This project will advance knowledge and create tools to support prescribed burns and managed wildfire use to address the wildfire crisis in the western U.S. It will also help train the skilled workforce needed to mitigate wildfire impacts. The project will close use-inspired research gaps on key wildfire mitigation strategies identified by decision-makers. These include social barriers, economic effects on communities, impacts on water systems, and ecological outcomes. A team from across Idaho, New Mexico, and Oklahoma will lead this work, with expertise in social science, economics, ecology, geoscience, engineering, computer science, and arts. Boise State will lead the effort in partnership with the University of New Mexico, Navajo Technical University, Northwest Nazarene University and University of Oklahoma. Finally, this project will develop research, education, and outreach capacity at a range of institutions to support national goals in disaster resilience and artificial intelligence. This project will investigate feedbacks between prescribed burns and wildfire use—collectively referred to as managed fires—and socio-environmental systems. It will generate novel, use-inspired insights into multi-dimensional, multi-sector impacts of managed fires. The research will integrate advanced statistical methods, machine learning, and ecosystem modeling with in-situ observations and mixed-methods approaches to assess watershed-scale hydrologic outcomes, optimize ecological bene