Fire activity and severity in the western US vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture.
Numerous theoretical and empirical studies have shown that wildfire activity (e.g., area burned) at regional to global scales may be limited at the extremes of environmental gradients such as productivity or moisture. Fire activity, however, represents only one component of the fire regime, and no s...
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doaj-500d30901ce7460aaa0769ddff04172a2020-11-24T21:44:33ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032014-01-0196e9969910.1371/journal.pone.0099699Fire activity and severity in the western US vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture.Sean A ParksMarc-André ParisienCarol MillerSolomon Z DobrowskiNumerous theoretical and empirical studies have shown that wildfire activity (e.g., area burned) at regional to global scales may be limited at the extremes of environmental gradients such as productivity or moisture. Fire activity, however, represents only one component of the fire regime, and no studies to date have characterized fire severity along such gradients. Given the importance of fire severity in dictating ecological response to fire, this is a considerable knowledge gap. For the western US, we quantify relationships between climate and the fire regime by empirically describing both fire activity and severity along two climatic water balance gradients, actual evapotranspiration (AET) and water deficit (WD), that can be considered proxies for fuel amount and fuel moisture, respectively. We also concurrently summarize fire activity and severity among ecoregions, providing an empirically based description of the geographic distribution of fire regimes. Our results show that fire activity in the western US increases with fuel amount (represented by AET) but has a unimodal (i.e., humped) relationship with fuel moisture (represented by WD); fire severity increases with fuel amount and fuel moisture. The explicit links between fire regime components and physical environmental gradients suggest that multivariable statistical models can be generated to produce an empirically based fire regime map for the western US. Such models will potentially enable researchers to anticipate climate-mediated changes in fire recurrence and its impacts based on gridded spatial data representing future climate scenarios.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4062429?pdf=render |
collection |
DOAJ |
language |
English |
format |
Article |
sources |
DOAJ |
author |
Sean A Parks Marc-André Parisien Carol Miller Solomon Z Dobrowski |
spellingShingle |
Sean A Parks Marc-André Parisien Carol Miller Solomon Z Dobrowski Fire activity and severity in the western US vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture. PLoS ONE |
author_facet |
Sean A Parks Marc-André Parisien Carol Miller Solomon Z Dobrowski |
author_sort |
Sean A Parks |
title |
Fire activity and severity in the western US vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture. |
title_short |
Fire activity and severity in the western US vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture. |
title_full |
Fire activity and severity in the western US vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture. |
title_fullStr |
Fire activity and severity in the western US vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture. |
title_full_unstemmed |
Fire activity and severity in the western US vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture. |
title_sort |
fire activity and severity in the western us vary along proxy gradients representing fuel amount and fuel moisture. |
publisher |
Public Library of Science (PLoS) |
series |
PLoS ONE |
issn |
1932-6203 |
publishDate |
2014-01-01 |
description |
Numerous theoretical and empirical studies have shown that wildfire activity (e.g., area burned) at regional to global scales may be limited at the extremes of environmental gradients such as productivity or moisture. Fire activity, however, represents only one component of the fire regime, and no studies to date have characterized fire severity along such gradients. Given the importance of fire severity in dictating ecological response to fire, this is a considerable knowledge gap. For the western US, we quantify relationships between climate and the fire regime by empirically describing both fire activity and severity along two climatic water balance gradients, actual evapotranspiration (AET) and water deficit (WD), that can be considered proxies for fuel amount and fuel moisture, respectively. We also concurrently summarize fire activity and severity among ecoregions, providing an empirically based description of the geographic distribution of fire regimes. Our results show that fire activity in the western US increases with fuel amount (represented by AET) but has a unimodal (i.e., humped) relationship with fuel moisture (represented by WD); fire severity increases with fuel amount and fuel moisture. The explicit links between fire regime components and physical environmental gradients suggest that multivariable statistical models can be generated to produce an empirically based fire regime map for the western US. Such models will potentially enable researchers to anticipate climate-mediated changes in fire recurrence and its impacts based on gridded spatial data representing future climate scenarios. |
url |
http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4062429?pdf=render |
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