Identification

Title

Role of fire in the global land water budget during the Twentieth Century due to changing ecosystems

Abstract

Fire is a global phenomenon and the primary form of terrestrial ecosystem disturbance on a global scale. It is tightly coupled with climate, ecosystems, carbon and water cycles, and human activities. Through biomass burning and fire-induced plant-tissue mortality, current and historical fires significantly affect terrestrial ecosystems, which can alter hydrology fluxes. This study provides the first quantitative assessment and understanding about the influence of fire on the global land water budget due to changing terrestrial ecosystems during the twentieth century. This is done by quantifying the difference between twentieth-century fire-on and fire-off simulations using the Community Earth System Model (CESM). Results show that fire significantly reduces the annual evapotranspiration (ET) over the global land by 0.6 x 10(3) km(3) yr(-1) and increases global total of runoff in almost the same quantity, while having almost no impact (0.0 x 10(3) km(3) yr(-1)) on annual precipitation amount. Fire also weakens both the significant upward trend in total ET over global land prior to the 1950s and the downward trend from 1950 to about 1985 by approximately 35%. For the twentieth-century average, fire impact on ET and runoff is most clearly seen in the tropical savannas, African rain forests, and some boreal forests and southern Asian forests. Fire affects global ET and runoff through reducing vegetation canopy and vegetation height, which interact with fire-induced changes in biogeochemical cycle and result in drier and warmer surface air and higher wind speed. Globally speaking, reducing the vegetation canopy is the main pathway of fire's impact on ET and runoff.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7zp47zp

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-03-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

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Use constraints

Copyright 2017 American Meteorological Society (AMS). Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be "fair use" under Section 107 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 USC, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Society's permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form on servers, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statements, requires written permission or license from the AMS. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policies, available from the AMS at 617-227-2425 or amspubs@ametsoc.org. Permission to place a copy of this work on this server has been provided by the AMS. The AMS does not guarantee that the copy provided here is an accurate copy of the published work.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact