Cited by 97Fire effects on ecosystemsRangeland and Wildlife ManagementPlant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics

Fire season precipitation variability influences fire extent and severity in a large southwestern wilderness area, United States

Holden, Zachary A., Morgan, Penelope, Crimmins, Michael A., Steinhorst, R. K., Smith, Alistair M. S.·2007·Geophysical Research Letters

Abstract

Despite a widely noted increase in the severity of recent western wildfires, this trend has never been quantified. A twenty‐year series of Landsat TM satellite imagery for all forest fires on the 1.4 million ha Gila National Forest suggests that an increases in area burned and area burned severely from 1984–2004 are well correlated with timing and intensity of rain events during the fire season. Winter precipitation was marginally correlated with burn severity, but only in high‐elevation forest types. These results suggest the importance of within‐season precipitation over snow pack in modulating recent wildfire size and severity in mid‐elevation southwestern forests.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1029/2007gl030804

Cites

20 of 20 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • These US trends are widely attributed to shifts towards earlier snowmelt timing, warming-driven increases in vapour pressure deficit, and variability in the timing of spring precipitation.

    “These trends are widely attributed to shifts towards earlier snowmelt timing54, though fire activity in the desert Southwest has also been attributed to warming-driven increases in vapour pressure deficit55 and variability in the timing of spring precipitation56.”

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Holden, Z. A., Morgan, P., Crimmins, M. A., Steinhorst, R. K., & Smith, A. M. S.
Affiliations
  • University of Idaho (US)
  • University of Arizona (US)
Venue
Geophysical Research Letters
Published
2007-08-23
Volume
34
Issue
16
ISSN
  • 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
  • 1944-8007
OpenAlex
W2144897122
Cited by
97
References
20
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 4
FWCI
3.64
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
Funders
  • U.S. Department of Agriculture
  • Innovative Research Group Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Rangeland and Wildlife Management
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
Keywords
wildfire severity, fire extent, rainfall variability, snowpack, Gila National Forest, high-elevation forests, fire weather

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review