4.7 Article

Projected increases in western US forest fire despite growing fuel constraints

Journal

COMMUNICATIONS EARTH & ENVIRONMENT
Volume 2, Issue 1, Pages -

Publisher

SPRINGERNATURE
DOI: 10.1038/s43247-021-00299-0

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The escalating burned area in western US forests has heightened the need to explore near-term forest-fire area trajectories. Fire-fuel feedbacks may impose constraints on climate-driven trends, but are unlikely to strongly constrain the profound broad-scale increases in forest-fire area by the mid-21st century, highlighting the need for proactive adaptation to increased forest-fire impacts.
Escalating burned area in western US forests punctuated by the 2020 fire season has heightened the need to explore near-term macroscale forest-fire area trajectories. As fires remove fuels for subsequent fires, feedbacks may impose constraints on the otherwise climate-driven trend of increasing forest-fire area. Here, we test how fire-fuel feedbacks moderate near-term (2021-2050) climate-driven increases in forest-fire area across the western US. Assuming constant fuels, climate-fire models project a doubling of forest-fire area compared to 1991-2020. Fire-fuel feedbacks only modestly attenuate the projected increase in forest-fire area. Even models with strong feedbacks project increasing interannual variability in forest-fire area and more than a two-fold increase in the likelihood of years exceeding the 2020 fire season. Fuel limitations from fire-fuel feedbacks are unlikely to strongly constrain the profound climate-driven broad-scale increases in forest-fire area by the mid-21st century, highlighting the need for proactive adaptation to increased western US forest-fire impacts. Reduced fuel availability will only moderately diminish projected near-term increases in climate-driven forest fire area in the Western US, according to a macroscale climate-fire model.

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