Climate change is narrowing and shifting prescribed fire windows

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Climate change is narrowing and shifting prescribed fire windows

In this study, the authors used observed weather and climate data, as well as climate model simulations, to project shifts in the frequency and seasonality of burn windows in the Western United States. Real-world burn plans were used to calculate median upper and lower prescription values for weather, climate, and vegetation parameters. These upper and lower median values determined days that were suitable for prescribed fire (RxDay) at a given location, in both the past and in a warmer climate future.

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Trends in prescribed fire weather windows from 2000 to 2022 in California

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Trends in prescribed fire weather windows from 2000 to 2022 in California

This study analyzed a 2-km hourly gridded weather dataset over a 23-year period to investigate the influence of climatological trends on prescribed fire weather windows. The authors explored how prescribed fire windows changed over this period for two California counties: Sonoma County near the coast and Plumas County in the Sierra Nevada, which contrast in land ownership types, vegetation, and climate. These counties represent diverse prescribed fire considerations in regions where recent catastrophic wildfire has drawn interest from land managers. Using burn prescriptions written by experienced local fire practitioners, the authors identified the degree of weather-driven change in prescribed fire opportunities for these two distinct areas within California.

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Fire and climate change: conserving seasonally dry forests is still possible: Research Brief

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Fire and climate change: conserving seasonally dry forests is still possible: Research Brief

A recent paper by Scott Stephens and co-authors asserts that conservation of western forests is still possible, and describes sensible, evidence-based strategies to improve forest ecosystem resilience.

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Forest recovery following extreme drought in California: Research Brief

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Forest recovery following extreme drought in California: Research Brief

This study compares post-drought forests to historical forests to understand if the recent tree mortality event shifted forests closer to or further from resilient conditions.

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Photo credit: Historic conditions in a ponderosa pine stand circa 1917. Source: Sierra National Forest Photo HP0313

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Interactions Between Fire and Climate in the California Sierra Nevada: Research Synthesis

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Interactions Between Fire and Climate in the California Sierra Nevada: Research Synthesis

Given the changing disturbance regimes and climate, there is a critical need to take decisive and extensive actions in the next 1-2 decades to conserve Sierra Nevada forests. This synthesis provides a summary of how climate change and fire are impacting our Sierra Nevada Mixed Conifer forests and how active management can help mitigate some of these impacts.

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Use Cross-scale Metrics to Help Manage for Resilience: Research Brief

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Use Cross-scale Metrics to Help Manage for Resilience: Research Brief

In our changing world, community change may be a resilience response indicating a process of adaptation rather than of failure. Falk and colleagues (2019) argue that resilience goals should be updated to better apply to 21st century ecosystems.

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How to Manage for Resilience During Climate Change? Research Brief

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How to Manage for Resilience During Climate Change? Research Brief

This research suggests that collaborative learning among stakeholders (aka knowledge coproduction) would be a good way to develop context specific resiliency metrics and goals, making the term more useful by operationalizing it.

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How Sierra Nevada Tree Mortality changed with Management, Precipitation and Forest Density: Research Brief

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How Sierra Nevada Tree Mortality changed with Management, Precipitation and Forest Density: Research Brief

This paper compares tree mortality patterns in treated (thinned and/or burned) forested stands to untreated stands and how these treatments affect forest response to drought.

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Interval Squeeze In Action: Modeling Woody Plant Species Survival Under Three Climate Scenarios: Research Brief

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Interval Squeeze In Action: Modeling Woody Plant Species Survival Under Three Climate Scenarios: Research Brief

To test the Interval Squeeze Model concept on real, fire sensitive woody species, these authors created a process-based model of a plant population that could be used for any serotinous, fire-killed species.

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Vulnerability of chaparral plant functional types to multiple stressors: climate, fire and land use: Recorded Presentation

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Vulnerability of chaparral plant functional types to multiple stressors: climate, fire and land use: Recorded Presentation

Presenter: Janet Franklin (UC Riverside)

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Presented at the 3rd California Chaparral Symposium: Global Change and the Vulnerability of Chaparral Ecosystems. May 14-16, 2018. Arcadia, CA.  

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Global change and the vulnerability of chaparral shrubs to acute drought versus chronic drought: Recorded Presentation

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Global change and the vulnerability of chaparral shrubs to acute drought versus chronic drought: Recorded Presentation

Presenter: Stephen Davis (Pepperdine Univ.)

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Presented at the 3rd California Chaparral Symposium: Global Change and the Vulnerability of Chaparral Ecosystems. May 14-16, 2018. Arcadia, CA.  

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Human Presence Diminishes the Importance of Climate in Determining U.S. Fire Activity: Research Brief

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Human Presence Diminishes the Importance of Climate in Determining U.S. Fire Activity: Research Brief

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers with the Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey showed that, across the U.S. on landscapes dominated by humans, climate has played a relatively small role in determining wildfire activity.

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Are historical fire regimes compatible with future climate? Implications for forest restoration: Research Brief

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Are historical fire regimes compatible with future climate? Implications for forest restoration: Research Brief

Future climate-induced shifts in fire regimes and plant distributions could uncouple vegetation from the fire regimes for which they are adapted. The brief discusses changes to fire-adapted plant communities under modeled climate change scenarios and their implications on the Kaibab Plateau landscape.

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Modeling Desert Shrubland Changes with an Invasive Grass Introduction and Climate Change: Research Brief

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Modeling Desert Shrubland Changes with an Invasive Grass Introduction and Climate Change: Research Brief

For desert shrubland species that have evolved without fire, the introduction of a grass-fire, positive feedback cycle is particularly problematic. This brief discusses work done by researchers who modeled the grass-fire cycle for non-fire-adapted desert shrublands under three sets of climate conditions.

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Parsing Ecosystem Responses: Divergent Fire-Climate Patterns for California Landscapes: Research Brief

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Parsing Ecosystem Responses: Divergent Fire-Climate Patterns for California Landscapes: Research Brief

In an era of concern over climate change, it's important to understand how different kinds of fire-adapted of ecosystems in California may respond to climate change in relation to fire. This study categorized Californian ecosystems into three types and discusses how each may be affected by climate change and fire.

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Drought and Fire in California: Research Synthesis

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Drought and Fire in California: Research Synthesis

The likely effects of drought associated with climate change in the United States have recently been synthesized by James M. Vose, James S. Clark, Charles H. Luce and Toral Patel-Weynand. Here we summarize their conclusions as they apply to drought and fire and provide examples of how these conditions are affecting different ecosystems in California.

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Predicting Future Fire Regimes: Still a Long Way to Go: Research Brief

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Predicting Future Fire Regimes: Still a Long Way to Go: Research Brief

In a review article by Jon Keeley and Alex Syphard, examples from California show that fire regimes are sensitive to geographic and seasonal variation in the climate signal and that many factors will confound the ability to model future conditions.

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