Prescribed burns can decrease the severity of future fires by about 16 percent and slash smoke pollution by 14 percent, a new study has found.

These controlled blazes are much more effective outside the wildland-urban interface (WUI) — the area where homes meet wild vegetation — than within it, according to the study, published on Thursday in AGU Advances.

“Prescribed fire is often promoted as a promising tool in theory to dampen wildfire impacts, but we show clear empirical evidence that prescribed burning works in practice,” lead author Makoto Kelp, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, said in a statement.

“It’s not a cure-all, but it’s a strategy that can reduce harm from extreme wildfires when used effectively,” Kelp added.

Experts already consider prescribed burns........

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