Identification

Title

Future regional increases in simultaneous large Western USA wildfires

Abstract

Background. Wildfire simultaneity affects the availability and distribution of resources for fire management: multiple small fires require more resources to fight than one large fire does. Aims. The aim of this study was to project the effects of climate change on simultaneous large wildfires in the Western USA, regionalised by administrative divisions used for wildfire management. Methods. We modelled historical wildfire simultaneity as a function of selected fire indexes using generalised linear models trained on observed climate and fire data from 1984 to 2016. We then applied these models to regional climate model simulations of the 21st century from the NA-CORDEX data archive. Key results. The results project increases in the number of simultaneous 1000+ acre (4+ km(2)) fires in every part of the Western USA at multiple return periods. These increases are more pronounced at higher levels of simultaneity, especially in the Northern Rockies region, which shows dramatic increases in the recurrence of high return levels. Conclusions. In all regions, the models project a longer season of high simultaneity, with a slightly earlier start and notably later end. These changes would negatively impact the effectiveness of fire response. Implications. Because firefighting decisions about resource distribution, pre-positioning, and suppression strategies consider simultaneity as a factor, these results underscore the importance of potential changes in simultaneity for fire management decision-making.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d77p93fp

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

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-09-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

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