Climate & Fire & Adaptation
Webinar recording.
Description: This presentation discusses a partnership between the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (PLPT) in northern Nevada and a team of university-based scientists. The research team engaged PLPT stakeholder groups through workshops, interviews, and focus groups to understand how climate change and upstream pressures threaten PLPT ecosystems, lands, and resources. Stakeholders emphasized that climate change planning must be grounded in and informed by Indigenous knowledge practices and protocols, in conjunction with decolonizing approaches to climate adaptation research that returns agency to the PLPT.
Presenters: Schuyler Chew is Mohawk Wolf clan from Six Nations Grand River and grew up on the Tuscarora Nation. As an environmental scientist, he is committed to partnering with Indigenous communities on climate adaptation research. His dissertation research on the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s resilience to climate change was funded in part by the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center.
Karletta Chief (Diné) is an Associate Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Arizona, and is also the Director of the Indigenous Resilience Center (IRC). As an Extension Specialist, she works to bring relevant water science to Native American communities in a culturally sensitive manner, and at the IRC she aims to facilitate efforts of UArizona climate/environment researchers, faculty, staff, and students working with Native Nations to build resiliency to climate impacts and environmental challenges.
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Study findings underscore that type conversion is a common outcome of high-severity wildland fire in the southwestern US. Ecosystem managers are frontline observers of these far-reaching and potentially persistent changes, making their experiences valuable in further developing intervention strategies and research agendas. As its drivers increase with climate change, VTC appears increasingly likely in many ecological contexts and may require management paradigms to transition as well. Approaches to VTC potentially include developing new models of desired conditions, the use of experimentation by managers, and broader implementation of adaptive management strategies. Continuing to support and develop science-manager partnerships and peer learning groups will help to shape our response to ongoing rapid ecological transformations.
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This study reports on preliminary investigations into recent and unexpected Great Basin bristlecone pine mortality at two sites, including the potential roles of weather-induced stress and bark beetles. At both sites climatic water deficit (CWD), a cumulative measure of moisture stress, and mean annual temperature increased during the 2010 decade and CWD was the highest in 2020 relative to any time during the past 40 years. Although Great Basin bristlecone pine mortality has not previously been attributed to bark beetles, we observed recent (i.e., 2013 to 2020) bark beetle-attacked trees at both sites, coincident with the timing of increasing temperature and CWD. Few adult beetles were produced, however, and our results support previous research that Great Basin bristlecone pine is a population sink for bark beetles. Because bark beetles are likely not self-sustaining in Great Basin bristlecone pine, bark beetle-caused mortality of this iconic species will most likely occur when it grows mixed with or near other pine species that support bark beetle population growth. We found Ips confusus and Dendroctonus ponderosae attacking Great Basin bristlecone pine in areas where their host trees, P. monophylla and P. flexilis, were also growing. These results suggest that the presence of these infested conifers likely contributed to Great Basin bristlecone pine mortality. We highlight several factors that may be used for prioritizing future research and monitoring to facilitate development of management strategies for protecting this iconic species.
Webinar recording.
In the year-plus since President Biden issued Executive Order 14008: Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, USDA agencies have put a central focus on promoting and expanding the use of climate-smart agriculture and forestry practices. This session will dig into how conservation and land management agencies – namely the Forest Service and NRCS – are operationalizing the Administration’s climate priorities through new and existing programs, initiatives, and funding sources. We’ll also hear from land management practitioners about how they are incorporating climate considerations into all-lands work at the local scale.
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Post-wildfire extreme rainfall events can have destructive impacts in the western United States. Using two climate model large ensembles, we assess the future risk of extreme fire weather events being followed by extreme rainfall in this region. By mid-21st century, in a high warming scenario (RCP8.5), we report large increases in the number of extreme fire weather events followed within 1 year by at least one extreme rainfall event. By 2100, the frequency of these compound events increases by 100% in California and 700% in the Pacific Northwest in the Community Earth System Model v1 Large Ensemble. We further project that more than 90% of extreme fire weather events in California, Colorado, and the Pacific Northwest will be followed by at least three spatially co-located extreme rainfall events within five years. Our results point to a future with substantially increased post-fire hydrologic risks across much of the western United States.
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This study shows that night-time fre intensity has increased, which is linked to hotter and drier nights. Our findings are based on global satellite observations of daytime and night-time fire detections and corresponding hourly climate data, from which we determine landcover-specific thresholds of VPD (VPDt), below which fire detections are very rare (less than 95 per cent modelled chance). Globally, daily minimum VPD increased by 25 per cent from 1979 to 2020. Across burnable lands, the annual number of flammable night-time hours—when VPD exceeds VPDt—increased by 110 hours, allowing five additional nights when flammability never ceases. Across nearly one-fifth of burnable lands, flammable nights increased by at least one week across this period. Globally, night fires have become 7.2 per cent more intense from 2003 to 2020, measured via a satellite record.
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In this document, authors used the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports over the past decade, as well as studies from other experts in the field, to summarize projected changes to U.S. rangelands. Since U.S. rangelands are so diverse, authors divided the country into five eco-regions, organized into three separate sections: Southwest North America (including the desert Southwest and Great Basin); the Great Plains; and the Gulf Coast (including Florida coastal rangelands and the Texas coastal prairies).
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This paper review science-based adaptation strategies for western North American (wNA) forests that include restoring active fire regimes and fostering resilient structure and composition of forested landscapes. As part of the review, we address common questions associated with climate adaptation and realignment treatments that run counter to a broad consensus in the literature. These include the following: (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? (3) Can forest thinning and prescribed burning solve the problem? (4) Should active forest management, including forest thinning, be concentrated in the wildland urban interface (WUI)? (5) Can wildfires on their own do the work of fuel treatments? (6) Is the primary objective of fuel reduction treatments to assist in future firefighting response and containment? (7) Do fuel treatments work under extreme fire weather? (8) Is the scale of the problem too great? Can we ever catch up? (9) Will planting more trees mitigate climate change in wNA forests? And (10) is post-fire management needed or even ecologically justified?
Webinar recording.
Webinar join links and recordings.
11-week lecture series Lookout: Envisioning Futures with Wildfire, we’ll scan the horizon for the ideas and stories that can guide us through this critical and disorienting time. We’ve invited speakers who offer perspectives from across the arts, humanities, and environmental sciences to think about questions like: What can we learn about transformation from fire’s destructive and creative force? How should we live differently, both with each other and on the planet, in this era of wildfires? How can we honor fire as an ancient, rejuvenating element while also honoring all that has been lost to wildfire?
This series is hosted by the Spring Creek Project and the Environmental Arts and Humanities Initiative at Oregon State University and co-sponsored by OSU’s Center for the Humanities, OSU’s Sustainability Office, OSU’s Arts and Education Complex, and Terrain.org. Additional co-sponsors for individual talks are noted in the schedule below.
The talks in the series will be broadcast live on Zoom Tuesdays at 6 p.m. PST / 8 p.m. CST / 9 p.m. EST from January 4 to March 15. Free and open to everyone.