Projecting wildfire area burned in the south-eastern United States, 2011–60
Jeffrey P. Prestemon A F , Uma Shankar B , Aijun Xiu B , K. Talgo B , D. Yang B , Ernest Dixon
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, PO Box 12254, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709, USA.
B Center for Environmental Modeling for Policy Development, University of North Carolina Institute for the Environment, Campus Box 1105, Room 4040 Suite 490 Europa Center, 100 Europa Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27517, USA.
C Global Forest Partners LP, 67 Etna Road, Suite 500, Lebanon, NH 03766, USA.
D Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, USDA Forest Service, 400 North 34th Street, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98103, USA.
E USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station, PO Box 12254, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709, USA.
F Corresponding author. Email: jprestemon@fs.fed.us
International Journal of Wildland Fire 25(7) 715-729 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF15124
Submitted: 13 July 2015 Accepted: 5 April 2016 Published: 2 June 2016
Abstract
Future changes in society and climate are expected to affect wildfire activity in the south-eastern United States. The objective of this research was to understand how changes in both climate and society may affect wildfire in the coming decades. We estimated a three-stage statistical model of wildfire area burned by ecoregion province for lightning and human causes (1992–2010) based on precipitation, temperature, potential evapotranspiration, forest land use, human population and personal income. Estimated parameters from the statistical models were used to project wildfire area burned from 2011 to 2060 under nine climate realisations, using a combination of three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-based emissions scenarios (A1B, A2, B2) and three general circulation models. Monte Carlo simulation quantifies ranges in projected area burned by county by year, and in total for higher-level spatial aggregations. Projections indicated, overall in the Southeast, that median annual area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire increases by 34%, human-ignited wildfire decreases by 6%, and total wildfire increases by 4% by 2056–60 compared with 2016–20. Total wildfire changes vary widely by state (–47 to +30%) and ecoregion province (–73 to +79%). Our analyses could be used to generate projections of wildfire-generated air pollutant exposures, relevant to meeting the National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
Additional keywords: climate change, human-caused wildfire, land use, lightning-caused wildfire.
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