Smoke consequences of new wildfire regimes driven by climate change

Abstract

Smoke from wildfires has adverse biological and social consequences, and various lines of evidence suggest that smoke from wildfires in the future may be more intense and widespread, demanding that methods be developed to address its effects on people, ecosystems, and the atmosphere. In this paper, we present the essential ingredients of a modeling system for projecting smoke consequences in a rapidly warming climate that is expected to change wildfire regimes significantly. We describe each component of the system, offer suggestions for the elements of a modeling agenda, and provide some general guidelines for making choices among potential components. We address a prospective audience of researchers whom we expect to be fluent already in building some or many of these components, so we neither prescribe nor advocate particular models or software. Instead, our intent is to highlight fruitful ways of thinking about the task as a whole and its components, while providing substantial, if not exhaustive, documentation from the primary literature as reference. This paper provides a guide to the complexities of smoke modeling under climate change, and a research agenda for developing a modeling system that is equal to the task while being feasible with current resources.

Wildland Fuel Fundamentals and Applications

“…It is important to note that these disturbances also interact with climate, vegetation, and other disturbances at the landscape level to uniquely modify fuel dynamics and create locally unique fuelbeds (Keane et al 2014). …”

“…There are many interesting examples of multiple disturbance interactions that influence fuel dynamics (Keane et al 2014). Bark beetles and the fungus Phaeolus schweinitzii may interact with fire to alter lodgepole pine fuel dynamics in Oregon, USA (Geiszler et al 1980).…”

“…The extent and spatial distribution of these burned patches on the landscape modify growth of future fires. This self-organizational property of wildland fire will be incredibly important in predicting future fire dynamics under climate change (McKenzie and Kennedy 2011;McKenzie et al 2014). Fire frequencies, for example, may increase under warming climates only to a point when postburn patches limit fire growth.…”

Representing climate, disturbance, and vegetation interactions in landscape models

“…Otherwise, important ecosystem changes emerging from interactions could be missed or muted in simulated outcomes. More abstractly, but just as importantly, interactions between landscape pattern and process (Turner, 1989) change landscapes in ways that may not emerge from the simulation of one-way forcings that use empirical approaches (McKenzie et al, 2014).…”

“…Of these, landscape-scale (10 0 -10 3 km 2 ) models are particularly important because their simulation is at spatial scales at which many ecosystem processes and linkages are manifest, as well as the scales at which most management decisions are made Littell et al, 2011;McKenzie et al, 2014). Hereafter we refer to these spatially explicit mediumscale models as landscape models (LMs).…”