A review of the relationships between drought and forest fire in the United States
Abstract
The historical and presettlement relationships between drought and wildfire are well documented in North America, with forest fire occurrence and area clearly increasing in response to drought. There is also evidence that drought interacts with other controls (forest productivity, topography, fire weather, management activities) to affect fire intensity, severity, extent, and frequency. Fire regime characteristics arise across many individual fires at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, so both weather and climate – including short‐ and long‐term droughts – are important and influence several, but not all, aspects of fire regimes. We review relationships between drought and fire regimes in United States forests, fire‐related drought metrics and expected changes in fire risk, and implications for fire management under climate change. Collectively, this points to a conceptual model of fire on real landscapes: fire regimes, and how they change through time, are products of fuels and how other factors affect their availability (abundance, arrangement, continuity) and flammability (moisture, chemical composition). Climate, management, and land use all affect availability, flammability, and probability of ignition differently in different parts of North America. From a fire ecology perspective, the concept of drought varies with scale, application, scientific or management objective, and ecosystem.
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It is unclear how the current fire pattern affects water availability at the regional or continental scale.
“However, it is unclear how this fire pattern affects water availability at the regional or continental scale1–4.”
From Burned forests impact water supplies (2018) · cites this paper as [2]
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Halofsky, J. E., Peterson, D. L., & Harvey, B. J. (2020) · Fire Ecology · doi:10.1186/s42408-019-0062-8 · Cited by 640 · see citing works
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Burned forests impact water supplies
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Self-citationDrought, multi-seasonal climate, and wildfire in northern New Mexico
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Genetic response of growth phases for abiotic environmental stress tolerance in cereal crop plants
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Widespread ecological responses and cascading effects of the 2021 western North American heatwave
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- Authors
- Littell, J. S., Peterson, D. L., Riley, K. L., Liu, Y., & Luce, C. H.
- Affiliations
- Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center (US)
- US Forest Service (US)
- Corresponding author
- Littell, Jeremy S.
- Venue
- Global Change Biology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2016-04-19
- Volume
- 22
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 2353-2369
- ISSN
- 1354-1013 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-2486
- OpenAlex
- W2339581915
- Cited by
- 571
- References
- 147
- Citations by year
- 2026: 54 · 2025: 70 · 2024: 76 · 2023: 83 · 2022: 64 · 2021: 86 · 2020: 44 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 40 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 8
- FWCI
- 3.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Global Change Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Forest Management and Policy
- Keywords
- drought, forest fires, fire regimes, fire risk, climate change, fire management, fuel availability, fuel flammability, fire weather, fire frequency, fire severity, fire extent, land use, fire ecology, United States forests
- MeSH terms
- Fires, Trees, United States, Ecosystem, Droughts, Climate Change, Forests
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