Quantifying the effect of elevation and aspect on fire return intervals in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

Rogeau, Marie-Pierre; Armstrong, Glen W.

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2016.10.035

Cited by 29 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Given the improvements to our models brought by this method, we insist that accounting for spatial autocorrelation in fire studies is highly necessary. Moreover, our results support those of other studies (e.g., Cumming 2001;Cavard et al 2015;Marchal et al 2017;Rogeau and Armstrong 2017) that showed that vegetation and physical environment are as important as climate to explain the BR variability in boreal ecosystems. All these factors should therefore be accounted for in fire regime studies, particularly in sight of climate change.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…High elevation areas tend to be subject to lower fire frequency (Rogeau and Armstrong 2017) as they experience shorter fire seasons resulting from lower temperatures and delayed snow melting (Westerling et al 2006). In addition, there can be a cooling effect from orographic lifting of air masses, leading to increasing relative humidity and eventually precipitation (Rogeau and Armstrong 2017). Lastly, if a few plains and valleys are found in mid-to high elevation, most are located in the low elevation James Bay area.…”

Section: Physical Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many fire studies in boreal ecosystems attempt to better understand the spatial heterogeneity of fire regimes by investigating top-down effects, such as climate at regional to global scales (Drever et al 2008;Girardin and Wotton 2009), or bottom-up effects, such as vegetation (Cumming 2001;Terrier et al 2013) and physical environment (Rogeau and Armstrong 2017) at local to regional scales. Some studies have evaluated the relationship between the spatial heterogeneity of fire regimes and several of these attributes (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some studies have evaluated the relationship between the spatial heterogeneity of fire regimes and several of these attributes (e.g. Drever et al 2008;Marchal et al 2017;Rogeau and Armstrong 2017). However, some uncertainties remain about the contribution of all these factors relative to each other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Physical Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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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“…Direct effects can be considered the physical settings, such as convex/concave terrain [75] and slope gradient [75], of a fire event. Meanwhile, indirect effects can be considered to affect the pre-fire conditions of fuel (e.g., composition, configuration, density, average stand diameter and long-term moisture) [19,76]. As Lee et al [3] discussed, it is neither clear nor well documented in fire research why topographic variables are nonlinearly associated with burn severity.…”

Section: Non-linear Relationship Of Topographic Characteristics With mentioning

confidence: 99%

Complex Relationships of the Effects of Topographic Characteristics and Susceptible Tree Cover on Burn Severity

2018

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Forest fires and burn severity mosaics have profound impacts on the post-fire dynamics and complexity of forest ecosystems. Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between topographic variables and susceptible tree covers with regard to burn severity. However, these relationships have not been fully elucidated, because most studies have assumed linearity in these relationships. Therefore, we examined the linearity and the nonlinearity in the relationships between topographic variables and susceptible tree covers with burn severity by comparing linear and nonlinear models. The site of the Samcheok fire, the largest recorded forest fire in Korea, was used as the study area. We generated 802 grid cells with a 500-m resolution that encompassed the entire study area and collected a dataset that included the topographic variables and percentage of red pine trees, which are the most susceptible tree cover types in Korea. We used conventional linear models and generalized additive models to estimate the linear and the nonlinear models based on topographic variables and Japanese red pine trees. The results revealed that the percentage of red pine trees had linear effects on burn severity, reinforcing the importance of silviculture and forest management to lower burn severity. Meanwhile, the topographic variables had nonlinear effects on burn severity. Among the topographic variables, elevation had the strongest nonlinear effect on burn severity, possibly by overriding the effects of susceptible fuels over elevation effects or due to the nonlinear effects of topographic characteristics on pre-fire fuel conditions, including the spatial distribution and availability of susceptible tree cover. To validate and generalize the nonlinear effects of elevation and other topographic variables, additional research is required at different fire sites with different tree cover types in different geographic locations.

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Aspect

Rogeau¹

2018

Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

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Quantifying the effect of elevation and aspect on fire return intervals in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

Cited by 29 publications

References 58 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

Complex Relationships of the Effects of Topographic Characteristics and Susceptible Tree Cover on Burn Severity

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