Simulated annual area burned for eleven extensively forested ecoregions in the western United States for 1980 - 2099
Dates
Publication Date
2023-01-10
Start Date
1980-01-01
End Date
2099-12-31
Citation
Henne, P.D., and Hawbaker, T.J., 2023, Simulated annual area burned for eleven extensively forested ecoregions in the western United States for 1980 - 2099: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9ERJ5Z4.
Summary
This data release provides output produced by a statistical, aridity threshold fire model for 11 extensively forested ecoregions in the western United States. We identified thresholds in fire-season climate water deficit (FSCWD) that distinguish years with limited, moderate, and extensive area burned for each ecoregion. We developed a new area burned model using these relationships and used it to simulate annual area burned using historical climate from 1980 - 2020 and output from global climate models (GCMs) from 1980 - 2099. The data release includes a comparison of mean annual FSCWD for 13 GCMs that we used to select five GCMs that bracket the range of conditions projected for the RCP 8.5 emissions scenario. We used the aridity [...]
Summary
This data release provides output produced by a statistical, aridity threshold fire model for 11 extensively forested ecoregions in the western United States. We identified thresholds in fire-season climate water deficit (FSCWD) that distinguish years with limited, moderate, and extensive area burned for each ecoregion. We developed a new area burned model using these relationships and used it to simulate annual area burned using historical climate from 1980 - 2020 and output from global climate models (GCMs) from 1980 - 2099. The data release includes a comparison of mean annual FSCWD for 13 GCMs that we used to select five GCMs that bracket the range of conditions projected for the RCP 8.5 emissions scenario. We used the aridity thresholds to classify each simulation year as having limited, moderate, or extensive area burned and defined fire-size distributions from historical fire records for these categories. We simulated individual fires from a regression relating fire season aridity to the annual number of fires and drew fire sizes from the corresponding fire-size distributions. For each ecoregion, we produced 1000 replicate simulations of annual area burned (ha).
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Related External Resources
Type: Related Primary Publication
Henne, P.D., and Hawbaker, T.J., 2023, An aridity threshold model of fire sizes and annual area burned in extensively forested ecoregions of the western USA: Ecological Modelling, v. 477, p. 110277, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2023.110277.
This study develops a statistical model of annual burned area for ecoregions in the western United States. The model requires data on fire sizes and fire-season climatic water deficit at the ecoregion scale for calibration. Given this limited number of inputs, the model can be readily updated and extended to new ecoregions. Our model produces annual fire counts and fire sizes that may be applied to other applications that simulate interactions among climate, vegetation, land use, and fire such as forest landscape or state and transition models.