文章基本信息

标题：Climate drives inter-annual variability in probability of high severity fire occurrence in the western United States
本地全文：下载
作者：Alisa Keyser ; Anthony LeRoy Westerling
期刊名称：Environmental Research Letters
印刷版ISSN：1748-9326
电子版ISSN：1748-9326
出版年度：2017
卷号：12
期号：6
页码：065003
DOI：10.1088/1748-9326/aa6b10
语种：English
出版社：IOP Publishing Ltd
摘要：A long history of fire suppression in the western United States has significantly changed forest structure and ecological function, leading to increasingly uncharacteristic fires in terms of size and severity. Prior analyses of fire severity in California forests showed that time since last fire and fire weather conditions predicted fire severity very well, while a larger regional analysis showed that topography and climate were important predictors of high severity fire. There has not yet been a large-scale study that incorporates topography, vegetation and fire-year climate to determine regional scale high severity fire occurrence. We developed models to predict the probability of high severity fire occurrence for the western US. We predict high severity fire occurrence with some accuracy, and identify the relative importance of predictor classes in determining the probability of high severity fire. The inclusion of both vegetation and fire-year climate predictors was critical for model skill in identifying fires with high fractional fire severity. The inclusion of fire-year climate variables allows this model to forecast inter-annual variability in areas at future risk of high severity fire, beyond what slower-changing fuel conditions alone can accomplish. This allows for more targeted land management, including resource allocation for fuels reduction treatments to decrease the risk of high severity fire.