|
|
Over the past four decades, annual area burned has increased significantly in California and across the western USA. This trend reflects a confluence of intersecting factors that affect wildfire regimes. It is correlated with increasing temperatures and atmospheric vapour pressure deficit. Anthropogenic climate change is the driver behind much of this change, in addition to influencing other climate-related factors, such as compression of the winter wet season. These climatic trends and associated increases in fire activity are projected to continue into the future. Additionally, factors related to the suppression of the Indigenous use of fire, aggressive fire suppression and, in some cases, changes in logging practices...
|
Abstract (from AGU): The prolonged 2012–2016 California drought has raised many issues including concerns over reduced vegetation health. Drought impacts are complicated by geographical differences in hydroclimatic variability due to a climatic dipole influenced by the Pacific. Analysis of MODIS‐derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and self‐calibrated Palmer Drought Severity Index from 2000 to 2018 reveals differences in drought and vegetation responses in Northern versus Southern California (NorCal vs SoCal, see definition in section 2.1). The greatest declines in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index were focused in the SoCal, while NorCal appears not severely affected thus far. It appears that both...
|
Abstract (from MDPI): A combination of drought and high temperatures (“global-change-type drought”) is projected to become increasingly common in Mediterranean climate regions. Recently, Southern California has experienced record-breaking high temperatures coupled with significant precipitation deficits, which provides opportunities to investigate the impacts of high temperatures on the drought sensitivity of Mediterranean climate vegetation. Responses of different vegetation types to drought are quantified using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data for the period 2000–2017. The contrasting responses of the vegetation types to drought are captured by the correlation and regression coefficients...
|
Abstract Urban vegetation is valuable in alleviating local heatwaves. However, drought may decrease vegetation health and limit this cooling effect. Here we use satellite-based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) to investigate the sensitivity of urban vegetation to drought in Coastal Greater Los Angeles (CGLA) from 2001 to 2020. We applied four statistical models to analyze the relations between 15 socioeconomic variables and the vegetation's sensitivity to drought. We then examined the changes in the cooling effect of the urban vegetation during drought and non-drought periods using remotely sensed land surface temperature (LST) data. The results suggest that...
|
Southern California is a biodiversity hotspot and home to over 23 million people. Over recent decades the annual wildfire area in the coastal southern California region has not significantly changed. Yet how fire regime will respond to future anthropogenic climate change remains an important question. Here, we estimate wildfire probability in southern California at station scale and daily resolution using random forest algorithms and downscaled earth system model simulations. We project that large fire days will increase from 36 days/year during 1970–1999 to 58 days/year under moderate greenhouse gas emission scenario (RCP4.5) and 71 days/year by 2070–2099 under a high emission scenario (RCP8.5). The large fire...
|
|
