Complex Modeling by Researchers Predicts Wildfires May Eventually Decline
July 27, 2022
Introduction:
(EurekAlert) RENO, Nev. – Researchers attempting to help predict how the wildfire hazard will change due to various factors over the next several decades have some good news, and some bad news. Good news is, wildfire occurrence and intensity will likely decrease in several locations in the future. The bad news: decreases may not occur for another 50 years, and wildfire hazard will likely get worse before it gets better.
“There are so many factors that we need to consider and better understand if we want to predict how the frequency, size and intensity of wildfires will change over time,” said Erin Hanan, a University of Nevada, Reno researcher with the University’s Experiment Station and an assistant professor in the College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources. “Our two studies looked at how changes in temperature, rainfall, and atmospheric carbon dioxide may interact with and influence plant growth, turnover and decomposition, and how those processes in turn affect fuel loading and fuel moisture in different plant communities, which are two key factors driving wildfire regimes in the West.”
Read more here:
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/960100
Here is a review of the results of one of the studies:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.co ... MS002818
Results of the second study:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.co ... 1EF002518
Here is a plain language summary taken from the second study:
(AGU Publications) While many studies have projected increases in wildfire under future climate change, fire may eventually decrease in some locations. The direction and extent of fire regime changes depend in large part on how decreases in fuel moisture balance against increases or decreases in fuel loading, which can occur in response to warmer temperatures and increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The balance between fuel moisture and loading, and their relative importance in driving fire regimes can vary along moisture gradients in western North America. To project how wildfire size, frequency, and severity will change in a relatively arid watershed of the northwestern United States throughout the 21st century, we used a coupled vegetation, water, and fire spread model. We found that wildfire is likely to increase in the mid-21st century due to an increase in fuel production and drier fuel. However, wildfire will likely to decrease in the late-21st century due to warming-induced increases in fuel decomposition, even when fuels are drier. We demonstrate that future wildfire regimes are dynamic, so the linear extrapolation of fire size from the baseline and 2040s scenarios to the 2070s may not always be a suitable approach, and we need to consider complex fuel responses to climate change. Predicting future wildfires will require reducing key uncertainties in future precipitation patterns and understanding how CO2 fertilization affects plant growth.
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