Topic: Climate Change and Fire

Wildfires are increasing in frequency and severity as a result of climate change in many ecosystems; however, effects of altered disturbance regimes on wildlife remain poorly quantified. Here, we leverage an unexpected opportunity to investigate how fire affects the occupancy and abundance of a…

An increase in mega-fires and wildfires is a global issue that is expected to become worse with climate change. Fuel treatments are often recommended to moderate behaviour and decrease severity of wildfires; however, the extensive nature of rangelands limits the use of many treatments. Dormant-…

Very large fires (VLFs) have important implications for communities, ecosystems, air quality and fire suppression expenditures. VLFs over the contiguous US have been strongly linked with meteorological and climatological variability. Building on prior modelling of VLFs (>5000 ha), an ensemble…

Fire-induced permafrost degradation is well documented in boreal forests, but the role of fires in initiating thermokarst development in Arctic tundra is less well understood. Here we show that Arctic tundra fires may induce widespread thaw subsidence of permafrost terrain in the first seven…

Dry forests at low elevations in temperate-zone mountains are commonly hypothesized to be at risk of exceptional rates of severe fire from climatic change and land-use effects. Their setting is fire-prone, they have been altered by land-uses, and fire severity may be increasing. However, where…

Climate strongly influences global wildfire activity, and recent wildfire surges may signal fire weather-induced pyrogeographic shifts. Here we use three daily global climate data sets and three fire danger indices to develop a simple annual metric of fire weather season length, and map spatio-…

Little research has focused on the economic impact associated with climate-change induced wildland fire on natural ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. We examine changes in wildland fire patterns based on the U.S. Forest Service's MC1 dynamic global vegetation model from 2013 to…

The prospect of rapidly changing climates over the next century calls for methods to predict their effects on myriad, interactive ecosystem processes. Spatially explicit models that simulate ecosystem dynamics at fine (plant, stand) to coarse (regional, global) scales are indispensable tools for…

Climate change adaptation and mitigation require understanding of vegetation response to climate change. Using the MC2 dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) we simulate vegetation for the Northwest United States using results from 20 different Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (…

Projected effects of climate change across many ecosystems globally include more frequent disturbance byfire and reduced plant growth due to warmer (and especially drier) conditions. Such changes affect species– particularly fire-intolerant woody plants – by simultaneously reducing recruitment,…