How contemporary bioclimatic and human controls change global fire regimes

Kelley, Douglas I.; Bistinas, Ioannis; Whitley, Robert; Burton, Chantelle; Marthews, Toby R.; Dong, Ning

doi:10.1038/s41558-019-0540-7

Cited by 122 publications

(168 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…Our results are generally consistent with Meyn et al (2007), who found that decreasing fuel moisture (increasing dryness) was important in promoting fire in a wide range of forests and other biomass-rich, rarely dry vegetation types, and Krawchuk and Moritz (2011), who found that mesic areas where biomass is relatively abundant experienced more fire activity as fuels dried, as indexed by soil moisture. Kelley et al (2019) identified some forests (though not all) where fire regimes have shifted consistent with this relationship between fire activity and fuel moisture trends.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

“…In this modelling study we did not attempt to explain seasonal or inter-annual variability in fire activity in terms of corresponding temporal variability in each fundamental determinant of fire (Abatzoglou et al, 2018;Kelley et al, 2019). Nevertheless, because we used multi-decadal fire and predictor records, the relationships implicitly reflected this variation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An extension of this modelling approach to address monthly to seasonal timescales and variation in vegetation structure may yield insights into the sensitivity of large fire probability to its fundamental determinants at a level potentially more relevant to fire managers. Further research could more directly explore the potential interactions between human effects, such as vegetation clearing/modification or infrastructure patterns, on each of the four primary determinants of fire probability, as done in other studies (Bistinas et al, 2014;Kelley et al, 2019) or the consider alternative proxy(s) for each determinant. A range of empirical relationships have been derived and could be used for this purpose, such as links between weather and fuel moisture FIGURE 4 | Potential future trajectory of large fire risk in currently forested areas.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

et al. 2020

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Variations in global patterns of burning and fire regimes are relatively well measured, however, the degree of influence of the complex suite of biophysical and human drivers of fire remains controversial and incompletely understood. Such an understanding is required in order to support current fire management and to predict the future trajectory of global fire patterns in response to changes in these determinants. In this study we explore and compare the effects of four fundamental controls on fire, namely the production of biomass, its drying, the influence of weather on the spread of fire and sources of ignition. Our study area is southern Australia, where fire is currently limited by either fuel production or fuel dryness. As in most fire-prone environments, the majority of annual burned area is due to a relatively small number of large fires. We train and test an Artificial Neural Network's ability to predict spatial patterns in the probability of large fires (>1,250 ha) in forests and grasslands as a function of proxies of the four major controls on fire activity. Fuel load is represented by predicted forested biomass and remotely sensed grass biomass, drying is represented by fraction of the time monthly potential evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation, weather is represented by the frequency of severe fire weather conditions and ignitions are represented by the average annual density of reported ignitions. The response of fire to these drivers is often non-linear. Our results suggest that fuel management will have limited capacity to alter future fire occurrence unless it yields landscape-scale changes in fuel amount, and that shifts between, rather than within, vegetation community types may be more important. We also find that increased frequency of severe fire weather could increase the likelihood of large fires in forests but decrease it in grasslands. These results have the potential to support long-term strategic planning and risk assessment by fire management agencies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

et al. 2020

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“…and 265 systematic evaluation of their performance is ongoing as part of the fire modelling intercomparison project (FIREMIP) (Hantson et al, 2016;Rabin et al, 2017;Teckentrup et al, 2019;Forkel et al, 2019). Our hydroclimatic model is conceptually similar to a global model proposed by Kelley et al (2019) that predicts burned area as a function of four limitations (i.e. fuel continuity, fuel moisture, potential ignitions and a suppression index).…”

Section: Discussion 255mentioning

confidence: 99%

A hydroclimatic model for the distribution of fire on Earth

Boer

Dios

Stefaniak

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. The distribution of fire on Earth has been monitored from space for several decades, yet the geography of global fire regimes has proven difficult to reproduce from interactions of climate, vegetation, terrain and land use by empirical and process-based fire models. Here, we propose a simple, yet robust, model for global fire potential based on fundamental biophysical constraints controlling fire activity in all biomes. In our <q>top-down</q> approach we ignored the dynamics of individual fires and focus on capturing hydroclimatic constraints on the production and (seasonal) desiccation of fuels to predict the potential mean annual fractional burned area, here estimated by the 0.99 percentile of the observed mean annual fractional burned area (F0.99). We show that 80&#8201;% of the global variation in F0.99 can be explained from a combination of mean annual precipitation and potential evapotranspiration. The proposed hydroclimatic model reproduced observed fire activity levels equally well across all biomes and provided the first objective underpinning for the dichotomy of global fire regimes in two domains characterised by either fuel production limitations on fire or fuel dryness limitations on fire. A sharp transition between the two climate-fire domains was found to occur at a mean annual aridity index of 1.9 (1.94&#8201;&#177;&#8201;0.02). Our model provides a simple but comprehensive basis for predicting fire potential under current and future climates, as well as an overarching framework for estimating effects of human activity via ignition regimes and manipulation of vegetation.

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“…Today, roughly 3% of the Earth's surface burns annually (van der Werf et al 2017). Current fire regimes are greatly influenced by humans through ignition sources, suppression, and changes in land cover and fuels (Bistinas et al 2013, Kelley et al 2019. Fire regimes are also rapidly changing, a function of changing climate patterns, extreme weather, land use, human population, and vegetation distributions (Jolly et al 2015, Andela et al 2017, Veraverbeke et al 2017.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Focus on changing fire regimes: interactions with climate, ecosystems, and society

Rogers

Balch

Goetz

et al. 2020

Environ. Res. Lett.

143

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Fire is a complex Earth system phenomenon that fundamentally affects vegetation distributions, biogeochemical cycling, climate, and human society across most of Earth's land surface. Fire regimes are currently changing due to multiple interacting global change drivers, most notably climate change, land use, and direct human influences via ignition and suppression. It is therefore critical to better understand the drivers, patterns, and impacts of these changing fire regimes now and continuing into the future. Our review contributes to this focus issue by synthesizing results from 27 studies covering a broad range of topics. Studies are categorized into (i) Understanding contemporary fire patterns, drivers, and effects; (ii) Human influences on fire regimes; (iii) Changes in historical fire regimes; (iv) Future projections; (v) Novel techniques; and (vi) Reviews. We conclude with a discussion on progress made, major remaining research challenges, and recommended directions.

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How contemporary bioclimatic and human controls change global fire regimes

Cited by 122 publications

References 55 publications

The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

A hydroclimatic model for the distribution of fire on Earth

Focus on changing fire regimes: interactions with climate, ecosystems, and society

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