Regional projections of the likelihood of very large wildland fires under a changing climate in the contiguous Western United States

Stavros, E. Natasha; Abatzoglou, John T.; McKenzie, Donald; Larkin, Narasimhan K.

doi:10.1007/s10584-014-1229-6

Cited by 113 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Studies have shown that large fires are driven by antecedent climatic factors that promote fuel abundance plus extreme fire weather and climatic factors (e.g., wind, drought, high temperatures) at the time of fire ignition [3,18,26,34,49,56]. However, our results suggest that the pattern between fire size and biomass varied substantially within and across U.S. ecoregions.…”

Section: Environmental Controls On Large Fire Sizecontrasting

confidence: 61%

“…Given the strong correlations previously identified between large fires and climate [3,18,34,49,56], we expected large fires across the U.S. to be more likely during dry, hot summer months in the western U.S. In the eastern U.S., the seasonality of large human-caused fires was highly correlated with the seasonality of human-caused fires of all sizes across most eastern ecoregions (Figure 4).…”

Section: Large Fire Seasonalitymentioning

confidence: 95%

“…In the northwestern U.S., the seasonal correlation between large fires and all fires was lower (Figure 4), suggesting that climate conditions may play a more important role in facilitating large fires here. Nonetheless, even in ecoregions of the intermountain west where climate is known to influence large fires [2,12,56], human ignitions explained a substantial portion of the seasonal pattern of large fires (r > 0.66; Figure 4). This finding suggests that ignition pressure, and human expansion of ignitions [5], plays a much larger role in influencing large fires than previously thought.…”

Section: Large Fire Seasonalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Human-Related Ignitions Increase the Number of Large Wildfires across U.S. Ecoregions

Nagy¹,

Fusco

Bradley

et al. 2018

Fire

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108

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Large fires account for the majority of burned area and are an important focus of fire management. However, 'large' is typically defined by a fire size threshold, minimizing the importance of proportionally large fires in less fire-prone ecoregions. Here, we defined 'large fires' as the largest 10% of wildfires by ecoregion (n = 175,222 wildfires from 1992 to 2015) across the United States (U.S.). Across ecoregions, we compared fire size, seasonality, and environmental conditions (e.g., wind speed, fuel moisture, biomass, vegetation type) of large human-and lighting-started fires that required a suppression response. Mean large fire size varied by three orders of magnitude: from 1 to 10 ha in the Northeast vs. >1000 ha in the West. Humans ignited four times as many large fires as lightning, and were the dominant source of large fires in the eastern and western U.S. (starting 92% and 65% of fires, respectively). Humans started 80,896 large fires in seasons when lightning-ignited fires were rare. Large human-started fires occurred in locations and months of significantly higher fuel moisture and wind speed than large lightning-started fires. National-scale fire policy should consider risks to ecosystems and economies by these proportionally large fires and include human drivers in large fire risk assessment.

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Section: Environmental Controls On Large Fire Sizecontrasting

confidence: 61%

Section: Large Fire Seasonalitymentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Large Fire Seasonalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Human-Related Ignitions Increase the Number of Large Wildfires across U.S. Ecoregions

Nagy¹,

Fusco

Bradley

et al. 2018

Fire

Self Cite

108

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“…This means that holding all other factors constant, these forests are more likely to burn with high severity than in the past, even if they only burn under severe weather conditions (Weatherspoon et al 1992). Moreover, under most modeling scenarios of future greenhouse emissions and projected climate impacts, the likelihood of severe fire weather is expected to increase, as is burned area and fire severity (Littell et al 2009, Spracklen et al 2009, Halofsky et al 2014a, Stavros et al 2014). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatiotemporal dynamics of simulated wildfire, forest management, and forest succession in central Oregon, USA

Barros¹,

Ager²,

Day³

et al. 2017

E&S

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ABSTRACT. We use the simulation model Envision to analyze long-term wildfire dynamics and the effects of different fuel management scenarios in central Oregon, USA. We simulated a 50-year future where fuel management activities were increased by doubling and tripling the current area treated while retaining existing treatment strategies in terms of spatial distribution and treatment type. We modeled forest succession using a state-and-transition approach and simulated wildfires based on the contemporary fire regime of the region. We tested for the presence of temporal trends and overall differences in burned area among four fuel management scenarios. Results showed that when the forest was managed to reduce fuels it burned less: over the course of 50 years there was up to a 40% reduction in area burned. However, simulation outputs did not reveal the expected temporal trend, i.e., area burned did not decrease progressively with time, nor did the absence of management lead to its increase. These results can be explained as the consequence of an existing wildfire deficit and vegetation succession paths that led to closed canopy, and heavy fuels forest types that are unlikely to burn under average fire weather. Fire (and management) remained relatively rare disturbances and, given our assumptions, were unable to alter long-term vegetation patterns and consequently unable to alter long-term wildfire dynamics. Doubling and tripling current management targets were effective in the near term but not sustainable through time because of a scarcity of stands eligible to treat according to the modeled management constraints. These results provide new insights into the long-term dynamics between fuel management programs and wildfire and demonstrate that treatment prioritization strategies have limited effect on fire activity if they are too narrowly focused on particular forest conditions.

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“…Across the U.S., climate change is expected to increase the occurrence and size of wildland fire (Westerling et al, 2011;Stavros et al, 2014), which could lead to reductions in the ecosystem services provided by such lands. Greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation is likely to result in fewer and/or less severe wildfires, thus providing potential economic benefits through the avoidance or reduction of ecosystem service losses from catastrophic fire.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The cost of climate change: Ecosystem services and wildland fires

Lee¹,

Schlemme²,

Murray³

et al. 2015

Ecological Economics

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Little research has focused on the economic impact associated with climate-change induced wildland fire on natural ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. We examine changes in wildland fire patterns based on the U.S. Forest Service's MC1 dynamic global vegetation model from 2013 to 2115 under two pre-defined scenarios: a reference (i.e., business-as-usual) and a greenhouse gas mitigation policy scenario. We construct a habitat equivalency model under which fuels management activities, actions commonly undertaken to reduce the frequency and/or severity of wildland fire, are used to compensate for climate change-induced losses in ecosystem services on conservation lands in the contiguous U.S. resulting from wildland fire. The benefit of the greenhouse gas mitigation policy is equal to the difference in fuels management costs between the reference and policy scenarios. Results suggest present value ecosystem service benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation on the average of $3.5 billion (2005 dollars, assuming a three percent discount rate). Our analysis highlights the importance of considering loss of ecosystem services when evaluating the impacts of alternative greenhouse gas mitigation policies.

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Regional projections of the likelihood of very large wildland fires under a changing climate in the contiguous Western United States

Cited by 113 publications

References 35 publications

Human-Related Ignitions Increase the Number of Large Wildfires across U.S. Ecoregions

Human-Related Ignitions Increase the Number of Large Wildfires across U.S. Ecoregions

Spatiotemporal dynamics of simulated wildfire, forest management, and forest succession in central Oregon, USA

The cost of climate change: Ecosystem services and wildland fires

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