Resource Catalog
Project
- Robert E. Keane IIUS Forest Service, Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory
- Rachel A. LoehmanUS Geological Survey, Alaska Science Center
Climate projections for the next 20-50 years forecast higher temperatures and variable precipitation for many landscapes in the western United States and many ecosystem and fire modelers are using gridded future climate data generated and synthesized from one or more Global Circulation Models (GCMs) to simulate climate interactions with vegetation and disturbance across landscapes. Unfortunately, these gridded climate data sets contain a high degree of uncertainty. Instead of using gridded climate, we propose to identify major changes in landscape structure, composition, and fire regimes as a consequence of systematic changes in climate using mechanistic simulation modeling. We have designed a comprehensive simulation experiment where we use the landscape succession model FireBGCv2 to simulate landscape dynamics for a set of simulation runs where the historical climate daily temperature, precipitation, and carbon dioxide concentration are systematically increased or modified by carefully selected factors based on historical records and future conditions. We will analyze resultant model output to identify major thresholds or tipping points in landscape dynamics based on vegetation, fire, and fuel variables. These tipping points will help the manager assess where and when climate change will be important to managing fire on their landscapes. Results will be published as a methodology paper in a peer-reviewed journal.
Cataloging Information
- fire management
- FireBGCv2
- landscape dynamics
- simulation model
- succession
- threshold limit values
- 09-3-01-17