Climate change impacts on future boreal fire regimes

Groot, William J. de; Flannigan, Mike D.; Cantin, Alan S.

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2012.09.027

Cited by 271 publications

(194 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…For instance, using units larger than the maximum fire size of the study area could reduce the spatial autocorrelation between units. Moreover, fire size is expected to increase in the future in response to the facilitation of fire spread by a more intense and longer drought events (de Groot et al 2013;Flannigan et al 2016). As a result, spatial autocorrelation could become an even more important issue in the future, and consideration of the future fire size could be necessary in studies interested in future area burned.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for spatial autocorrelation improves the estimation of climate, physical environment and vegetation’s effects on boreal forest’s burn rates

et al. 2017

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Context Wildfires play a crucial role in maintaining ecological and societal functions of North American boreal forests. Because of their contagious way of spreading, using statistical methods dealing with spatial autocorrelation has become a major challenge in fire studies analyzing how environmental factors affect their spatial variability.Objectives We aimed to demonstrate the performance of a spatially explicit method accounting for spatial autocorrelation in burn rates modelling, and to use this method to determine the relative contribution of climate, physical environment and vegetation to the spatial variability of burn rates between 1972 and 2015. Methods Using a 482,000 km 2 territory located in the coniferous boreal forest of eastern Canada, we built and compared burn rates models with and without accounting for spatial autocorrelation. The relative contribution of climate, physical environment and vegetation to the burn rates variability was identified with variance partitioning. Results Accounting for spatial autocorrelation improved the models' performance by a factor of 1.5. Our method allowed the unadulterated extraction of the contribution of climate, physical environment and vegetation to the spatial variability of burn rates. This contribution was similar for the three groups of factors. The spatial autocorrelation extent was linked to the fire size distribution. Conclusions Accounting for spatial autocorrelation can highly improve models and avoids biased results and misinterpretation. Considering climate, physical environment and vegetation altogether is essential, especially when attempting to predict future area burned. In addition to the direct effect of climate, changes in vegetation could have important impacts on future burn rates.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for spatial autocorrelation improves the estimation of climate, physical environment and vegetation’s effects on boreal forest’s burn rates

et al. 2017

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“…It will also require the development of fire management capacity where it had previously not been necessary. Increased fire weather severity could push current suppression capacity beyond a tipping point, resulting in a substantial increase in large fires (de Groot et al 2013;Liu et al 2010) and increased investment in resources and management efforts for disaster prevention and recovery.…”

Section: Fire Pests Invasive Species and Disturbance Risksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change impacts and adaptation in forest management: a review

Keenan

2015

Annals of Forest Science

430

303

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Abstract& Key message Adaptation of forest management to climate change requires an understanding of the effects of climate on forests, industries and communities; prediction of how these effects might change over time; and incorporation of this knowledge into management decisions. This requires multiple forms of knowledge and new approaches to forest management decisions. Partnerships that integrate researchers from multiple disciplines with forest managers and local actors can build a shared understanding of future challenges and facilitate improved decision making in the face of climate change.

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“…Burned area in boreal North America has increased over the last several decades (Gillet et al, 2004;Kasischke and Turetsky 2006). Changes in fire disturbance regimes have already occurred Beck and Goetz, 2011) and future climate change scenarios point towards additional changes (Flannigan et al, 2005;Amiro et al, 2009;Balshi et al, 2009;de Groot et al, 2013). Variations in fire frequency, intensity, size, and spatial and seasonal distributions may increase fire severity and carbon emissions and affect post-fire vegetation regeneration and succession (Chapin, et al, 2004;Goetz, et al, 2007;Johnstone, et al, 2011;Hollingsworth, et al, 2013).…”

Section: F Sedano and J T Randerson: Vpd Controls On Boreal Wildfiresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rupp et al (2007) estimated burned area using an empirical relationship driven by growing-season average temperature and cumulative precipitation, and integrated this information within a landscape-level model of vegetation dynamics. Several studies have explored the relationships between fire weather indices and burned areas to predict future burned area using climate model simulations of the 20th and 21st centuries (Flannigan et al, 2005;Balshi et al, 2009;De Groot et al, 2013).…”

Section: Implications For Earth System Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-scale influence of vapor pressure deficit on fire ignition and spread in boreal forest ecosystems

Sedano

Randerson

2014

Biogeosciences

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Abstract. Climate-driven changes in the fire regime within boreal forest ecosystems are likely to have important effects on carbon cycling and species composition. In the context of improving fire management options and developing more realistic scenarios of future change, it is important to understand how meteorology regulates different aspects of fire dynamics, including ignition, daily fire spread, and cumulative annual burned area. Here we combined ModerateResolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) active fires (MCD14ML), MODIS imagery (MOD13A1) and ancillary historic fire perimeter information to produce a data set of daily fire spread maps for Alaska during 2002-2011. This approach provided a spatial and temporally continuous representation of fire progression and a precise identification of ignition and extinction locations and dates for each wildfire. The fire-spread maps were analyzed with daily vapor pressure deficit (VPD) observations from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) and lightning strikes from the Alaska Lightning Detection Network (ALDN). We found a significant relationship between daily VPD and likelihood that a lightning strike would develop into a fire ignition. In the first week after ignition, above average VPD increased the probability that fires would grow to large or very large sizes. Strong relationships also were identified between VPD and burned area at several levels of temporal and spatial aggregation. As a consequence of regional coherence in meteorology, ignition, daily fire spread, and fire extinction events were often synchronized across different fires in interior Alaska. At a regional scale, the sum of positive VPD anomalies during the fire season was positively correlated with annual burned area during the NARR era ; R 2 = 0.45). Some of the largest fires we mapped had slow initial growth, indicating opportunities may exist for suppression efforts to adaptively manage these forests for climate change. The results of our spatiotemporal analysis provide new information about temporal and spatial dynamics of wildfires and have implications for modeling the terrestrial carbon cycle.

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Climate change impacts on future boreal fire regimes

Cited by 271 publications

References 31 publications

Accounting for spatial autocorrelation improves the estimation of climate, physical environment and vegetation’s effects on boreal forest’s burn rates

Accounting for spatial autocorrelation improves the estimation of climate, physical environment and vegetation’s effects on boreal forest’s burn rates

Climate change impacts and adaptation in forest management: a review

Multi-scale influence of vapor pressure deficit on fire ignition and spread in boreal forest ecosystems

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