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Human exposure and sensitivity to globally extreme wildfire events.
Bowman, David M J S; Williamson, Grant J; Abatzoglou, John T; Kolden, Crystal A; Cochrane, Mark A; Smith, Alistair M S.
Affiliation
  • Bowman DMJS; School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 55, Hobart, Tasmania 7000, Australia.
  • Williamson GJ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 55, Hobart, Tasmania 7000, Australia.
  • Abatzoglou JT; College of Science, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83844-3021, USA.
  • Kolden CA; College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83844-1133, USA.
  • Cochrane MA; Geospatial Sciences Center of Excellence, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota, USA.
  • Smith AMS; College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83844-1133, USA.
Nat Ecol Evol ; 1(3): 58, 2017 Feb 06.
Article in En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-28812737
Extreme wildfires have substantial economic, social and environmental impacts, but there is uncertainty whether such events are inevitable features of the Earth's fire ecology or a legacy of poor management and planning. We identify 478 extreme wildfire events defined as the daily clusters of fire radiative power from MODIS, within a global 10 × 10 km lattice, between 2002 and 2013, which exceeded the 99.997th percentile of over 23 million cases of the ΣFRP 100 km-2 in the MODIS record. These events are globally distributed across all flammable biomes, and are strongly associated with extreme fire weather conditions. Extreme wildfire events reported as being economically or socially disastrous (n = 144) were concentrated in suburban areas in flammable-forested biomes of the western United States and southeastern Australia, noting potential biases in reporting and the absence of globally comprehensive data of fire disasters. Climate change projections suggest an increase in days conducive to extreme wildfire events by 20 to 50% in these disaster-prone landscapes, with sharper increases in the subtropical Southern Hemisphere and European Mediterranean Basin.

Full text: 1 Collection: 01-internacional Database: MEDLINE Type of study: Diagnostic_studies Language: En Journal: Nat Ecol Evol Year: 2017 Type: Article Affiliation country: Australia

Full text: 1 Collection: 01-internacional Database: MEDLINE Type of study: Diagnostic_studies Language: En Journal: Nat Ecol Evol Year: 2017 Type: Article Affiliation country: Australia