Climate Change and Fire

Aim

Widespread impacts of landscape fire on ecosystems, societies, and the climate system itself have heightened the need to understand the potential future trajectory of fire under continued climate change. However, the complexity of fire makes climate change impact assessment challenging.

Changes in wildfire regimes may disrupt ecosystem processes as wildfires burn larger areas or burn more frequently than the recent natural range of variability. The climatic drivers of wildfire behavior may change in strength, but these effects are not likely to be uniform across space and different vegetation types.

Anticipating plausible future ecosystem states is necessary for effective ecosystem management. We use climate analog-based impact models and a co-production process with land managers to project future vegetation changes for the state of Oregon, United States, (2041–2070, RCP 8.5) at a management-relevant spatial resolution (270-m).

Background

Understanding the relative contribution of climate and human factors to wildfires is critical for managing risk across California’s diverse ecosystems, in the United States (US).

Aims

Climate change is impacting wildfires in the contiguous United States; thus, projections of fire danger under climate change have the potential to inform responses to changing wildfire risks.

Changing climate is altering the amount of carbon that can be sustained in forest ecosystems. Increasing heat and drought is already causing increased mortality and decreased regeneration in some locations. These changes have implications for landscape carbon storage with ongoing climate change.

Climate change in boreal regions is leading to warmer, drier conditions which amplify wildfire activity by altering fuel moisture, weather conditions, as well as the timing and duration of snow cover. Reduced snowpack and earlier snowmelt can lower fuel moisture, extend wildfire seasons, and increase burn severity.

Adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) in 1994 marked a pivotal moment in federal forest management in the Pacific Northwest, shifting focus away from intensive timber harvest toward an ecosystem management approach that emphasized late successional and old forest habitat with the creation of a reserve network across moist and dry forest zones.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires globally, yet our understanding of these high-impact events remains uneven and shaped by media attention and regional research biases.