Wildfires in Iowa? Experts say it’s an overlooked threat

Wildfires and wildfire risk are a fact of life in places like California and parts of Canada, where news — and smoke — from the fires captures national attention. But as the climate continues to change, other regions of North America are starting to see elevated wildfire risks as well.

Iowa, for one, is seeing wildfire risk projections grow in some areas of the state.

An interactive map published in February by the Iowa Environmental Council uses layers of data to visualize how different climate change factors may affect the state in the coming years.

The IEC’s Climate Change and Environmental Health Map highlights more than 45 environmental pollutants, climate change threats, and public health data points, and can drill down to individual neighborhoods.

Among the information available through the map are projected agriculture losses, cancer levels, and information about where wastewater discharges occur. The map also can layer environmental risk factors with Iowa demographics, like low-income areas, unemployment and health factors, like asthma.

One of the environmental threats incorporated in the map is wildfire risk. The map displays the share or properties in an area that are at risk of fire over the next 30 years. It assigns a percentile, which is that area’s risk relative to other areas. A higher percentile means that area is more likely than others to experience a wildfire.

Cody Smith, senior policy advocate at the Council, created the map using federal data downloaded from government websites. Smith said much of the data has since been removed from government websites, following President Donald Trump taking office in January.

Of all the environmental risks — or “indicators” — included on the map, Smith said Iowa’s wildfire risk jumped out to him the most.

“It was really surprising to me,” Smith said. “Because I just don’t think a lot about fire risk in Iowa.”

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Several areas of the state had higher percentiles for fire risk than he anticipated, Smith said.

For example, a small portion of Woodbury County in western Iowa had a wildfire risk in the 92nd percentile.

According to Wildfire Risk to Communities, an organization that measures wildfire risk across the country using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service, areas that score in the 91st percentile or above for wildfires are considered to have “very high” risk.

For areas like Woodbury County, this means that only 8 percent of areas across the country have a higher risk of wildfire.

In Tama County, areas around the towns of Tama and Toledo are in the 85th and 87th percentiles for wildfire risk. Belle Plaine in Benton County is at the 89th percentile.

And an area in Scott County, just north of Davenport, has a fire risk in the 74th percentile.

A percentile between the 70 and 90 is considered “high.”

“Nationally, these line up with places in California and Colorado and even Tennessee and North Carolina,” Smith said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency defines a wildfire as an unplanned fire burning in natural or wildland areas such as forests, shrub lands, grasslands, or prairies.

FEMA, which is housed under the Department of Homeland Security, runs the National Risk Index, which rates the risk of wildfire for different communities across the country.

Iowa Ideas In-Depth Week Explores Extreme Weather in Iowa

Iowa Ideas, a project of The Gazette, is hosting a free, virtual In-Depth Week series called Extreme Weather in Iowa, Aug. 11-15.

The week features five sessions, held 12-1 p.m. each day. Full session descriptions, including a list of panelists, and registration can be found at iowaideas.com. Here is the week’s schedule:

• Monday: How has Iowa’s weather changed? As Iowa grapples with changing weather patterns and their impacts, what are the facts when it comes to floods, derechos, microbursts and other extreme weather in the last decade?

• Tuesday: Health impacts of extreme weather: Whether it’s the air quality from Canadian wildfires, humidity, or seasonal allergies, this session will explore the health impacts Iowans face with Iowa’s changing climate.

• Wednesday: Economic threats of extreme weather: Iowans have suffered more than their fair share of natural disasters, and the losses that come with them. How is Iowa’s changing weather impacting the state’s economy?

• Thursday: Hardening of agriculture to withstand weather extremes: Iowa’s agriculture industry is among the most adept at pivoting. What are the benefits and trade-offs of the latest refinement efforts?

• Friday: Designing for the future of increased extreme weather: With the increase of severe weather events in Iowa, lessons have been learned. How is design of infrastructure and housing changing as a result?

Driving the fire risk

David Flory is a teaching professor in the Earth, Atmosphere and Climate Department at Iowa State University.

When it comes wildfire risk, he said drought conditions typically come with it.

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“When there are dry conditions and low soil moistures, plants dry out and you have increased fire risk,” Flory said. “You could talk about winds in terms of increased fire risk, but I really think it's the drought conditions that are the biggest player.”

Iowa experienced its longest drought in more than 60 years between 2020 and 2024. The worst of the drought was recorded Dec. 19, 2023, when 35 percent of the state was classified as being in “extreme drought.”

The drought broke in May 2024, but dry conditions crept back in last summer and fall.

Today, the state has no drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor — only dry pockets. In fact, July was Iowa’s second-wettest July on record (only 1993 saw more rain), with more than double the average monthly rainfall.

Flory said Eastern Iowa tends to see more precipitation, on average, than the western side of the state or Nebraska. As a result, he said western Iowa uses more irrigation practices to water farmland. In 2017, only about 222,000 of Iowa’s 30 million acres of farmland were irrigated.

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But areas like prairies and forested areas are not irrigated. So when drought conditions come in, the plants in those areas stay dry. In those areas, Flory said fire risk can remain high.

Aside from drought and dry conditions, Flory said high winds also can play a role in wildfire risk.

“When you have higher winds and you have ongoing fires, it's really hard to contain them. Embers will float in the winds or get moved around, and that’s really difficult to manage,” Flory said. “Winds are important here, but they do make it difficult to contain fires when they do occur.”

An ‘overlooked’ issue

Jason Walker, fire program leader for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, said the fire risk in Iowa generally is overlooked.

“The existence of the threat is here, and at some point in time, we ultimately could face something catastrophic and want to be prepared,” Walker said. “We work on those kinds of things annually and try to prepare the best we can.”

Walker and his team from the DNR are currently in Willow Creek, California, working on fire risk prevention in Six Rivers National Forest.

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In California, the Gifford Fire has burned at least 131 square miles of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, with just 9 percent containment, the Associated Press reported. It is the biggest fire in the state so far this year.

Canada is experiencing its second-worst wildfire season on record, with almost 4,000 fires recorded already this calendar year, NPR reported. The smoke from the fires — many of which are considered “out of control” — drifted south earlier this month, prompting air quality warnings across the Midwest.

Walker said he believes fire threats are overlooked in Iowa because it is predominately an agricultural state.

“That being said, we see some pretty crazy fires every year in our standing cornfields when they're cured in the fall,” Walker said.

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Over the last several decades, Walker said environmental agencies and organizations have worked to analyze theoretical wildfire risks across the U.S.

Walker pointed to the work that Northeast-Midwest State Foresters Alliance does with analyzing wildfire risks, especially through its Northeast-Midwest Wildfire Risk Explorer interactive map.

The map looks at fire risk across the Upper Midwest, including Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.

The map measures each state’s fire risk based on the potential damage to structures due to wildfires.

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According to the map, most of Iowa has a low to moderate fire risk. However, similar to the Iowa Environmental Council’s map, some areas show fire risks that are considered “very high.”

The locations labeled “very high” appear across the entire state, but higher risk areas are clustered on the western side of the state.

Walker said there are multiple factors that go into fire risk assessments, but western Iowa generally is at a greater risk than other parts of the state because more of the land is used for agriculture.

“There's a high percentage of Iowa that most of the year is just literally unburnable. It's either green corn or black dirt,” Walker said. “But when you get into areas like the western part of the state — and the Loess Hills area specifically — you (have) larger tracts of land with burnable fuels.”

Preventing wildfires

With wildfires, Walker said his team at the DNR tries to “preach prevention” when talking with property owners about how to prevent fires and protect their homes.

A lot of prevention comes down to creating a “defensible space.” He said making a defensible space can be as simple as cutting down tall grasses in some fields or near buildings to reduce the amount of fuel fires can pick up as they move.

For homeowners, Walker said this could mean making sure a wooden deck is stained or protected against fire, so that it won’t catch fire or help the fire spread.

“If you have tall grass or highly flammable fuels right up to your house, by the time that fire gets to your house, the firefighters really have no chance at stopping that or slowing that fire down before it consumes your house,” he said. “That's what you see in a lot of instances, like in Los Angeles.”

He said most wildfires that occur in Iowa are grass fires off the edge of an interstate.

“Small flames don't get big news like you do out west and that's really the awareness,” Walker said. “I think people become complacent and don't think about it.”

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Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. She is also a contributing writer for the Ag and Water Desk, an independent journalism collaborative focusing on the Mississippi River Basin.

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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.com