Asynchronous lightning and Santa Ana winds highlight human role in southern California fire regimes

Bendix, Jacob; Hartnett, Justin J.

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aace39

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Extended dry seasons due to climate change will increase the frequency of lightning-driven ignitions but will not change the overall pattern of burning (Fill et al, 2019). In fact, in cases where modern mega-fires exceed the expectation for ignitions based on number of lightning strikes, they are almost exclusively related to human ignitions and increased winds within human-modified landscapes, as seen in Southern California (Bendix and Hartnett, 2018).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building resilient landscapes in a semi-arid watershed: Anthropogenic and natural burning histories in Late Holocene Tesuque Creek, northern New Mexico

2022

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As mega-fires have swept the North American West in recent decades, studies of past fire events have gained academic interest. Deep-time perspectives are necessary to better understand the periodicity of fire events and to identify basic drivers of frequent fire episodes through time, including potential anthropogenic fire use. Our study contributes to the growing field of archeological fire ecology in the Southwest with an examination of a high-resolution geobotanical dataset for Holocene fire regimes as indicated within sediments from an alluvial section from Tesuque Creek in northern New Mexico. Using phytolith, geochemical, and sedimentological data, we reconstruct indices for burn cycle seasonality and destabilization of riparian vegetation communities that suggest potential anthropogenic land use and possible patterns distinguishing human burning from lightning ignitions. Through this study, we consider the potential role of hunter-gatherer behavior in producing fire landscapes as part of their strategies for managing risks in the fragile environments of the Middle-Late Holocene in northern New Mexico. We suggest that combining geo and botanical datasets from alluvial sections with archeological evidence will allow researchers to fine-tune the resolution of local climate sequences and their environmental impacts on small landscape scales. When such small-scale studies can be aggregated, they may further contribute to testing models of regional patch-burning, either natural or anthropogenic. We further posit that human relationships with fire in the past should be considered as collaborative efforts with lightning-ignited burns, to manage the risks associated with both too much and too little fire in fragile dryland ecosystems.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building resilient landscapes in a semi-arid watershed: Anthropogenic and natural burning histories in Late Holocene Tesuque Creek, northern New Mexico

2022

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“…As indicated by Minnich and Chou (1997), the reality is that suppression of very large fires was never effective, meaning that suppression forces cannot control large fires. These large fires are directly associated with strong offshore winds (Jin et al, 2014;Kolden and Abatzoglou, 2018), persistent heat and dry weather conditions (Bendix and Hartnett, 2018). The strong winds for fire spread are known locally as Santa Ana winds in southern California and Diablo winds in northern California., These winds are more generally referred to as foehns, namely dry-heat offshore winds, or the meteorological term "downslope winds" (Billmire et al, 2014;Guzman-Morales et al, 2016;Hughes and Hall, 2010;Moritz et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opposite anomalous synoptic patterns for potential California large wildfire spread and extinguishing in 2018 cases

Qian

et al. 2021

Atmospheric Research

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The consecutive occurrence of three large wildfires in 1 year is rarely seen in northern California including the deadliest case during 8-25 November 2018 in Butte County. They happened under favorable fuel and meteorological conditions including long-term warming trends, normal summer-autumn warm-dry climate, and extreme heated air masses with strong offshore wind. The former two meteorological conditions contribute a background for large wildfires but extreme heated air masses and strong offshore winds are critical potentials for a fire spread. The relationship between extreme heated/cooled air masses and the three large wildfires was carefully examined from their starts to extinguishing. An anomaly-based synoptic analysis method is used by separating atmospheric variables into climatology and anomalies. A 3-dimensional anomalous synoptic pattern of atmospheric variables is established for the three wildfire cases in 2018. The analysis showed that one anomalous warm-air mass in the mid-to-low troposphere dynamically associated with a positive center of geopotential height (GPH) anomalies at the upper troposphere (150-300 hPa) is an anomalous synoptic pattern indicating a potential large wildfire spread, and conversely by negative anomalies when the fires were extinguished. The ECMWF model seems to be capable of predicting such anomalous temperature-pressure patterns to indicate possible fire spread and extinguishing.

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California Chaparral and Woodlands

Baker

Halsey

2022

Imperiled: The Encyclopedia of Conservation

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Asynchronous lightning and Santa Ana winds highlight human role in southern California fire regimes

Cited by 6 publications

References 21 publications

Building resilient landscapes in a semi-arid watershed: Anthropogenic and natural burning histories in Late Holocene Tesuque Creek, northern New Mexico

Building resilient landscapes in a semi-arid watershed: Anthropogenic and natural burning histories in Late Holocene Tesuque Creek, northern New Mexico

Opposite anomalous synoptic patterns for potential California large wildfire spread and extinguishing in 2018 cases

California Chaparral and Woodlands

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