Surging wildfire activity in a grassland biome. Issue 12 (16th June 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Donovan, Victoria M.; Wonkka, Carissa L.; Twidwell, Dirac
• Is Part Of: Geophysical research letters. Volume 44:Issue 12(2017)
• Page Start: 5986
• Page End: 5993
• Publication Date: 2017-06-16
• Subjects: Great Plains biome -- fire season -- Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) -- wildfire -- pyrogeography -- fire regime; Geophysics -- Periodicals; Planets -- Periodicals; Lunar geology -- Periodicals; 550
• DOI: 10.1002/2017GL072901
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0094-8276

Abstract

Abstract: Rapid changes in wildfire patterns are documented globally, increasing pressure to identify regions that may experience increases in wildfire in future decades. Temperate grassland and savanna biomes were some of the most frequently burned regions on Earth; however, large wildfires have been largely absent from the Great Plains of North America over the last century. In this paper, we conduct an in‐depth analysis of changes in large wildfire (>400 ha) regime characteristics over a 30 year period across the Great Plains. For the entire biome, (i) the average number of large wildfires increased from 33.4 ± 5.6 per year from 1985 to 1994 to 116.8 ± 28.8 wildfires per year from 2005 to 2014, (ii) total area burned by large wildfires increased 400%, (iii) over half the ecoregions had greater than a 70% probability of a large wildfire occurring in the last decade, and (iv) seasonality of large wildfires remained relatively similar. Key Points: Large wildfires are increasing at a subcontinental scale in the North American Great Plains Increasing fire number and area burned were prominent in the southern and western Great Plains, while seasonality changed most in the east Increases in annual probability of large wildfire occurrence were most prominent in the southeastern Great Plains