Mid-21stcentury climate changes increase predicted fire occurrence and fire season length, Northern Rocky Mountains, United States

Ecosphere

Volumn 7, Issue 11, 2016, Pages

  Riley, Karin L ^a   Loehman, Rachel A ^b  

^a USDA Forest Service Forestry Science Lab   (United States)

^b U S GEOLOGICAL SURVEY   (United States)

Author keywords

Burn probability; Climate change; Climatic fire season length; Fire occurrence; FSim; Northern Rocky Mountains

Indexed keywords

EID: 84995387557     PISSN: None     EISSN: 21508925     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/ecs2.1543     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Abatzoglou, J. T., and T. J. Brown. 2012. A comparison of statistical downscaling methods suited for wildfire applications. International Journal of Climatology 32:772-780.
2. Agee, J. 1993. Fire ecology of Pacific Northwest forests. Island Press, Washington, D. C., USA.
3. Agee, J. K. 1998. The landscape ecology of western forest fire regimes. Northwest Science 72:24-34.
4. Ager, A. A., N. M. Vaillant, and M. A. Finney. 2010. A comparison of landscape fuel treatment strategies to mitigate wildland fire risk in the urban interface and preserve old forest structure. Forest Ecology and Management 259:1556-1570.
5. Andrews, P. L. 1986. BEHAVE: fire behavior prediction and fuel modeling system-BURN subsystem, Part 1. General Technical Report INT-194. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Ogden, Utah, USA.
6. Andrews, P. L., D. O. Loftsgaarden, and L. S. Bradshaw. 2003. Evaluation of fire danger rating indexes using logistic regression and percentile analysis. International Journal of Wildland Fire 12:213-226.
7. Bachelet, D., R. P. Neilson, T. Hickler, R. J. Drapek, J. M. Lenihan, M. T. Sykes, B. Smith, S. Sitch, and K. Thonicke. 2003. Simulating past and future dynamics of natural ecosystems in the United States. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 17:1045.
8. Bachelet, D., T. Sheehan, K. Ferschweiler, and J. Abatzoglou. In press. Simulating vegetation change, carbon cycling and fire over the western US using CMIP5 climate projections. Pages 257-276 in K. L. Riley, M. P. Thompson, and P. Webley, editors. Uncertainty in natural hazards: modeling and decision support. Wiley and American Geophysical Union Books, New York, New York, USA.
9. Barbero, R., J. T. Abatzoglou, N. K. Larkin, C. A. Kolden, and B. Stocks. 2015. Climate change presents increased potential for very large fires in the contiguous United States. International Journal of Wildland Fire 24:892-899.
10. Bradshaw, L., and E. McCormick. 2000. FireFamily Plus user's guide, version 2.0. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-67WWW. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Ogden, Utah, USA.
11. Brown, T. J., B. L. Hall, and A. L. Westerling. 2004. The impact of twenty-first century climate change on wildland fire danger in the western United States: an applications perspective. Climatic Change 62:365-388.
12. Calkin, D. E., A. A. Ager, M. P. Thompson, M. A. Finney, D. C. Lee, T. M. Quigley, C. W. McHugh, K. L. Riley, and J. Gilbertson-Day. 2011. A comparative risk assessment framework for wildland fire management: the 2010 Cohesive Strategy Science Report. RMRS-GTR-262. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
13. Calkin, D. E., M. P. Thompson, and M. A. Finney. 2015. Negative consequence of positive feedbacks in US wildfire management. Forest Ecosystems 2:9.
14. Chen, Y., D. C. Morton, N. Andela, L. Giglio, and J. T. Randerson. 2016. How much global burned area can be forecast on seasonal time scales using sea surface temperatures? Environmental Research Letters 11:045001.
15. Cohen, J. D., and J. E. Deeming. 1985. The national fire-danger rating system: basic equations. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-82. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, Berkeley, California, USA.
16. Deeming, J. E., R. E. Burgan, and J. D. Cohen. 1984. The 1978 national fire-danger rating system: technical documentation. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Ogden, Utah, USA.
17. Dillon, G. K., Z. A. Holden, P. Morgan, M. A. Crimmins, E. K. Heyerdahl, and C. H. Luce. 2011. Both topography and climate affected forest and woodland burn severity in two regions of the western US, 1984 to 2006. Ecosphere 2:1-33.
18. Fagre, D. B., and D. L. Peterson. 2000. Ecosystem dynamics and disturbance in mountain wildernesses: assessing vulnerability of natural resources to change. Pages 74-81 in S. F. McCool, D. N. Cole, W. T. Borrie, and J. O'Loughlin, editors. Wilderness science in a time of change. Vol. 3: wilderness as a place for scientific inquiry. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Ogden, Utah, USA.
19. Falk, D. A., C. Miller, D. McKenzie, and A. E. Black. 2007. Cross-scale analysis of fire regimes. Ecosystems 10:809-823.
20. Finney, M. A. 2002. Fire growth using minimum travel time methods. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 32:1420-1424.
21. Finney, M., I. C. Grenfell, and C. W. McHugh. 2009. Modeling containment of large wildfires using generalized linear mixed-model analysis. Forest Science 55:249-255.
22. Finney, M. A., C. W. McHugh, I. Grenfell, and K. L. Riley. 2010. Continental-scale simulation of burn probabilities, flame lengths, and fire size distribution for the United States. Page 12 in D. X. Viegas, editor. Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Forest Fire Research. University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
23. Finney, M. A., C. W. McHugh, I. C. Grenfell, K. L. Riley, and K. C. Short. 2011. A simulation of probabilistic wildfire risk components for the continental United States. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment 25:973-1000.
24. Flannigan, M. D., B. D. Amiro, K. A. Logan, B. J. Stocks, and B. M. Wotton. 2006. Forest fires and climate change in the 21st century. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 11:847-859.
25. Flannigan, M. D., M. A. Krawchuk, W. J. De Groot, B. M. Wotton, and L. M. Gowman. 2009. Implications of changing climate for global wildland fire. International Journal of Wildland Fire 18:483-507.
26. Fosberg, M. A., and J. E. Deeming. 1971. Derivation of the one- and ten-hour timelag fuel moisture calculations for fire-danger rating. 207. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Research Note RM-207, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
27. Gebert, K. M., D. E. Calkin, and J. Yoder. 2007. Estimating suppression expenditures for individual large wildland fires. Western Journal of Applied Forestry 22:188-196.
28. Grenfell, I. C., M. Finney, and M. Jolly. 2010. Simulating spatial and temporally related fire weather. Page 9 in Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Forest Fire Research. University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal.
29. Hejl, S. J., R. L. Hutto, C. R. Preston, and D. M. Finch. 1995. Effects of silvicultural treatments in the Rocky Mountains. Page 220 in T. E. Martin and D. M. Finch, editors. Ecology and management of Neotropical migratory birds, a synthesis and review of critical issues. Oxford University Press, New York, New York, USA.
30. Heyerdahl, E. K., R. F. Miller, and R. A. Parsons. 2006. History of fire and Douglas-fir establishment in a savanna and sagebrush-grassland mosaic, southwestern Montana, USA. Forest Ecology and Management 230:107-118.
31. Heyerdahl, E. K., P. Morgan, and J. P. Riser. 2008. Multi-season climate synchronized historical fires in dry forests (1650-1900), northern Rockies, USA. Ecology 89:705-716.
32. Higuera, P. E., J. T. Abatzoglou, J. S. Littell, and P. Morgan. 2015. The changing strength and nature of fire-climate relationships in the northern Rocky Mountains, USA, 1902-2008. PLoS ONE 10:e0127563.
33. Holsinger, L., R. E. Keane, D. J. Isaak, L. Eby, and M. K. Young. 2014. Relative effects of climate change and wildfires on stream temperatures: a simulation modeling approach in a Rocky Mountain watershed. Climatic Change 124:191-206.
34. Jolly, W. M., M. A. Cochrane, P. H. Freeborn, Z. A. Holden, T. J. Brown, G. J. Williamson, and D. M. Bowman. 2015. Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013. Nature Communications 6:1-11.
35. Keane, R. E., G. J. Cary, I. D. Davies, M. D. Flannigan, R. H. Gardner, S. Lavorel, J. M. Lenihan, C. Li, and T. S. Rupp. 2004. A classification of landscape fire succession models: spatial simulations of fire and vegetation dynamics. Ecological Modelling 179:3-27.
36. Keane, R. E., R. Loehman, J. Clark, E. A. Smithwick, and C. Miller. 2015a. Exploring interactions among multiple disturbance agents in forest landscapes: simulating effects of fire, beetles, and disease under climate change. Pages 201-231 in A. H. Perera, T. K. Remmel, and L. J. Buse, editors. Simulation modeling of forest landscape disturbances. Springer International Publishing, Cham, Switzerland.
37. Keane, R. E., D. McKenzie, D. A. Falk, E. A. Smithwick, C. Miller, and L.-K. B. Kellogg. 2015b. Representing climate, disturbance, and vegetation interactions in landscape models. Ecological Modelling 309:33-47.
38. Kitzberger, T., E. Aráoz, J. H. Gowda, M. Mermoz, and J. M. Morales. 2012. Decreases in fire spread probability with forest age promotes alternative community states, reduced resilience to climate variability and large fire regime shifts. Ecosystems 15:97-112.
39. Krawchuk, M. A., M. A. Moritz, M. A. Parisien, J. Van Dorn, and K. Hayhoe. 2009. Global pyrogeography: the current and future distribution of wildfire. PLoS ONE 4:e5102.
40. LANDFIRE. 2008a. Existing vegetation type layer, LANDFIRE 1.1.0. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and U. S. Department of Interior, U. S. Geologic Survey. http://www.landfire.gov/in dex.php
41. LANDFIRE. 2008b. Fire regime group layer, LANDFIRE 1.1.0. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and U. S. Department of the Interior, U. S. Geologic Survey. http://www.landfire.gov/index. php
42. LANDFIRE. 2013. Homepage of the LANDFIRE Project. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service and U. S. Department of the Interior, U. S. Geologic Survey. http://www.landfire.gov/index.php
43. Littell, J. S., M. M. Elsner, G. Mauger, E. Lutz, A. F. Hamlet, and E. Salathé. 2011a. Regional climate and hydrologic change in the northern US Rockies and Pacific Northwest: internally consistent projections of future climate for resource management. Climate Impacts Group, College of the Environment, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
44. Littell, J. S., D. L. McKenzie, B. K. Kerns, S. Cushman, and C. G. Shaw. 2011b. Managing uncertainty in climate-driven ecological models to inform adaptation to climate change. Ecosphere 2:102.
45. Littell, J. S., D. McKenzie, D. L. Peterson, and A. L. Westerling. 2009. Climate and wildfire area burned in western US ecoprovinces, 1916-2003. Ecological Applications 19:1003-1021.
46. Loehman, R. A., J. A. Clark, and R. E. Keane. 2011a. Modeling effects of climate change and fire management on western white pine (Pinus monticola) in the northern Rocky Mountains, USA. Forests 2:832-860.
47. Loehman, R. A., A. Corrow, and R. E. Keane. 2011b. Modeling climate change and disturbance interactions: effects on whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) and implications for restoration, Glacier National Park, Montana, USA. Pages 176-189 in R. E. Keane, D. F. Tomback, M. P. Murray, and C. Smith, editors. The future of high-elevation, five-needle white pines in western North America: Proceedings of the High Five Symposium. Proceedings RMRS-P-63. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
48. Loehman, R. A., R. E. Keane, L. M. Holsinger, and Z. Wu. 2016. Interactions of landscape disturbances and climate change dictate ecological pattern and process: spatial modeling of wildfire, insect, and disease dynamics under future climates. Landscape Ecology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10980-016-0414-6
49. Loehman, R. A., E. Reinhardt, and K. L. Riley. 2014. Wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate: seeing the forest and the trees - A cross-scale assessment of wildfire and carbon dynamics in fire-prone, forested ecosystems. Forest Ecology and Management 317:9-19.
50. Mach, K. J., M. D. Mastrandrea, T. E. Bilir, and C. B. Field. 2016. Understanding and responding to danger from climate change: the role of key risks in the IPCC AR5. Climatic Change 136:427-444.
51. Marlon, J. R., P. Bartlein, C. Carcaillet, D. Gavin, S. Harrison, P. Higuera, F. Joos, M. Power, and I. Prentice. 2008. Climate and human influences on global biomass burning over the past two millennia. Nature Geoscience 1:697-702.
52. Marlon, J. R., P. J. Bartlein, D. G. Gavin, C. J. Long, R. S. Anderson, C. E. Briles, K. J. Brown, D. Colombaroli, D. J. Hallett, and M. J. Power. 2012. Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109:E535-E543.
53. Marlon, J. R., et al. 2009. Wildfire responses to abrupt climate change in North America. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106:2519-2524.
54. McKenzie, D., G. Ze'ev, D. Peterson, and P. Mote. 2004. Climatic change, wildfire, and conservation. Conservation Biology 18:890-902.
55. Miller, C., J. Abatzoglou, T. Brown, and A. D. Syphard. 2011. Wilderness fire management in a changing environment. Pages 269-294 in The landscape ecology of fire. Springer, New York, New York, USA.
56. Morgan, P., E. Heyerdahl, and C. Gibson. 2008. Multi-season climate synchronized forest fires throughout the 20th century, northern Rockies, USA. Ecology 89:717-728.
57. Murphy, J. M., D. M. Sexton, D. N. Barnett, G. S. Jones, M. J. Webb, M. Collins, and D. A. Stainforth. 2004. Quantification of modelling uncertainties in a large ensemble of climate change simulations. Nature 430:768-772.
58. Naficy, C., A. Sala, E. G. Keeling, J. Graham, and T. H. DeLuca. 2010. Interactive effects of historical logging and fire exclusion on ponderosa pine forest structure in the northern Rockies. Ecological Applications 20:1851-1864.
59. Nakicenovic, N., et al. 2000. Special report on emissions scenarios: a special report of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
60. Parks, S. A., C. Miller, J. T. Abatzoglou, L. M. Holsinger, M.-A. Parisien, and S. Z. Dobrowski. 2016. How will climate change affect wildland fire severity in the western US? Environmental Research Letters 11:035002.
61. Peterson, D. L., M. C. Johnson, J. K. Agee, T. B. Jain, D. McKenzie, and E. D. Reinhardt. 2005. Forest structure and fire hazard in dry forests of the western United States. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-268. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, USA.
62. Riley, K. L., J. T. Abatzoglou, I. C. Grenfell, A. E. Klene, and F. A. Heinsch. 2013. The relationship of large fire occurrence with drought and fire danger indices in the western USA, 1984-2008: the role of temporal scale. International Journal of Wildland Fire 22:894-909.
63. Rocca, M. E., P. M. Brown, L. H. MacDonald, and C. M. Carrico. 2014. Climate change impacts on fire regimes and key ecosystem services in Rocky Mountain forests. Forest Ecology and Management 327:290-305.
64. Rollins, M. G. 2009. LANDFIRE: a nationally consistent vegetation, wildland fire, and fuel assessment. International Journal of Wildland Fire 18:235-249.
65. Romps, D. M., J. T. Seeley, D. Vollaro, and J. Molinari. 2014. Projected increase in lightning strikes in the United States due to global warming. Science 346:851-854.
66. Running, S. W. 2006. Is global warming causing more, larger wildfires? Science 313:927-928.
67. Schoennagel, T., T. T. Veblen, and W. H. Romme. 2004. The interaction of fire, fuels, and climate across Rocky Mountain forests. BioScience 54:661-676.
68. Scott, J. H., and R. E. Burgan. 2005. Standard fire behavior fuel models: a comprehensive set for use with Rothermel's surface fire spread model. Gen. Tech. Rep RMRS-GTR-153. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
69. Seidl, R., P. M. Fernandes, T. F. Fonseca, F. Gillet, A. M. Jönsson, K. Merganicová, S. Netherer, A. Arpaci, J. D. Bontemps, and H. Bugmann. 2011. Modelling natural disturbances in forest ecosystems: a review. Ecological Modelling 222:903-924.
70. Seneviratne, S. I., N. Nicholls, D. Easterling, C. Goodess, S. Kanae, J. Kossin, Y. Luo, J. Marengo, K. McInnes, and M. Rahimi. 2012. Changes in climate extremes and their impacts on the natural physical environment. Pages 109-230 in C. Field, V. Barros, T. Stocker, D. Qin, D. Dokken, K. Ebi, M. Mastrandrea, K. Mach, G.-K. Plattner, S. Allen, M. Tignor, and P. Midgley, editors. Managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation. A Special Report of Working Groups I and II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
71. Sheehan, T., D. Bachelet, and K. Ferschweiler. 2015. Projected major fire and vegetation changes in the Pacific Northwest of the conterminous United States under selected CMIP5 climate futures. Ecological Modelling 317:16-29.
72. Short, K. 2014. A spatial database of wildfires in the United States, 1992-2011. Earth System Science Data 6:1-27.
73. Sprugel, D. G. 1991. Disturbance, equilibrium, and environmental variability: What is 'natural' vegetation in a changing environment? Biological Conservation 58:1-18.
74. Stephens, S. L., J. J. Moghaddas, C. Edminster, C. E. Fiedler, S. Haase, M. Harrington, J. E. Keeley, E. E. Knapp, J. D. McIver, and K. Metlen. 2009. Fire treatment effects on vegetation structure, fuels, and potential fire severity in western US forests. Ecological Applications 19:305-320.
75. Svenning, J.-C., and B. Sandel. 2013. Disequilibrium vegetation dynamics under future climate change. American Journal of Botany 100:1266-1286.
76. Taylor, A. H., and C. N. Skinner. 2003. Spatial patterns and controls on historical fire regimes and forest structure in the Klamath Mountains. Ecological Applications 13:704-719.
77. Thompson, M. P., J. R. Haas, M. A. Finney, D. E. Calkin, M. S. Hand, M. J. Browne, M. Halek, K. C. Short, and I. C. Grenfell. 2015. Development and application of a probabilistic method for wildfire suppression cost modeling. Forest Policy and Economics 50:249-258.
78. Werth, P. A., B. E. Potter, C. B. Clements, M. Finney, S. L. Goodrick, M. E. Alexander, M. G. Cruz, J. A. Forthofer, and S. S. McAllister. 2011. Synthesis of knowledge of extreme fire behavior: Volume I for fire managers. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-854. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Portland, Oregon, USA.
79. Westerling, A. L., H. G. Hidalgo, D. R. Cayan, and T. W. Swetnam. 2006. Warming and earlier spring increase western U. S. forest wildfire activity. Science 313:940-943.
80. Westerling, A. L., M. G. Turner, E. A. H. Smithwick, W. H. Romme, and M. G. Ryan. 2011. Continued warming could transform Greater Yellowstone fire regimes by mid-21st century. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108:13165-13170.
81. Williams, H. L. 2015. Economic efficiency of fuel reduction treatments in the home ignition zone to mitigate wildfire risk in Montana, USA. Master's thesis. College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana, USA.
82. Wotton, B., and B. Stocks. 2006. Fire management in Canada: vulnerability and risk trends. Pages 49-55 in Canadian wildland fire strategy: background synthesis, analysis, and perspectives. Canadian Council of Forest Ministers, Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.