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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...
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The 2017 fire season in California was highly unusual with its late seasonal timing, the areal extent it burned, and its devastation to communities. These fires were associated with extreme winds and were potentially also influenced by unusually dry conditions during several years leading up to the 2017 events. This fire season brought additional attention and emphasized the vital need for managers in the western U.S. to have access to scientific information on when and where to expect dangerous fire events. Understanding the multiple factors that cause extreme wildfire events is critical to short and long-term forecasting and planning. Seasonal climate measures such as temperature and precipitation are commonly...
Categories: Project;
Types: Map Service,
OGC WFS Layer,
OGC WMS Layer,
OGC WMS Service;
Tags: 2018,
CASC,
Drought,
Drought,
Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather, All tags...
Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather,
Extreme Weather,
Extreme Weather,
Fire,
Fire,
Projects by Region,
Santa Ana winds,
Southwest,
Southwest CASC,
heat waves,
wildfires, Fewer tags
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Abstract (from Conservation Science and Practice): Climate change uncertainty poses serious challenges to conservation efforts. One emerging conservation strategy is to identify and conserve climate change refugia: areas relatively buffered from contemporary climate change that enable persistence of valued resources. This management paradigm may be pursued at broad scales by leveraging existing resources and placing them into a tangible framework to stimulate further collaboration that fosters management decision-making. Here, we describe a framework for moving toward operationalizing climate change refugia conservation at an ecoregion scale with an analysis for the Sierra Nevada ecoregion (CA, USA). Structured...
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Wildfire burn areas are increasing in the western U.S., a change that has been linked to increased fuel aridity caused by climate change. Recognizing that there will likely be even more large fires in the future presents an opportunity to prepare and adapt to the expected climatic changes. This project addresses three key science questions: 1) Is there a specific level (threshold) of fuel aridity below which large fires more likely, and levels of temperature and humidity that don’t change how these fires begin and spread? 2) if there is a fuel aridity threshold, how often has that level been exceeded in the past? 3) Do climate models predict this threshold will be exceeded more or less often in the future? ...
Categories: Project;
Types: Map Service,
OGC WFS Layer,
OGC WMS Layer,
OGC WMS Service;
Tags: 2023,
CASC,
Drought,
Drought,
Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather, All tags...
Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather,
Extreme Weather,
Extreme Weather,
Fire,
Fire,
Projects by Region,
Science Tools for Managers,
Science Tools for Managers,
Southwest,
Southwest CASC, Fewer tags
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