Relationships between climate and macroscale area burned in the western United States

Increased wildfire activity (e.g. number of starts, area burned, fire behaviour) across the western United States in recent decades has heightened interest in resolving climate–fire relationships. Macroscale climate–fire relationships were examined in forested and non-forested lands for eight Geographic Area Coordination Centers in the western United States, using area burned derived from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity dataset (1984–2010). Fire-specific biophysical variables including fire danger and water balance metrics were considered in addition to standard climate variables of monthly temperature, precipitation and drought indices to explicitly determine their optimal capacity to explain interannual variability in area burned. Biophysical variables tied to the depletion of fuel and soil moisture and prolonged periods of elevated fire-danger had stronger correlations to area burned than standard variables antecedent to or during the fire season, particularly in forested systems. Antecedent climate–fire relationships exhibited inter-region commonality with area burned in forested lands correlated with winter snow water equivalent and emergent drought in late spring. Area burned in non-forested lands correlated with moisture availability in the growing season preceding the fire year. Despite differences in the role of antecedent climate in preconditioning fuels, synchronous regional fire activity in forested and non-forested lands suggests that atmospheric conditions during the fire season unify fire activity and can compound or supersede antecedent climatic stressors. Collectively, climate–fire relationships viewed through the lens of biophysical variables provide a more direct link to fuel flammability and wildfire activity than standard climate variables, thereby narrowing the gap in incorporating top-down climatic factors between empirical and process-based fire models.

[1]  Isaac C. Grenfell,et al.  The relationship of large fire occurrence with drought and fire danger indices in the western USA, 1984-2008: the role of temporal scale , 2013 .

[2]  J. Randerson,et al.  Satellite-based assessment of climate controls on US burned area , 2013 .

[3]  J. Abatzoglou.  Development of gridded surface meteorological data for ecological applications and modelling , 2013 .

[4]  J. Balch,et al.  Introduced annual grass increases regional fire activity across the arid western USA (1980–2009) , 2013, Global change biology.

[5]  J. W. Wagtendonk,et al.  Mapped versus actual burned area within wildfire perimeters: Characterizing the unburned , 2012 .

[6]  Wildfire Management and Forecasting Fire Potential: The Roles of Climate Information and Social Networks in the Southwest United States , 2012 .

[7]  P. Bartlein,et al.  Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[8]  Carol Miller,et al.  Spatial bottom-up controls on fire likelihood vary across western North America , 2012 .

[9]  Carol Miller,et al.  Contributions of Ignitions, Fuels, and Weather to the Spatial Patterns of Burn Probability of a Boreal Landscape , 2011, Ecosystems.

[10]  J. Abatzoglou,et al.  Climate Change in Western US Deserts: Potential for Increased Wildfire and Invasive Annual Grasses , 2011 .

[11]  M. G. Ryan,et al.  Continued warming could transform Greater Yellowstone fire regimes by mid-21st century , 2011, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[12]  J. Abatzoglou,et al.  Relative importance of weather and climate on wildfire growth in interior Alaska , 2011 .

[13]  Charles W. McHugh,et al.  A Method for Ensemble Wildland Fire Simulation , 2011 .

[14]  Sean T. Michaletz,et al.  Predicting climate change effects on wildfires requires linking processes across scales , 2011 .

[15]  J. Littell,et al.  Climatic Water Balance and Regional Fire Years in the Pacific Northwest, USA: Linking Regional Climate and Fire at Landscape Scales , 2011 .

[16]  Ze'ev Gedalof,et al.  Climate and Spatial Patterns of Wildfire in North America , 2011 .

[17]  P. Mote,et al.  Three Recent Flavors of Drought in the Pacific Northwest , 2010 .

[18]  Timothy J. Brown,et al.  Beyond wildfire: perspectives of climate, managed fire and policy in the USA , 2010 .

[19]  Alex Hall,et al.  Spatial variation in extreme winds predicts large wildfire locations in chaparral ecosystems , 2010 .

[20]  M. Mudelsee,et al.  Heterogeneous response of circumboreal wildfire risk to climate change since the early 1900s , 2009 .

[21]  J. Logan,et al.  Impacts of climate change from 2000 to 2050 on wildfire activity and carbonaceous aerosol concentrations in the western United States , 2009 .

[22]  M. Krawchuk,et al.  Implications of changing climate for global wildland fire , 2009 .

[23]  D. Peterson,et al.  Climate and wildfire area burned in western U.S. ecoprovinces, 1916-2003. , 2009, Ecological applications : a publication of the Ecological Society of America.

[24]  A. Taylor,et al.  Interannual variations in fire weather, fire extent, and synoptic-scale circulation patterns in northern California and Oregon , 2009 .

[25]  B. Wotton,et al.  Summer Moisture and Wildfire Risks across Canada , 2009 .

[26]  A. Tatem,et al.  Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations , 2009 .

[27]  C. Daly,et al.  Physiographically sensitive mapping of climatological temperature and precipitation across the conterminous United States , 2008 .

[28]  P. Morgan,et al.  Multi-season climate synchronized forest fires throughout the 20th century, northern Rockies, U.S.A. , 2008, Ecology.

[29]  B. Mike Wotton,et al.  Interpreting and using outputs from the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System in research applications , 2009, Environmental and Ecological Statistics.

[30]  P. Weisberg,et al.  Assessing Accuracy of Manually-mapped Wildfire Perimeters in Topographically Dissected Areas , 2007 .

[31]  B. Quayle,et al.  A Project for Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity , 2007 .

[32]  J. Abatzoglou,et al.  Asymmetry between trends in spring and autumn temperature and circulation regimes over western North America , 2007 .

[33]  Timothy J. Brown,et al.  Characteristics of US drought and pluvials from a high‐resolution spatial dataset , 2007 .

[34]  A. Taylor,et al.  Fire‐climate interactions in forests of the American Pacific coast , 2006 .

[35]  T. Swetnam,et al.  Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity , 2006, Science.

[36]  B. Collins,et al.  Regional relationships between climate and wildfire-burned area in the interior West, USA , 2006 .

[37]  Barbara J. Morehouse,et al.  Exploring Use of Climate Information in Wildland Fire Management: A Decision Calendar Study , 2006 .

[38]  Kevin E. Trenberth,et al.  Relationships between precipitation and surface temperature , 2005 .

[39]  Z. Gedalof,et al.  ATMOSPHERIC, CLIMATIC, AND ECOLOGICAL CONTROLS ON EXTREME WILDFIRE YEARS IN THE NORTHWESTERN UNITED STATES , 2005 .

[40]  Ramakrishna R. Nemani,et al.  A generalized, bioclimatic index to predict foliar phenology in response to climate , 2004 .

[41]  A. Weaver,et al.  Detecting the effect of climate change on Canadian forest fires , 2004 .

[42]  Donald McKenzie,et al.  Climatic Change, Wildfire, and Conservation , 2004 .

[43]  D. Loftsgaarden,et al.  Evaluation of fire danger rating indexes using logistic regression and percentile analysis , 2003 .

[44]  Peter E. Thornton,et al.  Climatic and biophysical controls on conifer species distributions in mountain forests of Washington State, USA , 2003 .

[45]  Michael D. Dettinger,et al.  CLIMATE AND WILDFIRE IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES , 2003 .

[46]  Yves Bergeron,et al.  Change of fire frequency in the eastern Canadian boreal forests during the Holocene: does vegetation composition or climate trigger the fire regime? , 2001 .

[47]  T. Swetnam,et al.  Mesoscale Disturbance and Ecological Response to Decadal Climatic Variability in the American Southwest , 1998 .

[48]  N. Stephenson,et al.  Actual evapotranspiration and deficit: biologically meaningful correlates of vegetation distribution across spatial scales , 1998 .

[49]  L. S. Pereira,et al.  Crop evapotranspiration : guidelines for computing crop water requirements , 1998 .

[50]  E. Johnson,et al.  The Relative Importance of Fuels and Weather on Fire Behavior in Subalpine Forests , 1995 .

[51]  D. Lettenmaier,et al.  A simple hydrologically based model of land surface water and energy fluxes for general circulation models , 1994 .

[52]  Harold F. Heady,et al.  Rangeland Ecology and Management , 2019 .

[53]  T. Swetnam,et al.  Fire-Southern Oscillation Relations in the Southwestern United States , 1990, Science.

[54]  James B. Harrington,et al.  A Study of the Relation of Meteorological Variables to Monthly Provincial Area Burned by Wildfire in Canada (1953–80) , 1988 .

[55]  C. E. Van Wagner,et al.  Development and structure of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System , 1987 .

[56]  J. E. Deeming.  National Fire-Danger Rating System / , 1972 .