Climate & Fire & Adaptation
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This study used the ecohydrological simulation model SOILWAT to disentangle the contributions of direct climate change effects and of additional indirect, climate change-induced changes in vegetation on soil water availability. Vegetation change will mostly exacerbate low soil water availability in regions already expected to suffer from negative direct impacts of climate change (with the two RCP scenarios giving us qualitatively similar effects). By contrast, in regions that will likely experience increased water availability due to climate change alone, vegetation changes will counteract these increases due to increased water losses by interception. In only a small minority of locations, climate change-induced vegetation changes may lead to a net increase in water availability. These results suggest that changes in vegetation in response to climate change may exacerbate drought conditions and may dampen the effects of increased precipitation, that is, leading to more ecological droughts despite higher precipitation in some regions. Our results underscore the value of considering indirect effects of climate change on vegetation when assessing future soil moisture conditions in water-limited ecosystems.
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This study suggests that policy and management have focused primarily on specified resilience approaches aimed at resistance to wildfire and restoration of areas burned by wildfire through fire suppression and fuels management. These strategies are inadequate to address a new era of western wildfires. In contrast, policies that promote adaptive resilience to wildfire, by which people and ecosystems adjust and reorganize in response to changing fire regimes to reduce future vulnerability, are needed.
Key aspects of an adaptive resilience approach are:
- recognizing that fuels reduction cannot alter regional wildfire trends;
- targeting fuels reduction to increase adaptation by some ecosystems and residential communities to more frequent fire;
- actively managing more wild and prescribed fires with a range of severities;
- incentivizing and planning residential development to withstand inevitable wildfire.
These strategies represent a shift in policy and management from restoring ecosystems based on historical baselines to adapting to changing fire regimes and from unsustainable defense of the wildland–urban interface to developing fire-adapted communities. We propose an approach that accepts wildfire as an inevitable catalyst of change and that promotes adaptive responses by ecosystems and residential communities to more warming and wildfire.
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Abstracts of Recent Papers on Climate Change and Land Management in the West, Prepared by Louisa Evers, Science Liaison and Climate Change Coordinator, BLM, OR-WA State Office.
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This study used a genecological approach to explore genetic variation for survival in Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush). It found evidence of adaptive genetic variation for survival. Plants from areas with the coldest winters had the highest levels of survival, while populations from warmer and drier sites had the lowest levels of survival. Survival was lowest, 36%, in the garden that was prone to the lowest minimum temperatures. These results suggest the importance of climatic driven genetic differences and their effect on survival. Understanding how genetic variation is arrayed across the landscape, and its association with climate can greatly enhance the success of restoration and conservation.
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This study measured aboveground C pools and fluxes at leaf, soil, and ecosystem scales over a single growing season in plots that had 200 mm of supplemental precipitation added in either winter or summer for the past 21 years, in shrub- and exotic-bunchgrass-dominated garden plots. In general, ecosystem C uptake and long-term biomass accumulation were greater in winter- and summer-irrigated plots compared to control plots in both vegetation communities.
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This KQED Science article indicates that since 1600, the way humans have used land in the Sierra has had more effect on fire behavior than climate change. Valerie Trouet, associate professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona and lead coauthor of a study about humans and fire, suggests that land managers and owners can affect fire behavior through activities that make forests more resilient.
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Abstracts of recent publications on climate change and land management in the West. Prepared by Louisa Evers, Science and Climate Change Coordinator, Bureau of Land Management, Oregon-Washington State Office.
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This report evaluated how changes in climate in the United States would lead to changes by the middle and the end of the current century in annual spending to suppress wildfires on USDA Forest Service (FS) and Department of the Interior (DOI) managed lands.
To do this, researchers developed a two-stage model. In the first stage, we analyzed the historical relationships between area burned on FS and DOI lands and maximum daily temperatures and other variables. In the second stage, we analyzed historical relationships between area burned and suppression spending.
Then, using projections of climate obtained from general circulation models, we projected area burned, and used this projection in our second stage model to project spending on suppression. All spending projections were done with constant 2014 dollars. We made projections for mid-century (2041-2059) and late-century (2081-2099). Uncertainty in the area burned and suppression spending was quantified using Monte Carlo simulation methods, incorporating parametric uncertainty from the two stage models and climate uncertainty from the alternative climate projections.
Results show that median area burned on DOI lands is projected to increase, compared to the amount observed between 1995 and 2013, by 99% by mid-century and by 189% by late-century. For FS lands, the increases are projected to be 123% by mid-century and 221%, respectively. Given such changes in area burned, DOI spending is projected to increase by 45% by mid-century and by 72% by late-century. For the FS, annual spending is projected to rise by 117% and 192%, respectively. Such changes would entail an increase in dollars spent in total across both agencies from a historical average of $1.33 billion to a projected $2.63 billion in mid-century and $3.47 billion by late-century.
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Abstracts of Recent Papers on Climate Change and Land Management in the West, Prepared by Louisa Evers, Science Liaison and Climate Change Coordinator, BLM, OR-WA State Office.
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This article reviews trends in aspen science and management, particularly in Utah and highlights recent studies continuing the tradition to keep rangeland managers informed of important developments, focusing on aspen functional types, historical cover change and climate warming, ungulate herbivory, and disturbance interactions.