Climate Change, Fuels, and Wildfire
Abstract
Climate affects both fuel availability and flammability on multiple time scales, and the relative importance of availability versus flammability as limiting drivers of wildfire activity varies across ecosystem types. Climatic controls on fuel flammability during the peak fire season dominate in dense forests with characteristically infrequent, high severity fire, while the effects of antecedent moisture on the availability of fine surface fuels may also play a role in forests with more frequent, lower severity fire regimes. Changes in future temperatures and in precipitation amounts, form (rain versus snow), and timing can all potentially alter fuels, fire regimes, and emissions. We will describe the primary drivers of fire activity in very diverse ecosystems in California and the Northern Rockies, and summarize how climate change may affect these. In order to assess changes in wildfire and emissions, it is particularly important to use modeling methods that demonstrably capture extreme events, as well as to model at spatial resolutions that can capture topographic influences on temperature and precipitation. We demonstrate probabilistic statistical models that are designed to meet these requirements in California and the Northern Rockies. We demonstrate methods that allow the estimate of fuels management on vulnerability to climate change in diverse ecosystems. Altered climate may drive changes in burned area and fire severity may in turn profoundly impact emissions from wildfire in some areas of the western United States. We demonstrate the production of emissions scenarios for approximately 2000 future climate and development scenarios in California, and discuss the important drivers of differences in emissions across a wide range of scenarios.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 29, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA554066
Entities
People
- Anthony L. Westerling
Organizations
- University of California