Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Abstract
Fire is the dominant disturbance in forest ecosystems across Canada and Alaska, and has important implications for forest ecosystems, terrestrial carbon dioxide emissions and the forestry industry. Large fire activity had increased in Canadian and Alaskan forests during the last four decades of the 20th century. Here we combined the Palmer Drought Severity Index and historical large fire databases to demonstrate that Canada and Alaska forest regions experienced summer drying over this time period, and drought during the fire season significantly affected forest fire activity in these regions. Climatic warming, positive geopotential height anomalies and ocean circulation patterns were spatially and temporally convolved in causing drought conditions, which in turn enhanced fuel flammability and thereby indirectly affected fire activity. Future fire regimes will likely depend on drought patterns under global climate change scenarios.
Department
Earth Systems Research Center
Publication Date
11-27-2007
Journal Title
Environmental Research Letters
Publisher
Institute of Physics (IOP)
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Xiao, J.F., Zhuang, Q.L. (2007). Drought effects on large fire activity in Canadian and Alaskan forests. Environmental Research Letters, 2, 044003, https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/2/4/044003
Rights
© 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd
Comments
This is an article published by Institute of Physics (IOP) in Environmental Research Letters in 2007, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/2/4/044003