The DOI matches its Crossref record; 22 of the 22 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
How will climate change affect wildland fire severity in the western US?
Open accessAbstract
Fire regime characteristics in North America are expected to change over the next several decades as a result of anthropogenic climate change. Although some fire regime characteristics (e.g., area burned and fire season length) are relatively well-studied in the context of a changing climate, fire severity has received less attention. In this study, we used observed data from 1984 to 2012 for the western United States (US) to build a statistical model of fire severity as a function of climate. We then applied this model to several ( n = 20) climate change projections representing mid-century (2040–2069) conditions under the RCP 8.5 scenario. Model predictions suggest widespread reduction in fire severity for large portions of the western US. However, our model implicitly incorporates climate-induced changes in vegetation type, fuel load, and fire frequency. As such, our predictions are best interpreted as a potential reduction in fire severity, a potential that may not be realized due human-induced disequilibrium between plant communities and climate. Consequently, to realize the reductions in fire severity predicted in this study, land managers in the western US could facilitate the transition of plant communities towards a state of equilibrium with the emerging climate through means such as active restoration treatments (e.g., mechanical thinning and prescribed fire) and passive restoration strategies like managed natural fire (under suitable weather conditions). Resisting changes in vegetation composition and fuel load via activities such as aggressive fire suppression will amplify disequilibrium conditions and will likely result in increased fire severity in future decades because fuel loads will increase as the climate warms and fire danger becomes more extreme. The results of our study provide insights to the pros and cons of resisting or facilitating change in vegetation composition and fuel load in the context of a changing climate.
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Cites
Allen, C. D., Macalady, A. K., Chenchouni, H., Bachelet, D., McDowell, N., Vennetier, M., Kitzberger, T., Rigling, A., Breshears, D. D., Hogg, E. H. (., et al. (2010) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2009.09.001 · Cited by 7,763
Warming and earlier spring increase western U.S. forest wildfire activity.
Westerling, A. L., Hidalgo, H. G., Cayan, D. R., & Swetnam, T. W. (2006) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1128834 · Cited by 5,176
Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013
Jolly, W. M., Cochrane, M. A., Freeborn, P. H., Holden, Z. A., Brown, T. J., Williamson, G. J., & Bowman, D. M. J. S. (2015) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms8537 · Cited by 2,200
Temperature as a potent driver of regional forest drought stress and tree mortality
Park Williams, A., Allen, C. D., Macalady, A. K., Griffin, D., Woodhouse, C. A., Meko, D. M., Swetnam, T. W., Rauscher, S. A., Seager, R., Grissino-Mayer, H. D., et al. (2013) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/nclimate1693 · Cited by 1,991
Implications of changing climate for global wildland fire
Flannigan, M. D., Krawchuk, M. A., de Groot, W. J., Wotton, B. M., & Gowman, L. M. (2009) · International Journal of Wildland Fire · doi:10.1071/wf08187 · Cited by 1,460
A Project for Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity
Eidenshink, J., Schwind, B., Brewer, K., Zhu, Z.-L., Quayle, B., & Howard, S. (2007) · Fire Ecology · doi:10.4996/fireecology.0301003 · Cited by 1,423
Global Pyrogeography: the Current and Future Distribution of Wildfire
Krawchuk, M. A., Moritz, M. A., Parisien, M.-A., Van Dorn, J., & Hayhoe, K. (2009) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005102 · Cited by 1,000
Self-citationClimate and human influences on global biomass burning over the past two millennia
Marlon, J. R., Bartlein, P. J., Carcaillet, C., Gavin, D. G., Harrison, S. P., Higuera, P. E., Joos, F., Power, M. J., & Prentice, I. C. (2008) · Nature Geoscience · doi:10.1038/ngeo313 · Cited by 823
The interaction of fire, fuels, and climate across Rocky Mountain forests
SCHOENNAGEL, T., VEBLEN, T. T., & ROMME, W. H. (2004) · BioScience · doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2004)054[0661:tioffa]2.0.co;2 · Cited by 776
Thonicke, K., Venevsky, S., Sitch, S., & Cramer, W. (2001) · Global Ecology and Biogeography · doi:10.1046/j.1466-822x.2001.00175.x · Cited by 684
Cited by
Abatzoglou, J. T., Dobrowski, S. Z., Parks, S. A., & Hegewisch, K. C. (2018) · Scientific Data · doi:10.1038/sdata.2017.191 · Cited by 3,421
Self-citationAdapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes
Schoennagel, T., Balch, J. K., Brenkert-Smith, H., Dennison, P. E., Harvey, B. J., Krawchuk, M. A., Mietkiewicz, N., Morgan, P., Moritz, M. A., Rasker, R., et al. (2017) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1617464114 · Cited by 774
Halofsky, J. E., Peterson, D. L., & Harvey, B. J. (2020) · Fire Ecology · doi:10.1186/s42408-019-0062-8 · Cited by 640
Tree regeneration following wildfires in the western US: a review
Stevens-Rumann, C. S., & Morgan, P. (2019) · Fire Ecology · doi:10.1186/s42408-019-0032-1 · Cited by 278
Exploring the future change space for fire weather in southeast Australia
Clarke, H., & Evans, J. P. (2019) · Theoretical and Applied Climatology · doi:10.1007/s00704-018-2507-4 · Cited by 98
Metadata
- Authors
- Parks, S. A., Miller, C., Abatzoglou, J. T., Holsinger, L. M., Parisien, M.-A., & Dobrowski, S. Z.
- Venue
- Environmental Research Letters
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2016-02-22
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 035002
- ISSN
- 1748-9326 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2287019727
- Cited by
- 158
- References
- 22
- FWCI
- 12.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
