Simulating the impacts of climate change on west-side fire regimes

Project Description

A Smokey Bear fire danger sign. Photo by glaukos licensed under CC by NC 2.0.

Fire regimes across the western United States are widely anticipated to change under climate change. However, relatively little research has been conducted on projected fire regime changes in west-side forests compared to dry forests elsewhere. In this project, we are modeling how fire regimes might change with respect to fire frequency, size, and intensity. The anticipated outputs will provide managers and planners with many spatially explicit datasets representing burn probability, fire behavior, and fire effects, which could serve as the basis for future climate adaptation planning, as well as public outreach and education.

Methods

We are running a large fire simulator called FSim that uses topography, weather, and fuel data to model the way fire spreads across a landscape. We are running FSim with downscaled future climate projections, which are based on outputs from a global climate model that represents a high warming scenario (RCP8.5).