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Wildfire activity has increased in recent years in the United States, endangering both environment and society. Appropriate management of this phenomenon is only achievable with a thorough understanding of the critical factors influencing wildfire activity in each region. In three essays, I use statistical and mathematical models to examine wildfires and propose solutions to mitigate their impact on society. In the first essay, I focused on building a systematic framework for modeling wildfire as a coupled human-natural system. I employ system dynamics modeling, which was previously applied in various fields, including healthcare, sustainability, and disaster mitigation. I show how, in the absence of exogenous factors such as temperature or lightning, the human perception of fire danger may establish a feedback loop that can yield significant trends such as fluctuation or even fluctuation with rising amplitude when linked with the natural system. This conclusion is counter-intuitive, given that the human contribution to wildfire is typically described in the literature using constant or semi-constant variables. Additionally, I analyzed the impact of three important fire protection measures on reducing burning rates (prescribed burning, enhancing immediate suppression accomplishment, and regulating the rate of WUI growth). The research concludes that appropriately integrating several policies can result in a synergistic effect that is greater than the sum of the effects of the individual policies. The second essay calibrates the model built in the first essay and examines wildfire trends across the contiguous United States. The simulation results closely match the real data, and the model serves as a foundation for data-driven policy research. To be more precise, I fit the model to each state separately and then compare the model's goodness of fit. Following that, I examine the influence of various policies and scenarios on wildfire behavior. In the scenario, I examine the effect of maintaining constant temperatures and precipitation levels relative to the average values for these variables over the last century. For the policy analysis, I examine the influence of three policies on each state (prescribed burning, increasing immediate suppression achievement, and regulating the rate of WUI development). Here, I provide state-specific suggestions about the primary factors that contribute to wildfires and the most effective policies for each state. In the third essay, I have implemented the Oregon wildfire history dataset and integrated it with two other aerial datasets, including meteorological data gathered by weather stations located around the state and counties. Then, using hierarchical modeling on over 10,000 wildfire ignitions, I developed a classification system for determining if a given fire has the potential to grow major or not. However, utilizing a huge dataset and a variety of resources presents several obstacles, such as the presence of missing data. I imputed the missing numbers using a sophisticated mathematical approach called "Predictive Mean Matching". / Doctor of Philosophy / Wildfire activity has increased in recent decades in the United States, which put many people in danger. Climate change, the Settlement of people in the Wildland Urban Interface, and an increase in vegetation density each play a role in this increase. In this dissertation, we discuss the wildfire in the United States in three essays. In the first essay, we develop a mathematical model to show how humans and nature affect wildfire activity in any area. We then test different major wildfire management policies on the hypothetical situation to compare the outcome of these policies together. In the second essay, we use the model developed in the essay (with some minor changes) to model the wildfire activity in 11 states of the U.S. which has the most wildfire activity in recent years. First, we show that our model can replicate the wildfire activity in each state. Second, we test the effect of wildfire mitigation policies on each state. This essay proposes state-specific policy recommendations based on the main reasons for the increase in wildfire activity in each state. Finally, in the third essay, we develop a statistical model to predict the existence of large wildfires in the next month in Oregon counties. We use climate, land, and fire history data to develop a warning system. Policymakers can use this system to move the fire suppression resources to counties with a high probability of experiencing large wildfires over the next month. Finally, all essays aim to enhance our understanding of the reasons for the increase in wildfire activity in recent years and suggest finding the appropriate way to deal with this change to reduce the effect of wildfire on human life.

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a philosopher who became known for the change in the direction of Western philosophical thought, for what he called the awakening of dogmatic sleep, or even the Copernican revolution of thinking, critical philosophy, taught geography at the University of Königsberg of the years of 1756, began his teaching career until 1796, ending his official teaching activities at the university, making a total of 49 geography courses over 40 years of teaching. Geography, therefore, goes through all stages of development of academic teaching and its philosophy, from the pre-critical period before 1781 to the critical period of criticism of the Pure Reason (1781A/1787B), the Practical Rationale (1788) and the Faculty of Judge (1790), showing the irreplaceable role that geography played in the development of its teaching and philosophical activities, to the point of being considered as the knowledge of the world without which one did not advance in critical philosophical, but enlightened and mundane, given space-temporally. Kant, in this sense, develops a close relationship between a philosophy that manifests itself geographically and an eminently philosophical geography. Thus the relation between philosophy and geography and of philosophy with the philosophy of geography professor and philosopher of Königsberg, as well as the nuances that emerge from this relationship, is the central objective of our research endeavor, which will be evidenced by the complexity that geography for Kant is becoming over time, because it is the science that concatenates the relationship between the human being and nature, grounding the human-natural relations within the limits of the frontiers of humanly valid scientific knowledge, the phenomenal, both from the point of view universal and singular view. In the development of the research, we go through works that extend from the years 1755 to the post-Third Critical period of 1790, showing that the spatio-temporal, geographical, natural-human relationship of Kant's world knowledge is established by a dynamic, which results in a systematicity and an organicity that is not only mechanical-causal but also teleological, which lacks observation, description and explanation, therefore, of a geographical philosophy and a philosophical geography, without which one does not learn to philosophize, therefore, it does not become clarifies and does not become a geographical citizen of the world. / Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), filósofo que ficou conhecido pela mudança nos rumos do pensamento filosófico ocidental, por aquilo que ele chamou de “despertar do sono dogmático”, ou ainda de “revolução copernicana do pensar”, a filosofia crítica, lecionou geografia na universidade de Königsberg dos anos de 1756, início de sua carreira docente, até 1796, fim de suas atividades oficiais de docência na universidade, perfazendo um total de 49 cursos de geografia ao longo de 40 anos de ensino. A geografia, portanto, passa por todas as etapas de desenvolvimento docente acadêmico e de sua filosofia, desde o período chamado de pré-crítico, antes de 1781, ao período crítico, das críticas da Razão Pura (1781A/1787B), da Razão Prática (1788) e da Faculdade de Julgar (1790), mostrando o papel insubstituível que a geografia teve no desenvolvimento de suas atividades docentes e filosóficas, ao ponto de ser considerada como o conhecimento do mundo sem o qual não se avançava ao filosofar crítico, não escolar, mas esclarecido e mundano, dado espaço-temporalmente. Kant, nesse sentido, desenvolve uma relação estreita entre uma filosofia que se manifesta geograficamente e uma geografia eminentemente filosófica. Assim, a relação entre filosofia e geografia e desta com a filosofia no pensamento do professor de geografia e filósofo de Königsberg, bem como as nuances que dessa relação emergem, é o objetivo central de nossa empreitada investigativa, que será evidenciada pela complexidade que a geografia para Kant vai se tornando ao longo do tempo, por ser a ciência que concatena a relação entre o ser humano e a natureza, fundamentando as relações humano-naturais dentro dos limites das fronteiras do conhecimento científico humanamente válido, o fenomênico, tanto do ponto de vista universal quanto singular. No desenvolvimento da pesquisa, passamos por obras que se estendem dos anos de 1755 ao período pós Terceira Crítica de 1790, mostrando que a relação espaço-temporal, geográfica, natural-humana, do conhecimento do mundo em Kant se estabelece por uma relação dinâmica, que resulta em uma sistematicidade e uma organicidade que é não só mecânico-causal, mas também teleológica, que carece de observação, descrição e explicação, portanto, de uma filosofia geográfica e de uma geografia filosófica, sem a qual não se aprende a filosofar, logo, não se esclarece e não se torna um cidadão geográfico, do mundo. / São Cristóvão, SE