The importance of geography in forecasting future fire patterns under climate change.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
; 121(32): e2310076121, 2024 Aug 06.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-39074287
ABSTRACT
An increasing amount of California's landscape has burned in wildfires in recent decades, in conjunction with increasing temperatures and vapor pressure deficit due to climate change. As the wildland-urban interface expands, more people are exposed to and harmed by these extensive wildfires, which are also eroding the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems. With future wildfire activity expected to increase, there is an urgent demand for solutions that sustain healthy ecosystems and wildfire-resilient human communities. Those who manage disaster response, landscapes, and biodiversity rely on mapped projections of how fire activity may respond to climate change and other human factors. California wildfire is complex, however, and climate-fire relationships vary across the state. Given known geographical variability in drivers of fire activity, we asked whether the geographical extent of fire models used to create these projections may alter the interpretation of predictions. We compared models of fire occurrence spanning the entire state of California to models developed for individual ecoregions and then projected end-of-century future fire patterns under climate change scenarios. We trained a Maximum Entropy model with fire records and hydroclimatological variables from recent decades (1981 to 2010) as well as topographic and human infrastructure predictors. Results showed substantial variation in predictors of fire probability and mapped future projections of fire depending upon geographical extents of model boundaries. Only the ecoregion models, accounting for the unique patterns of vegetation, climate, and human infrastructure, projected an increase in fire in most forested regions of the state, congruent with predictions from other studies.
Palabras clave
Texto completo:
1
Colección:
01-internacional
Base de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Cambio Climático
/
Ecosistema
/
Incendios Forestales
/
Predicción
/
Geografía
Límite:
Humans
País/Región como asunto:
America do norte
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
/
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A
/
Proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the United States of America
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
Pais de publicación:
Estados Unidos