Journal ArticleDOI
The global fire–productivity relationship
Juli G. Pausas,E. Ribeiro +1 more
TLDR
In this paper, the intermediate fire-productivity model has been validated across all world ecosystems, including Antarctica, and it has been suggested that on a global scale, fire activity changes along the productivity/aridity gradient following a humped relationship.Abstract:
Aim
It has been suggested that on a global scale, fire activity changes along the productivity/aridity gradient following a humped relationship, i.e. the intermediate fire–productivity hypothesis. This relation should be driven by differing relative roles of the main fire drivers (weather and fuel) along the productivity gradient. However, the full intermediate fire–productivity model across all world ecosystems remains to be validated.
Location
The entire globe, excluding Antarctica.
Methods
To test the intermediate fire–productivity hypothesis, we use the world ecoregions as a spatial unit and, for each ecoregion, we compiled remotely sensed fire activity, climate, biomass and productivity information. The regression coefficient between monthly MODIS fire activity and monthly maximum temperature in each ecoregion was considered an indicator of the sensitivity of fire to high temperatures in the ecoregion. We used linear and generalized additive models to test for the linear and humped relationships.
Results
Fire occurs in most ecoregions. Fire activity peaked in tropical grasslands and savannas, and significantly decreased towards the extremes of the productivity gradient. Both the sensitivity of fire to high temperatures and above-ground biomass increased monotonically with productivity. In other words, fire activity in low-productivity ecosystems is not driven by warm periods and is limited by low biomass; in contrast, in high-productivity ecosystems fire is more sensitive to high temperatures, and in these ecosystems, the available biomass for fires is high.
Main conclusion
The results support the intermediate fire–productivity model on a global scale and suggest that climatic warming may affect fire activity differently depending on the productivity of the region. Fire regimes in productive regions are vulnerable to warming (drought-driven fire regime changes), while in low-productivity regions fire activity is more vulnerable to fuel changes (fuel-driven fire regime changes).read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Minimal effect of prescribed burning on fire spread rate and intensity in savanna ecosystems
TL;DR: In this article, a machine learning analysis using random forests was performed in a spatio-temporal data set comprising a large number of savanna fires across 22 years, showing that fire return interval was not an important predictor of fire spread rate or fire intensity, having a feature importance of 3.5%, among eight other predictor variables.
Peer Review
Quantifying Fuel for Fire in Waterton National Park
TL;DR: In this article , the authors investigated how the distribution of canopy fuel load (CFL) is changing within the context of a warming climate, and in the process, offered knowledge and recommendations to wildfire agencies regarding mitigation strategies to adapt to the changing distribution.
The response of wildfire regimes to Last Glacial Maximum carbon dioxide 1 and climate
TL;DR: In this paper , the effects of atmospheric CO 2 on plant growth influence fuel availability independently of climate; but the relative importance of each in driving large-scale changes in wildfire regimes cannot easily be quantified from observations alone.
Dissertation
Linking meteorological fire danger and burnt area in Brazil under present and future climate conditions
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors employ a fire danger index tailored for Brazilian biomes, the MFDI, and outputs from a regional climate model, the RCA4 from the Rossby Centre, to assess present and future trends of fire danger and burned area.
Journal ArticleDOI
Investigating Drought Events and Their Consequences in Wildfires: An Application in China
TL;DR: In this article , a series of multiple linear regression (MLR) models were used to estimate the burned area during mainland China's fire season from 2001 to 2019, across seven regions, to evaluate the impact of climate change on wildfire activity in China.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth
Journal ArticleDOI
A global overview of drought and heat-induced tree mortality reveals emerging climate change risks for forests
Craig D. Allen,Alison K. Macalady,Haroun Chenchouni,Dominique Bachelet,Nate G. McDowell,Michel Vennetier,Thomas Kitzberger,Andreas Rigling,David D. Breshears,Edward H. Hogg,Patrick Gonzalez,Rod Fensham,Zhen Zhang,Jorge Castro,N.A. Demidova,Jong Hwan Lim,Gillian Allard,Steven W. Running,Akkin Semerci,Neil S. Cobb +19 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present the first global assessment of recent tree mortality attributed to drought and heat stress and identify key information gaps and scientific uncertainties that currently hinder our ability to predict tree mortality in response to climate change and emphasizes the need for a globally coordinated observation system.
Journal ArticleDOI
Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity
Anthony L. Westerling,Anthony L. Westerling,Hugo G. Hidalgo,Daniel R. Cayan,Daniel R. Cayan,Thomas W. Swetnam +5 more
TL;DR: It is shown that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons.
Journal ArticleDOI
The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis
Suranjana Saha,Shrinivas Moorthi,Hua-Lu Pan,Xingren Wu,Jiande Wang,Sudhir Nadiga,Patrick Tripp,Robert Kistler,John S. Woollen,David Behringer,Haixia Liu,Diane Stokes,Robert Grumbine,George Gayno,Jun Wang,Yu-Tai Hou,Hui-ya Chuang,Hann-Ming Henry Juang,Joe Sela,Mark Iredell,Russ Treadon,Daryl T. Kleist,Paul van Delst,Dennis Keyser,John Derber,Michael Ek,Jesse Meng,Helin Wei,Rongqian Yang,Stephen J. Lord,Huug van den Dool,Arun Kumar,Wanqiu Wang,Craig S. Long,Muthuvel Chelliah,Yan Xue,Boyin Huang,Jae-Kyung E. Schemm,Wesley Ebisuzaki,Roger Lin,Pingping Xie,Mingyue Chen,Shuntai Zhou,Wayne Higgins,Cheng-Zhi Zou,Quanhua Liu,Yong Chen,Yong Han,Lidia Cucurull,Richard W. Reynolds,Glenn Rutledge,Mitch Goldberg +51 more
TL;DR: The NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) was completed for the 31-yr period from 1979 to 2009, in January 2010 as mentioned in this paper, which was designed and executed as a global, high-resolution coupled atmosphere-ocean-land surface-sea ice system to provide the best estimate of the state of these coupled domains over this period.
Journal ArticleDOI
Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction With R
TL;DR: Robinson, R. (2007). Generalized Additive Models: An Introduction With R.(2007).
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