Description

In 2019 the National Science Foundataion (NSF) funded a Navigating the New Arctic project called "Arctic Urban Risks and Adaptations (AURA): a co-production framework for addressing multiple changing environmental hazards". This project looks at three hazards: wildfire, thawing permafrost, and rain-in-winter from 1980 through 2060.  Our study area includes Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Whitehorse, and given the large spatial extent we are using the ABoVE vegetation dataset(link is external) to assess the effect of wildfire on vegetation and succession in an effort to model wildfire hazard. Our results indicate that without wildfire changes in vegetation over 30 years is minimal. Post-fire succession captured by remote sensed data such as Landsat largely agrees with field observations and literature. Woodlands result in the greatest amount of post-fire diversity among vegetation types. As part of the risk assessment process we have worked with Alaska EPSCoR to build a statewide database of fuel treatments (> 1,000) with the goal of providing an online resource to aid wildfire suppression activities.