Searching for a climate change effect in fire management expenditures

Abstract

A level-of-protection simulation model was used with fire and weather data from 1976 to 1998 to determine if there was a trend in fire management expenditures over the time period. Results indicate that there was no trend; neither the average expenditure nor the standard deviation of the expenditure has changed substantively over the given time frame. It is concluded that authors who point to increasing fire management expenditures as a possible indicator of climate change may be premature in their conclusions.