s book presents nine maps of California geographic regions charting dozens of major fires since 2000. He writes that “a fire’s size is not necessarily representative of the fire’s significance. For example, in terms of human life and property, sixteen of the twenty most destructive wildfires took place between 2003 and 2023, and most of those fires don’t crack the top twenty in terms of overall fire size.”
Kaufmann’s looks back to before humans came to California. “Fire,” he writes, “has sculpted every arboreal, shrubby, and grassland habitat within the California floristic province. It has informed coevolved ecological adaptation strategies for tens of thousands of years.” He says that prior to Euro-American colonization, “California’s forest habitats remained consistent primarily because of Indigenous fire application.” I asked him if Indigenous fire application is what we some call “controlled burns.”
For Kaufmann, “Medicinal burns” is a better term. Some call the practice, “land medicine.” “Land medicine,” he states “is a piece of traditional ecological knowledge that may be elusive to federal and state fire practitioners who wish to implement a standardized order of operations across every locale, whereas indigenous thought is catered to a specific area, with history and endemic relationships held sacred.” This is another reason why Kaufmann emphasizes geographic literacy because federal and state policymakers should know the features of their respective ecosystems to apply the right land medicine. If we all knew our own local ecosystems, we’d make wiser decisions with our landscaping, architecture and urban planning.
A Vision for the Future
Ultimately Kaufmann presents fire as a tool of regeneration rather than apocalypse. When we remember ancient stories and learn from the state’s fire history, we can create a safer future. In addition to geographic literacy and increased attention to biodiversity, he advocates more mindful design in our infrastructure that will deter fire. Though “the cost of implementing such infrastructural design is high,” he states, “following a fire catastrophe, the cost of not having done so is surely higher.”
Kaufmann sees a new vision of California’s landscape and infrastructure “powered by a human community ready to tell stories again of resource reciprocation and abundance.” The vision will “be made real through applied elegance of adaptive architectural, ecological, and political design that maximizes the integration of the natural and endemic process of pyrogenic regeneration on the land and inside ourselves.” There’s an existential undertone he asserts that asks us to look at our own actions.
“Californians have the tools at hand to get the job done,” he declares. “Just as pyrodiversity has informed biodiversity, fire informs human ecology and will increasingly inform economic development. Popular knowledge of what California burns is essential to the process.” He concludes by saying “You are essential to the process.” The italics are his. We would all be wise to listen and learn.
