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.
Wildfire is a natural disturbance in boreal forest systems that has been predicted to increase in frequency, intensity, and extent due to climate change.
Downslope wind-driven fires have resulted in many of the wildfire disasters in the western United States and represent a unique hazard to infrastructure and human life. We analyze the co-occurrence of wildfires and downslope winds across the western United States (US) during 1992–2020.
Wildfires and housing development have increased since the 1990s, presenting unique challenges for wildfire management. However, it is unclear how the relative influences of housing growth and changing wildfire occurrence have altered risk to homes, or the potential for wildfire to threaten homes.
Climate change is having complex impacts on the boreal forest, modulating both tree growth limiting factors and fire regime. However, these aspects are usually projected independently when estimating climate change effect on the boreal forest.
Aim Ecological disturbances are increasing as climate warms, and how multiple disturbances interact spatially to drive landscape change is poorly understood.
Extreme wildfires threaten human lives, air quality, and ecosystems. Meteorology plays a vital role in wildfire behaviors, and the links between wildfires and climate have been widely studied. However, it is not fully clear how fire-weather feedback affects short-term wildfire variability, which undermines our ability to mitigate fire disasters.
Frequent-fire forests were once heterogeneous at multiple spatial scales, which contributed to their resilience to severe fire. While many studies have characterized historical spatial patterns in frequent-fire forests, fewer studies have investigated their temporal dynamics.
Major wildfires and their smoke pose a threat to public health and are becoming more frequent in the United States, particularly in California and other populated, fire-prone states. There- fore, it is crucial to understand how California residents view wildfires and engage in risk-reducing behaviors during wildfire events. Currently, there is a knowledge gap concerning this area of inquiry.
Since the 1930s, California’s Sierra Nevada has warmed by an average of 1.2∘∘C. Warming directly primes forests for easier wildfire ignition, but the change in climate also affects vegetation species composition.