Wildland fire is a global phenomenon, and a result of interactions between climate–weather, fuels and people. Our climate is changing rapidly primarily through the release of greenhouse gases that may have profound and possibly unexpected impacts on global fire activity. The present paper reviews the current understanding of what the future may bring with respect to wildland fire and discusses future options for research and management. To date, research suggests a general increase in area burned and fire occurrence but there is a lot of spatial variability, with some areas of no change or even decreases in area burned and occurrence. Fire seasons are lengthening for temperate and boreal regions and this trend should continue in a warmer world. Future trends of fire severity and intensity are difficult to determine owing to the complex and non-linear interactions between weather, vegetation and people. Improved fire data are required along with continued global studies that dynamically include weather, vegetation, people, and other disturbances. Lastly, we need more research on the role of policy, practices and human behaviour because most of the global fire activity is directly attributable to people.

/pdf/implications-of-changing-climate-for-global-wildland-fire-3ol75ysz53.pdf

Implications of changing climate for global wildland fire

[1] A Large Fire Database (LFDB), which includes information on fire location, start date, final size, cause, and suppression action, has been developed for all fires larger than 200 ha in area for Canada for the 1959–1997 period. The LFDB represents only 3.1% of the total number of Canadian fires during this period, the remaining 96.9% of fires being suppressed while <200 ha in size, yet accounts for ∼97% of the total area burned, allowing a spatial and temporal analysis of recent Canadian landscape-scale fire impacts. On average ∼2 million ha burned annually in these large fires, although more than 7 million ha burned in some years. Ecozones in the boreal and taiga regions experienced the greatest areas burned, with an average of 0.7% of the forested land burning annually. Lightning fires predominate in northern Canada, accounting for 80% of the total LFDB area burned. Large fires, although small in number, contribute substantially to area burned, most particularly in the boreal and taiga regions. The Canadian fire season runs from late April through August, with most of the area burned occurring in June and July due primarily to lightning fire activity in northern Canada. Close to 50% of the area burned in Canada is the result of fires that are not actioned due to their remote location, low values-at-risk, and efforts to accommodate the natural role of fire in these ecosystems. The LFDB is updated annually and is being expanded back in time to permit a more thorough analysis of long-term trends in Canadian fire activity.

/pdf/large-forest-fires-in-canada-1959-1997-2pppy1s4mg.pdf

Large forest fires in Canada, 1959–1997

Wildfire hazard abatement is one of the major reasons to use prescribed burning. Computer simula- tion, case studies, and analysis of the fire regime in the presence of active prescribed burning programs in forest and shrubland generally indicate that this fuel management tool facilitates fire suppression efforts by reducing the intensity, size and damage of wildfires. However, the conclusions that can be drawn from the above approaches are limited, highlighting the need for more properly designed experiments addressing this question. Fuel accumulation rate frequently limits prescribed fire effectiveness to a short post-treatment period (2-4 years). Optimisation of the spatial pattern of fire application is critical but has been poorly addressed by research, and practical management guidelines are lacking to initiate this. Furthermore, adequate treatment efforts in terms of fire protection are con- strained by operational, social and ecological issues. The best results of prescribed fire application are likely to be attained in heterogeneous landscapes and in climates where the likelihood of extreme weather conditions is low. Conclusive statements concerning the hazard-reduction potential of prescribed fire are not easily generalised, and will ultimately depend on the overall efficiency of the entire fire management process.

/pdf/a-review-of-prescribed-burning-effectiveness-in-fire-hazard-3rtf2w9796.pdf

A review of prescribed burning effectiveness in fire hazard reduction

Direct emissions of carbon from Canadian forest fires were estimated for all Canada and for each ecozone for the period 19591999. The estimates were based on a data base of large fires for the cou...

Direct carbon emissions from Canadian forest fires, 1959-1999

The terrestrial carbon cycle is currently the least constrained component of the global carbon budget. Large uncertainties stem from a poor understanding of plant carbon allocation, stocks, residence times, and carbon use efficiency. Imposing observational constraints on the terrestrial carbon cycle and its processes is, therefore, necessary to better understand its current state and predict its future state. We combine a diagnostic ecosystem carbon model with satellite observations of leaf area and biomass (where and when available) and soil carbon data to retrieve the first global estimates, to our knowledge, of carbon cycle state and process variables at a 1° × 1° resolution; retrieved variables are independent from the plant functional type and steady-state paradigms. Our results reveal global emergent relationships in the spatial distribution of key carbon cycle states and processes. Live biomass and dead organic carbon residence times exhibit contrasting spatial features (r = 0.3). Allocation to structural carbon is highest in the wet tropics (85-88%) in contrast to higher latitudes (73-82%), where allocation shifts toward photosynthetic carbon. Carbon use efficiency is lowest (0.42-0.44) in the wet tropics. We find an emergent global correlation between retrievals of leaf mass per leaf area and leaf lifespan (r = 0.64-0.80) that matches independent trait studies. We show that conventional land cover types cannot adequately describe the spatial variability of key carbon states and processes (multiple correlation median = 0.41). This mismatch has strong implications for the prediction of terrestrial carbon dynamics, which are currently based on globally applied parameters linked to land cover or plant functional types.

/pdf/the-decadal-state-of-the-terrestrial-carbon-cycle-global-14id1bzdg1.pdf

The decadal state of the terrestrial carbon cycle: Global retrievals of terrestrial carbon allocation, pools, and residence times

In Canada, many fire management agencies interpolate indexes of the Fire Weather Index System to estimate the fire danger between weather stations. Difficulties with interpolation arise because summer precipitation can be highly variable over short distances. This variability hinders the usefulness of interpolating precipitation, which is one of the inputs for the Fire Weather Index System. Precipitation estimates from the Canadian Atmospheric Environment Service radar at Upsala, Ontario, were used to determine if this will enable a more accurate measure of the fire danger over the region. Three methods of interpolation of the fire danger between weather stations were compared: first, the standard practice of interpolating fire weather indexes from weather stations to any specified location; second, interpolating the weather variables, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and precipitation from the weather station to any specified site and then calculating the fire weather indexes; third, interpolating weather variables as in Method 2 above except using the precipitation estimate from the radar and then calculating the fire weather indexes for any specified site. Overall, results indicate that the standard procedure of interpolating the fire weather indexes performs better than the other two methods. However, there are indexes where the other methods perform best (e.g., the fine fuel moisture code is best determined by using the radar precipitation estimation method). Fire management agencies should continue to use the standard practice of interpolating fire weather indexes to estimate fire danger between weather stations. Factors influencing the performance of the radar estimated precipitation method of estimating fire danger are discussed along with potential application of precipitation radar for fire management purposes.

A Study on the Interpolation of Fire Danger Using Radar Precipitation Estimates

This paper was presented at the conference ‘Integrating spatial technologies and ecological principles for a new age in fire management’, Boise, Idaho, USA, June 1999 Fire is the dominant stand-renewing disturbance through much of the Canadian boreal forest, with large high-intensity crown fires being common. From 1 to 3 million ha have burned on average during the past 80 years, with 6 years in the past two decades experiencing more than 4 million ha burned. A large-fire database that maps forest fires greater than 200 ha in area in Canada is being developed to catalogue historical fires. However, analyses using a regional climate model suggest that a changing climate caused by increasing greenhouse gases may alter fire weather, contributing to an increased area burned in the future. Direct carbon emissions from fire (combustion) are estimated to average 27 Tg carbon year–1 for 1959–1999 in Canada. Post-fire decomposition may be of a similar magnitude, and the regenerating forest has a different carbon sink strength. Measurements indicate that there is a net carbon release (source) by the forest immediately after the fire before vegetation is re-established. Daytime downward carbon fluxes over a burned forest take 1–3 decades to recover to those of a mature forest, but the annual carbon balance has not yet been measured. There is a potential positive feedback to global climate change, with anthropogenic greenhouse gases stimulating fire activity through weather changes, with fire releasing more carbon while the regenerating forest is a smaller carbon sink. However, changes in fuel type need to be considered in this scenario since fire spreads more slowly through younger deciduous forests. Proactive fuel management is evaluated as a potential mechanism to reduce area burned. However, it is difficult to envisage that such treatments could be employed successfully at the national scale, at least over the next few decades, because of the large scale of treatments required and ecological issues related to forest fragmentation and biodiversity.

Fire, climate change, carbon and fuel management in the Canadian boreal forest

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Flannigan

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

A Study on the Interpolation of Fire Danger Using Radar Precipitation Estimates

Fire, climate change, carbon and fuel management in the Canadian boreal forest