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Climate change and wildfire Research at the PNW Station: past, present, future

Climate change and wildfire Research at the PNW Station: past, present, future. Don McKenzie (TCM/FERA) with contributions from. Paul Hessburg Becky Flitcroft. Sim Larkin John Kim. PNW Science Day March 12, 2014. Seneviratne et al. (2014).

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Climate change and wildfire Research at the PNW Station: past, present, future

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  1. Climate change and wildfire Research at the PNW Station: past, present, future • Don McKenzie (TCM/FERA) • with contributions from • Paul Hessburg • Becky Flitcroft • Sim Larkin • John Kim PNW Science Day March 12, 2014

  2. Seneviratne et al. (2014) Rationale • It’s getting warm down here. • No “hiatus” in hot extremes over land. • More area is expected to burn. • What we care about is how fire climatology translates to the issues and scales relevant to land management. • Fire effects: tree mortality, smoke and air quality, habitat structure and pattern, regeneration and forest succession. • Time domains: immediate (to 2020s), next generation (2040s), long-term (2060s and beyond). Uncertainties grow non-linearly over time. • Space domains: cross-scale, from watersheds (“landscapes”) to the region. • Specificity: fire regimes. It’s not about individual fires or “my favorite pixel”. (though not so much as on this map)

  3. Past and present research (1) • Drivers of area burned • Fire-climate models at the scales of ecosections project that the West will burn up. • Expectation breaks down because there are limitations. • Fire area can’t keep increasing because fires will run out of real estate. • “Hotter and drier = more fire”doesn’t work everywhere. Best in thedark green ecosections. Expectation: Hotter and drier = more fire! Transitional forests: drought stress will increase fire extent and severity. Temperate rain forests: extreme weather causes rare wildfires. Arid forests: fire extent and severity may actually decrease. Correlations between annual area burned and water-balance deficit

  4. McKenzie et al. (2014) Past and present research (2) • Smoke and air quality (AirFire/FERA — Larkin/McKenzie) • Smoke modeling framework (BlueSky) that accepts either observed or simulated (i.e., future) fires. • Stochastic fire simulator tuned to the spatio-temporal domains of air-quality models.

  5. Past and present research (3) • Future megafires (AirFire/FERA — Larkin/McKenzie) • Expectation of more extreme events based on projections of future fire weather. • Representing all the factors that combine to produce a megafire. • Weather pre-ignition conditions fuels. • Weather on the day or hour of the fire. • Escapes initial attack? (hard to model but a big source of uncertainty) • Weather in days or weeks following fire. • How will this change in a warming climate? • Downscaling climate models. • Different regions will see different fire weather (not always hotter and drier). Stavros et al. (2014)

  6. Past and present research (4) • Fire and landscape dynamics (EPF/CLI — Hessburg) • Patch-size distributions associated with future climate. • Topographic controls based on terrain patch structure. • Endogenous vs. exogenous controls on fire & other disturbance. • Restore and maintain ecosystem function in future climate. • Use topography as a template. • Patch structure and tree density tuned to “climate analog” reference conditions rather than HRV. • Anticipate patterns of fire severity and seral stages.

  7. Past and present research (5) • Wildfire may compound the negative effects of climate change for cold water species. • Some management action to reduce wildfire effects may serve to protect some cold water aquatic refugia. • Fire, climate change, and bull trout vulnerability (LWM/AEM — Flitcroft) • Patch-size distributions associated with future climate. • Habitat extent of cold water aquatic species is vulnerable to climate change. • Climate change may isolate small patches of habitat, often in the headwaters of a watershed.

  8. Past and present research (6) • Downscaled output from CMIP5 GCM projections used to drive DGVM and predict changes in fire. • Process-based modeling of climate, vegetation, fire (EPF/CLI — Kim) • MC2 DGVM simulates vegetation-fire interactions at multiple scales. • Global, CONUS, regional. • Currently studying R6, R5, R4, R1, and Blue Mountains Ecoregion. • MC1-based Seasonal Drought and Fire Forecasting System creates 7-month fire and drought forecasts, updated monthly. Projections of biomass consumed by wildfire:1951-2000. vs. 2050-2099

  9. Subalpine fire and succession (Cansler 2014) Fire Future research (1): categories • Field & remote-sensing studies • Fire and succession • Fire and other disturbances • Fire and carbon • Theory • Conceptual models • Scaling • Extreme events and thresholds Kellogg et al. (2008) • Models • Landscape projections • Process AND empirical • “As simple as possible, but no simpler”

  10. Future research (2): questions ? • How much, how quickly? • High-severity patches • Carbon source • Air quality • Where? • Vulnerable landscapes • Thresholds for species and life forms (e.g., forest ➛ shrubland) • Thresholds for processes (e.g., habitat connectivity) • What can we do? • Resistance (short-term) • Resilience (mid-term) • Adaptation (start now)

  11. The end

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