Fire and the relative roles of weather, climate and landscape characteristics in the Great Lakes‐St. Lawrence forest of Canada
Abstract
Question: In deciduous‐dominated forest landscapes, what are the relative roles of fire weather, climate, human and biophysical landscape characteristics for explaining variation in large fire occurrence and area burned?
Location: The Great Lakes‐St. Lawrence forest of Canada. Methods: We characterized the recent (1959–1999) regime of large (≥ 200 ha) fires in 26 deciduous‐dominated landscapes and analysed these data in an information‐theoretic framework to compare six hypotheses that related fire occurrence and area burned to fire weather severity, climate normals, population and road densities, and enduring landscape characteristics such as surficial deposits and large lakes.
Results: 392 large fires burned 833 698 ha during the study period, annually burning on average 0.07%± 0.42% of forested area in each landscape. Fire activity was strongly seasonal, with most fires and area burned occurring in May and June. A combination of antecedent‐winter precipitation, fire season precipitation deficit/surplus and percent of landscape covered by well‐drained surficial deposits best explained fire occurrence and area burned. Fire occurrence varied only as a function of fire weather and climate variables, whereas area burned was also explained by percent cover of aspen and pine stands, human population density and two enduring characteristics: percent cover of large water bodies and glaciofluvial deposits.
Conclusion: Understanding the relative role of these variables may help design adaptation strategies for forecasted increases in fire weather severity by allowing (1) prioritization of landscapes according to enduring characteristics and (2) management of their composition so that substantially increased fire activity would be necessary to transform landscape structure and composition.
Citing Literature
Number of times cited according to CrossRef: 22
- M. Palviainen, A. Laurén, J. Pumpanen, Y. Bergeron, B. Bond‐Lamberty, M. Larjavaara, D. M. Kashian, K. Köster, A. Prokushkin, H. Y. H. Chen, M. Seedre, D. A. Wardle, M. J. Gundale, M.‐C. Nilsson, C. Wang, F. Berninger, Decadal‐Scale Recovery of Carbon Stocks After Wildfires Throughout the Boreal Forests, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 10.1029/2020GB006612, 34, 8, (2020).
- Lynn M. Johnston, Xianli Wang, Sandy Erni, Stephen W. Taylor, Colin B. McFayden, Jacqueline A. Oliver, Chris Stockdale, Amy Christianson, Yan Boulanger, Sylvie Gauthier, Dominique Arseneault, B. Mike Wotton, Marc-André Parisien, Mike D. Flannigan, Wildland fire risk research in Canada, Environmental Reviews, 10.1139/er-2019-0046, (1-23), (2020).
- Jeanne Portier, Sylvie Gauthier, Yves Bergeron, Spatial distribution of mean fire size and occurrence in eastern Canada: influence of climate, physical environment and lightning strike density, International Journal of Wildland Fire, 10.1071/WF18220, 28, 12, (927), (2019).
- Judit Lecina-Diaz, Albert Alvarez, Miquel De Cáceres, Sergi Herrando, Jordi Vayreda, Javier Retana, Are protected areas preserving ecosystem services and biodiversity? Insights from Mediterranean forests and shrublands, Landscape Ecology, 10.1007/s10980-019-00887-8, (2019).
- Jeanne Portier, Sylvie Gauthier, André Robitaille, Yves Bergeron, Accounting for spatial autocorrelation improves the estimation of climate, physical environment and vegetation’s effects on boreal forest’s burn rates, Landscape Ecology, 10.1007/s10980-017-0578-8, 33, 1, (19-34), (2017).
- Zeeshan Shirazi, Huadong Guo, Fang Chen, Bo Yu, Bin Li, Assessing the impact of climatic parameters and their inter-annual seasonal variability on fire activity using time series satellite products in South China (2001–2014), Natural Hazards, 10.1007/s11069-016-2631-3, 85, 3, (1393-1416), (2016).
- Kirsten Barrett, Tatiana Loboda, A. D. McGuire, Hélène Genet, Elizabeth Hoy, Eric Kasischke, Static and dynamic controls on fire activity at moderate spatial and temporal scales in the Alaskan boreal forest, Ecosphere, 10.1002/ecs2.1572, 7, 11, (2016).
- Gaige Hunter Kerr, Arthur T. DeGaetano, Cathelijne R. Stoof, Daniel Ward, Climate change effects on wildland fire risk in the Northeastern and Great Lakes states predicted by a downscaled multi-model ensemble, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 10.1007/s00704-016-1994-4, (2016).
- Sandra Oliveira, José M.C. Pereira, Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz, Luciano Lourenço, Exploring the spatial patterns of fire density in Southern Europe using Geographically Weighted Regression, Applied Geography, 10.1016/j.apgeog.2014.04.002, 51, (143-157), (2014).
- R. DeRose, A. Leffler, Simulation of Quaking Aspen Potential Fire Behavior in Northern Utah, USA, Forests, 10.3390/f5123241, 5, 12, (3241-3256), (2014).
- Laura Serra, Marc Saez, Jorge Mateu, Diego Varga, Pablo Juan, Carlos Díaz-Ávalos, Håvard Rue, Spatio-temporal log-Gaussian Cox processes for modelling wildfire occurrence: the case of Catalonia, 1994–2008, Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 10.1007/s10651-013-0267-y, 21, 3, (531-563), (2013).
- Mathieu L. Bourbonnais, Trisalyn A. Nelson, Michael A. Wulder, Geographic analysis of the impacts of mountain pine beetle infestation on forest fire ignition, The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien, 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2013.12057.x, 58, 2, (188-202), (2013).
- J. Martínez-Fernández, E. Chuvieco, N. Koutsias, Modelling long-term fire occurrence factors in Spain by accounting for local variations with geographically weighted regression, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 10.5194/nhess-13-311-2013, 13, 2, (311-327), (2013).
- P.-A. Versini, M. Velasco, A. Cabello, D. Sempere-Torres, Hydrological impact of forest fires and climate change in a Mediterranean basin, Natural Hazards, 10.1007/s11069-012-0503-z, 66, 2, (609-628), (2012).
- S. Magnussen, S. W. Taylor, Prediction of daily lightning- and human-caused fires in British Columbia, International Journal of Wildland Fire, 10.1071/WF11088, 21, 4, (342), (2012).
- Sandra Oliveira, Friderike Oehler, Jesús San-Miguel-Ayanz, Andrea Camia, José M.C. Pereira, Modeling spatial patterns of fire occurrence in Mediterranean Europe using Multiple Regression and Random Forest, Forest Ecology and Management, 10.1016/j.foreco.2012.03.003, 275, (117-129), (2012).
- Stephen J. Colombo, Jiaxin Chen, Michael T. Ter-Mikaelian, Jon McKechnie, Philip C. Elkie, Heather L. MacLean, Linda S. Heath, Forest protection and forest harvest as strategies for ecological sustainability and climate change mitigation, Forest Ecology and Management, 10.1016/j.foreco.2012.06.016, 281, (140-151), (2012).
- Marc-André Parisien, Sean A. Parks, Carol Miller, Meg A. Krawchuk, Mark Heathcott, Max A. Moritz, Contributions of Ignitions, Fuels, and Weather to the Spatial Patterns of Burn Probability of a Boreal Landscape, Ecosystems, 10.1007/s10021-011-9474-2, 14, 7, (1141-1155), (2011).
- William T. Flatley, Charles W. Lafon, Henri D. Grissino-Mayer, Climatic and topographic controls on patterns of fire in the southern and central Appalachian Mountains, USA, Landscape Ecology, 10.1007/s10980-010-9553-3, 26, 2, (195-209), (2010).
- Paulo M. Fernandes, Ana Luz, Carlos Loureiro, Changes in wildfire severity from maritime pine woodland to contiguous forest types in the mountains of northwestern Portugal, Forest Ecology and Management, 10.1016/j.foreco.2010.06.008, 260, 5, (883-892), (2010).
- Héloïse Le Goff, Mike D. Flannigan, Yves Bergeron, Potential changes in monthly fire risk in the eastern Canadian boreal forest under future climate change, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 10.1139/X09-153, 39, 12, (2369-2380), (2009).
- C. Ronnie Drever, Yves Bergeron, Mark C. Drever, Mike Flannigan, Travis Logan, Christian Messier, Effects of climate on occurrence and size of large fires in a northern hardwood landscape: historical trends, forecasts, and implications for climate change in Témiscamingue, Québec, Applied Vegetation Science, 10.1111/j.1654-109X.2009.01035.x, 12, 3, (261-272), (2009).
