Fire regime from 1973 to 2011 in north-western Patagonian grasslands

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (9) ◽  
pp. 922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Facundo José Oddi ◽  
Luciana Ghermandi
Keyword(s):  
Fire Regime ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Socioeconomic Impacts ◽  
Mean Size ◽  
Fire Size Distribution ◽  
North Western

Fire is one of the most important disturbances in terrestrial ecosystems and has major ecological and socioeconomic impacts. Fire regime describes the variation of individual fire events in time and space. Few studies have characterised the fire regime in grasslands in spite of the importance of these ecosystems. The aim of this study was to describe the recent fire regime (from 1973 to 2011) of north-western Patagonian grasslands in terms of seasonality, frequency and burned area. Our study area covered 560 000 ha and we used a remote sensing approach combined with statistics obtained from operational databases. Fires occur during the summer in 2 of every 3 years with a frequency of 2.7 fires per year and a mean size of 823 ha. Fire size distribution is characterised by many small fires and few large ones which would respond to a distribution from the power law family. Eighty per cent of the total area affected by fire was burned in the span of a few years, which were also widespread fire years in forests and woodlands of north-western Patagonia. This work contributes to general knowledge about fire regimes in grasslands and we expect that our results will serve as a reference to further fire regime research.

scholarly journals Modelling fires in the terrestrial carbon balance by incorporating SPITFIRE into the global vegetation model ORCHIDEE – Part 1: Simulating historical global burned area and fire regime

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 2377-2427 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Yue ◽  
P. Ciais ◽  
P. Cadule ◽  
K. Thonicke ◽  
S. Archibald ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Energy Budgets ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Vegetation Model ◽  
Global Vegetation

Abstract. Fire is an important global ecological process that determines the distribution of biomes, with consequences for carbon, water, and energy budgets. The modelling of fire is critical for understanding its role in both historical and future changes in terrestrial ecosystems and the climate system. This study incorporates the process-based prognostic fire module SPITFIRE into the global vegetation model ORCHIDEE, which was then used to simulate the historical burned area and the fire regime for the 20th century. For 2001–2006, the simulated global spatial extent of fire occurrence agrees well with that given by the satellite-derived burned area datasets (L3JRC, GLOBCARBON, GFED3.1) and captures 78–92% of global total burned area depending on which dataset is used for comparison. The simulated global annual burned area is 329 Mha yr−1, which falls within the range of 287–384 Mha yr−1 given by the three global observation datasets and is close to the 344 Mha yr−1 given by GFED3.1 data when crop fires are excluded. The simulated long-term trends of burned area agree best with the observation data in regions where fire is mainly driven by the climate variation, such as boreal Russia (1920–2009), and the US state of Alaska and Canada (1950–2009). At the global scale, the simulated decadal fire trend over the 20th century is in moderate agreement with the historical reconstruction, possibly because of the uncertainties of past estimates, and because land-use change fires and fire suppression are not explicitly included in the model. Over the globe, the size of large fires (the 95th quantile fire size) is systematically underestimated by the model compared with the fire patch data as reconstructed from MODIS 500 m burned area data. Two case studies of fire size distribution in boreal North America and southern Africa indicate that both the number and the size of big fires are underestimated, which could be related with too low fire spread rate (in the case of static vegetation) and fire duration time. Future efforts should be directed towards building consistent spatial observation datasets for key parameters of the model in order to constrain the model error at each key step of the fire modelling.

scholarly journals A century of transformation: Fire regime transitions from 1919 to 2019 in southeastern British Columbia, Canada

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer N Baron ◽  
Sarah E. Gergel ◽  
Paul F. Hessburg ◽  
Lori D. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Annual Number ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Climatic Period ◽  
Fire Exclusion

The past 100 years marks a transition between pre-colonial and modern era fire regimes, which provides crucial context for understanding future wildfire behavior. Using the greatest depth of digitized fire events in Canada, we identify distinct phases of wildfire regimes from 1919 to 2019 by evaluating changes in mapped fire perimeters (>20-ha) across the East Kootenay forest region (including the southern Rocky Mountain Trench), British Columbia (BC). We detect transitions in annual number of fires, burned area, and fire size; explore the roles of lightning- and human-caused fires in driving these transitions; and quantify departures from historical fire frequency at the regional level. We found that, relative to historical fire frequency, fire exclusion created a significant fire deficit across 89% of the flammable landscape. Fire was active from 1919 to 1940 with frequent and large fire events, but the regime was already altered by a century of colonization. Fire activity decreased after 1940, coinciding with effective fire suppression influenced by a mild climatic period. After 2003, the combined effects of fire exclusion and accelerated climate change fueled a shift in fire regimes of various forest types, with increases in area burned and mean fire size driven by lightning.

scholarly journals Small mammals decline with increasing fire extent in northern Australia: evidence from long-term monitoring in Kakadu National Park

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Lawes ◽  
Brett P. Murphy ◽  
Alaric Fisher ◽  
John C. Z. Woinarski ◽  
Andrew C. Edwards ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Small Mammals ◽  
National Park ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Northern Australia ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Burnt Area ◽  
Fire Extent

Small mammal (<2 kg) numbers have declined dramatically in northern Australia in recent decades. Fire regimes, characterised by frequent, extensive, late-season wildfires, are implicated in this decline. Here, we compare the effect of fire extent, in conjunction with fire frequency, season and spatial heterogeneity (patchiness) of the burnt area, on mammal declines in Kakadu National Park over a recent decadal period. Fire extent – an index incorporating fire size and fire frequency – was the best predictor of mammal declines, and was superior to the proportion of the surrounding area burnt and fire patchiness. Point-based fire frequency, a commonly used index for characterising fire effects, was a weak predictor of declines. Small-scale burns affected small mammals least of all. Crucially, the most important aspects of fire regimes that are associated with declines are spatial ones; extensive fires (at scales larger than the home ranges of small mammals) are the most detrimental, indicating that small mammals may not easily escape the effects of large and less patchy fires. Notwithstanding considerable management effort, the current fire regime in this large conservation reserve is detrimental to the native mammal fauna, and more targeted management is required to reduce fire size.

Inter- and intra-annual profiles of fire regimes in the managed forests of Canada and implications for resource sharing

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steen Magnussen ◽  
Stephen W. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Resource Sharing ◽  
Joint Distribution ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Season ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Fire Activity ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Regional Synchrony

Year-to-year variation in fire activity in Canada constitutes a key challenge for fire management agencies. Interagency sharing of fire management resources has been ongoing on regional, national and international scales in Canada for several decades to better cope with peaks in resource demand. Inherent stressors on these schemes determined by the fire regimes in constituent jurisdictions are not well known, nor described by averages. We developed a statistical framework to examine the likelihood of regional synchrony of peaks in fire activity at a timescale of 1 week. Year-to-year variations in important fire regime variables and 48 regions in Canada are quantified by a joint distribution and profiled at the Provincial or Territorial level. The fire regime variables capture the timing of the fire season, the average number of fires, area burned, and the timing and extent of annual maxima. The onset of the fire season was strongly correlated with latitude and longitude. Regional synchrony in the timing of the maximum burned area within fire seasons delineates opportunities for and limitations to sharing of fire suppression resources during periods of stress that were quantified in Monte Carlo simulations from the joint distribution.

Future fires in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) phase 6

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gitta Lasslop ◽  
Stijn Hantson ◽  
Victor Brovkin ◽  
Fang Li ◽  
David Lawrence ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Coupled Model ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Atmospheric Composition ◽  
Cloud Formation ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Earth System ◽  
System Models ◽  
Earth System Models

&lt;p&gt;Fires are an important component in Earth system models (ESMs), they impact vegetation carbon storage, vegetation distribution, atmospheric composition and cloud formation. The representation of fires in ESMs contributing to CMIP phase 5 was still very simplified. Several Earth system models updated their representation of fires in the meantime. Using the latest simulations of CMIP6 we investigate how fire regimes change in the future for different scenarios and how land use, climate and atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentration contribute to the fire regimes changes. We quantify changes in fire danger, burned area and carbon emissions on an annual and seasonal basis. Factorial model simulations allow to quantify the influence of land use, climate and atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; on fire regimes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We complement the information on fire regime change supplied by ESMs that include a fire module with a statistical modelling approach for burned area. This will use information from simulated changes in climate, vegetation and socioeconomic changes (population density and land use) provided for a set of different future scenarios. This allows the integration of information provided by global satellite products on burned area with the process-based simulations of climate and vegetation changes and information from socioeconomic scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;

Using spatially explicit simulations to explore size distribution and spacing of regenerating areas produced by wildfires: recommendations for designing harvest agglomerations for the Canadian boreal forest

2007 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie Belleau ◽  
Yves Bergeron ◽  
Alain Leduc ◽  
Sylvie Gauthier ◽  
Andrew Fall
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Boreal Forest ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Temporal Variability ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Natural Disturbance ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Canadian Boreal Forest

It is now recognized that in the Canadian boreal forest, timber harvesting activities have replaced wildfires as the main stand-replacing disturbance. Differences in landscape patterns derived from these two sources of disturbance have, however, raised concerns that the way forest harvesting has been dispersed is potentially shifting patterns away from the natural range. In the context of natural disturbance-based management, we used a spatially explicit model designed to capture general fire regimes in order to quantify temporal variability associated with regenerating areas (burnt areas of 25 years or younger), and to develop strategic objectives for harvest agglomeration sizes and dispersion. We first evaluated temporal variability in the proportion of stands younger than 100 years (assumed to be even-aged stands) for various fire regimes (seven fire cycles: 50 to 400 years, and three mean fires sizes: 3000, 15 000 and 60 000 ha). Secondly, we quantified the size distribution and dispersion of regenerating areas for each fire regime. As expected by theoretical fire frequencies and size distributions, the importance of even-aged stands at the forest management unit level was found to decrease with longer fire cycles. However, the temporal variability associated with these proportions is shown to increase with mean fire size. It was also observed that the size distribution and dispersion of regenerating areas was primarily influenced by mean fire size. Based on these observations, natural disturbance-based management objectives were formulated, providing guidelines on harvest agglomeration size and dispersion. Key words: temporal variability, boreal forest, fire regime, forest management, age distribution, fire size distribution, clearcut agglomeration size distribution

scholarly journals Characterization of wildfire regimes in Canadian boreal terrestrial ecosystems

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yueyang Jiang ◽  
Qianlai Zhuang ◽  
Mike D. Flannigan ◽  
John M. Little
Keyword(s):  
Power Law ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Carbon Dynamics ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Burned Areas ◽  
Fire Recurrence ◽  
Natural Fires ◽  
Recurrence Intervals ◽  
Frequency Area

Wildfire is a major disturbance in boreal terrestrial ecosystems. Characterizing fire regimes and projecting fire recurrence intervals for different biomes are important in managing those ecosystems and quantifying carbon dynamics of those ecosystems. This study used Canadian wildfire datasets, 1980–1999, to characterize relationships between number of fires and burned area for 13 ecozones and to calculate wildfire recurrence intervals in each ecozone. For the study period, wildfires were found to follow power–law relationships between frequency densities (number of fires normalized to unit bins) and burned areas in all ecozones. Power–law frequency–area relationships also held for both anthropogenic fires and natural fires in the 1980s and 1990s. For each Canadian ecozone using the parameters of the power–law frequency–area distributions, fire recurrence intervals were then calculated for wildfires equal to or larger than a given size of burned area. Fire recurrence intervals ranged from 1 to 32 years for burned areas >2 km2, and from 1 to 100 years for burned areas >10 km2 in every 10 000-km2 spatial area for each ecozone. The information obtained through characterizing the wildfires and the fire recurrence intervals calculated in this study will provide guidance to wildfire risk managers throughout Canada. The findings of this study will also be a benefit to future efforts in quantifying carbon dynamics in Canadian boreal terrestrial ecosystems.

scholarly journals Sensitivity of simulated historical burned area to environmental andanthropogenic controls: A comparison of seven fire models

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Teckentrup ◽  
Sandy P. Harrison ◽  
Stijn Hantson ◽  
Angelika Heil ◽  
Joe R. Melton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Global Change ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Fire Behavior ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Strong Response ◽  
Fire Models ◽  
In Fire ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Understanding how fire regimes change over time is of major importance for understanding their future impact on the Earth system, including society. Large differences in simulated burned area between fire models show that there is substantial uncertainty associated with modelling global change impacts on fire regimes. We draw here on sensitivity simulations made by seven global dynamic vegetation models participating in the Fire Model Intercomparison Project (FireMIP) to understand how differences in models translate into differences in fire regime projections. The sensitivity experiments isolate the impact of the individual drivers of fire, which are prescribed in the simulations. Specifically these drivers are atmospheric CO2, population density, land-use change, lightning and climate. The seven models capture spatial patterns in burned area. However, they show considerable differences in the burned area trends since 1900. We analyse the trajectories of differences between the sensitivity and reference simulation to improve our understanding of what drives the global trend in burned area. Where it is possible, we link the inter-model differences to model assumptions. Overall, these analyses reveal that the strongest differences leading to diverging trajectories are related to the way anthropogenic ignitions and suppression, as well as the effects of land-use on vegetation and fire, are incorporated in individual models. This points to a need to improve our understanding and model representation of the relationship between human activities and fire to improve our abilities to model fire for global change applications. Only two models show a strong response to CO2 and the response to lightning on global scale is low for all models. The sensitivity to climate shows a spatially heterogeneous response and globally only two models show a significant trend. It was not possible to attribute the climate-induced changes in burned area to model assumptions or specific climatic parameters. However, the strong influence of climate on the inter-annual variability in burned area, shown by all the models, shows that we need to pay attention to the simulation of fire weather but also meteorological influences on biomass accumulation and fuel properties in order to better capture extremes in fire behavior.

scholarly journals Fire regime and ecosystem responses: adaptive forest management in a changing world (Part 1)

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Moya ◽  
Giacomo Certini ◽  
Peter Z. Fulé
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Landscape Management ◽  
Intrinsic Factor ◽  
Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Management Decision ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Ongoing Research

Although fire is an intrinsic factor in most terrestrial biomes, it is often perceived as a negative disturbance that must be suppressed. The application of successful fire prevention policies can lead to unsustainable fire events for ecosystems adapted to a specific fire regime. In addition, new climate and land use scenarios are influencing fire parameters and ecosystem services. Consequently, adaptive forest and landscape management must include knowledge on vulnerability, resistance and resilience of terrestrial ecosystems. To help address this need, we convened a special issue (divided in two separate parts) to synthesise ongoing research focused on obtaining a better understanding of wildfire response decisions and actions, including preventive management and post-fire restoration. We conceived a collection of research studies covering a wide diversity of geographical settings characterised by different climates and forest types, under scenarios of changing climate and land use. Here, we summarise the key findings from the six papers published in the first section of the special issue. They deal with diverse topics and assessments, such as adaptions to fire regimes, the effects of burn severity on the plant–soil interface, and post-fire management taking advantage of indices obtained from satellite images (dNBR, NDVI), dendrochronology, soil sampling and analysis of biological indicators. We highlight the new knowledge developed to enhance fire management decision making in a time of rapidly changing scenarios around the world.

scholarly journals FIRED (Fire Events Delineation): An Open, Flexible Algorithm and Database of US Fire Events Derived from the MODIS Burned Area Product (2001–2019)

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 3498
Author(s):  
Jennifer K. Balch ◽  
Lise A. St. Denis ◽  
Adam L. Mahood ◽  
Nathan P. Mietkiewicz ◽  
Travis M. Williams ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Integration ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Open Science ◽  
Burn Severity ◽  
National Database ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Fire Event ◽  
Area Product

Harnessing the fire data revolution, i.e., the abundance of information from satellites, government records, social media, and human health sources, now requires complex and challenging data integration approaches. Defining fire events is key to that effort. In order to understand the spatial and temporal characteristics of fire, or the classic fire regime concept, we need to critically define fire events from remote sensing data. Events, fundamentally a geographic concept with delineated spatial and temporal boundaries around a specific phenomenon that is homogenous in some property, are key to understanding fire regimes and more importantly how they are changing. Here, we describe Fire Events Delineation (FIRED), an event-delineation algorithm, that has been used to derive fire events (N = 51,871) from the MODIS MCD64 burned area product for the coterminous US (CONUS) from January 2001 to May 2019. The optimized spatial and temporal parameters to cluster burned area pixels into events were an 11-day window and a 5-pixel (2315 m) distance, when optimized against 13,741 wildfire perimeters in the CONUS from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity record. The linear relationship between the size of individual FIRED and Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) events for the CONUS was strong (R2 = 0.92 for all events). Importantly, this algorithm is open-source and flexible, allowing the end user to modify the spatio-temporal threshold or even the underlying algorithm approach as they see fit. We expect the optimized criteria to vary across regions, based on regional distributions of fire event size and rate of spread. We describe the derived metrics provided in a new national database and how they can be used to better understand US fire regimes. The open, flexible FIRED algorithm could be utilized to derive events in any satellite product. We hope that this open science effort will help catalyze a community-driven, data-integration effort (termed OneFire) to build a more complete picture of fire.

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