Download or read book Climate Change on Wildfire Activity written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fire Ecology and Management Past Present and Future of US Forested Ecosystems written by Cathryn H. Greenberg and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume presents original scientific research and knowledge synthesis covering the past, present, and potential future fire ecology of major US forest types, with implications for forest management in a changing climate. The editors and authors highlight broad patterns among ecoregions and forest types, as well as detailed information for individual ecoregions, for fire frequencies and severities, fire effects on tree mortality and regeneration, and levels of fire-dependency by plant and animal communities. The foreword addresses emerging ecological and fire management challenges for forests, in relation to sustainable development goals as highlighted in recent government reports. An introductory chapter highlights patterns of variation in frequencies, severities, scales, and spatial patterns of fire across ecoregions and among forested ecosystems across the US in relation to climate, fuels, topography and soils, ignition sources (lightning or anthropogenic), and vegetation. Separate chapters by respected experts delve into the fire ecology of major forest types within US ecoregions, with a focus on the level of plant and animal fire-dependency, and the role of fire in maintaining forest composition and structure. The regional chapters also include discussion of historic natural (lightning-ignited) and anthropogenic (Native American; settlers) fire regimes, current fire regimes as influenced by recent decades of fire suppression and land use history, and fire management in relation to ecosystem integrity and restoration, wildfire threat, and climate change. The summary chapter combines the major points of each chapter, in a synthesis of US-wide fire ecology and forest management into the future. This book provides current, organized, readily accessible information for the conservation community, land managers, scientists, students and educators, and others interested in how fire behavior and effects on structure and composition differ among ecoregions and forest types, and what that means for forest management today and in the future.
Download or read book Climate Change on Wildfire Activity written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Taming Wildfires in the Context of Climate Change written by OECD and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 2023-05-17 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report provides a global assessment and outlook on wildfire risk in the context of climate change. It discusses the drivers behind the growing incidence of extreme wildfires and the attribution effect of climate change.
Download or read book Wildfires in the Northeastern United States written by Daniel R. Miller and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change is one of the most complex and challenging issues facing the world today. A changing climate will affect humankind in many ways and alter our physical environment, presenting ethical challenges in how we respond. The impact of climate change will likely be exacerbated in heavily populated regions of the planet, such as the Northeastern United States (NEUS). The NEUS is comprised of complex, sprawling urban centers and rural regions, both of which are vital to the economic and cultural character of the region. Furthermore, both urban and rural areas in the NEUS contain communities that have been historically susceptible to climate change (Horton et al. 2014). Over the past 120 years, average temperatures have increased by 2°F, precipitation has increased by 10%, and sea levels have also risen (Kunkel 2013). One poorly understood consequence of climate change is its effects on extreme events such as wildfires. Robust associations between wildfire frequency and climatic variability have been shown to exist (Scholze et al. 2006; Westerling et al. 2006), indicating that future climate change may continue to have a significant effect on wildfire activity. The NEUS has been home to some of the most infamous and largest historic "megafires" in North America, such as the Miramichi Fire of 1825 and the fires of 1947 (Irland 2013). Although return intervals in most areas of the NEUS are high (hundreds of years), wildfires have played a critical role in ecosystem development and forest structure in the region (Carlson 2013). Therefore, predicting fire occurrence and vulnerability to large wildfires in the NEUS is economically and culturally relevant. However, predicting fire occurrence is not a simple task due to the nature of wildfire activity in the NEUS. While in most regions of the world, natural factors such as lightning are the driving cause of wildfires, it has been estimated that the vast majority (>99%) of wildfires in the NEUS are caused by anthropogenic activity and not natural causes (Pyne 1982). Consequently, only studying data associated with fire occurrence (i.e. area burned, number of fires) is likely inadequate for the investigation the region's fire risk over time. Furthermore, little is known about how the direct (temperature and precipitation trends) and indirect (ecosystem-wide species distribution) effects of climate change will impact fire risk in the NEUS under future climate scenarios. Fully understanding the natural mechanisms that control fire risk and occurrence requires continuous records of past fires and climatic variability on centennial to millennial timescales. However, historical fire records in the NEUS are temporally limited, and do not provide an adequate analysis of the impacts of regional wildfire regimes, prior to human disturbance and anthropogenic climate change. We find that regional climatic fire risk for the NEUS can be estimated most accurately using the Keetch Byram Drought Index (KBDI) from 20th century historical meteorological records from various stations located throughout the region. Regional fire risk is then estimated through 2100 AD, using the KBDI and dynamically downscaled regional climate models from CMIP5 climate models. Under RCP 8.5, average KBDI and max yearly KBDI is shown to increase by 300% and 500%, respectively, in an exponential trend. Under RCP 4.5, KBDI is also expected to increase through 2100 AD to a lesser extent. Interestingly, these increases in regional fire risk are present regardless of increases in precipitation, indicating that future fire risk in the NEUS is driven largely by changes in temperature as opposed to precipitation. In order to investigate long-term regional wildfire activity over the past millennium, we examine PAHs and macrocharcoal from a varved sedimentary record from Basin Pond, Fayette, Maine (USA). We find elevated concentrations of the PAH retene were found to be highly correlated with known large-scale regional wildfire events that occurred in 1761-1762, 1825, and 1947 (A.D.). To distinguish between biomass burning and anthropogenic combustion, we examined the ratio of the PAHs retene and chrysene. The new Basin Pond PAH records, along with a local signal of fire occurrence from charcoal analysis, offers the prospect of using this multi-proxy approach as a method for examining wildfire frequency at the local and regional scale in the NEUS. Finally, we report seasonally resolved measurements of brGDGT production in the water column, in catchment soils, and in a sediment core from Basin Pond. We utilize these observations to help interpret a Basin Pond brGDGT-based temperature reconstruction spanning the past 900 years. This record exbibits similar trends to a pollen record from the same site and also to regional and global syntheses of terrestrial temperatures over the last millennium. However, the Basin Pond temperature record shows higher-frequency variability than has previously been captured by such an archive in the NEUS, potentially attributed to large scale atmospheric patterns. These new records of temperature variability and wildfire activity, when compared to regional hydroclimate records, shed insight into pre-historic wildfire risk in the NEUS.
Download or read book Climate Change on Wildfire Activity written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book S Hrg 110 228 written by U.S. Government Printing Office (Gpo) and published by BiblioGov. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States Government Printing Office (GPO) was created in June 1860, and is an agency of the U.S. federal government based in Washington D.C. The office prints documents produced by and for the federal government, including Congress, the Supreme Court, the Executive Office of the President and other executive departments, and independent agencies. A hearing is a meeting of the Senate, House, joint or certain Government committee that is open to the public so that they can listen in on the opinions of the legislation. Hearings can also be held to explore certain topics or a current issue. It typically takes between two months up to two years to be published. This is one of those hearings.
Download or read book Development and Structure of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System written by C. E. Van Wagner and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecological Impacts of Climate Change written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-12-07 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world's climate is changing, and it will continue to change throughout the 21st century and beyond. Rising temperatures, new precipitation patterns, and other changes are already affecting many aspects of human society and the natural world. In this book, the National Research Council provides a broad overview of the ecological impacts of climate change, and a series of examples of impacts of different kinds. The book was written as a basis for a forthcoming illustrated booklet, designed to provide the public with accurate scientific information on this important subject.
Download or read book Fire and Climatic Change in Temperate Ecosystems of the Western Americas written by Thomas T. Veblen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-05-10 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both fire and climatic variability have monumental impacts on the dynamics of temperate ecosystems. These impacts can sometimes be extreme or devastating as seen in recent El Nino/La Nina cycles and in uncontrolled fire occurrences. This volume brings together research conducted in western North and South America, areas of a great deal of collaborative work on the influence of people and climate change on fire regimes. In order to give perspective to patterns of change over time, it emphasizes the integration of paleoecological studies with studies of modern ecosystems. Data from a range of spatial scales, from individual plants to communities and ecosystems to landscape and regional levels, are included. Contributions come from fire ecology, paleoecology, biogeography, paleoclimatology, landscape and ecosystem ecology, ecological modeling, forest management, plant community ecology and plant morphology. The book gives a synthetic overview of methods, data and simulation models for evaluating fire regime processes in forests, shrublands and woodlands and assembles case studies of fire, climate and land use histories. The unique approach of this book gives researchers the benefits of a north-south comparison as well as the integration of paleoecological histories, current ecosystem dynamics and modeling of future changes.
Download or read book Firestorm written by Edward Struzik and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Frightening...Firestorm comes alive when Struzik discusses the work of offbeat scientists." —New York Times Book Review "Comprehensive and compelling." —Booklist "A powerful message." —Kirkus "Should be required reading." —Library Journal For two months in the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire “the Beast.” It acted like a mythical animal, alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it’s not a stretch to imagine we will all soon live in a world in which fires like the Beast are commonplace. A glance at international headlines shows a remarkable increase in higher temperatures, stronger winds, and drier lands– a trifecta for igniting wildfires like we’ve rarely seen before. This change is particularly noticeable in the northern forests of the United States and Canada. These forests require fire to maintain healthy ecosystems, but as the human population grows, and as changes in climate, animal and insect species, and disease cause further destabilization, wildfires have turned into a potentially uncontrollable threat to human lives and livelihoods. Our understanding of the role fire plays in healthy forests has come a long way in the past century. Despite this, we are not prepared to deal with an escalation of fire during periods of intense drought and shorter winters, earlier springs, potentially more lightning strikes and hotter summers. There is too much fuel on the ground, too many people and assets to protect, and no plan in place to deal with these challenges. In Firestorm, journalist Edward Struzik visits scorched earth from Alaska to Maine, and introduces the scientists, firefighters, and resource managers making the case for a radically different approach to managing wildfire in the 21st century. Wildfires can no longer be treated as avoidable events because the risk and dangers are becoming too great and costly. Struzik weaves a heart-pumping narrative of science, economics, politics, and human determination and points to the ways that we, and the wilder inhabitants of the forests around our cities and towns, might yet flourish in an age of growing megafires.
Download or read book Wildland Fire Danger Estimation And Mapping The Role Of Remote Sensing Data written by Emilio Chuvieco and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2003-09-29 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents a wide range of techniques for extracting information from satellite remote sensing images in forest fire danger assessment. It covers the main concepts involved in fire danger rating, and analyses the inputs derived from remotely sensed data for mapping fire danger at both the local and global scale. The questions addressed concern the estimation of fuel moisture content, the description of fuel structural properties, the estimation of meteorological danger indices, the analysis of human factors associated with fire ignition, and the integration of different risk factors in a geographic information system for fire danger management.
Download or read book Desertification written by Victor R. Squires and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book (with a foreword by eminent desertification specialist, Dr. Alan Grainger of Leeds University) provides a synthesis of what desertification means in the present day context of worldwide concerns about land degradation in the face of global (including climate) change, burgeoning populations, urbanization, and loss of biodiversity. It defines and describes desertification in its many forms and examines efforts to combat land degradation. The authors present some models that relate to the current impact of climate change on desertification as well as the medium to long term, and offer case studies on efforts to combat desertification in the major regions of the world. In the last chapter, we attempt to synthesize the whole book in the context of the post-2015 agreements on climate change (the Paris Accord) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Chapters concerning the historical context of desertification consider the definition and meanings associated with the word desertification; discuss the global extent and severity of the many types of desertification; and explain the current status of desertification in the post-2015 context. The book also discusses the impacts of desertification on ecosystems and people along with biodiversity; dust and sand storms from desertified landscapes; and the people affected by desertification. Chapters also focus on desertification and climate change, and consider the nexus between climate, soil, water and people; climate variability, land use and livelihoods affected by desertification are also analyzed. Chapters on combating desertification focus on combating desertification and act as an overview of proven practices with a detailed case study from China. Finally, synthesis and conclusions are consider the future of those affected by desertification, dealing firstly with medium to long term future outlooks and secondly with attempting to sum up the trends.
Download or read book Review of the Draft Fourth National Climate Assessment written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change poses many challenges that affect society and the natural world. With these challenges, however, come opportunities to respond. By taking steps to adapt to and mitigate climate change, the risks to society and the impacts of continued climate change can be lessened. The National Climate Assessment, coordinated by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is a mandated report intended to inform response decisions. Required to be developed every four years, these reports provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date evaluation of climate change impacts available for the United States, making them a unique and important climate change document. The draft Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) report reviewed here addresses a wide range of topics of high importance to the United States and society more broadly, extending from human health and community well-being, to the built environment, to businesses and economies, to ecosystems and natural resources. This report evaluates the draft NCA4 to determine if it meets the requirements of the federal mandate, whether it provides accurate information grounded in the scientific literature, and whether it effectively communicates climate science, impacts, and responses for general audiences including the public, decision makers, and other stakeholders.
Download or read book Implications of the California Wildfires for Health Communities and Preparedness written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2020-08-31 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: California and other wildfire-prone western states have experienced a substantial increase in the number and intensity of wildfires in recent years. Wildlands and climate experts expect these trends to continue and quite likely to worsen in coming years. Wildfires and other disasters can be particularly devastating for vulnerable communities. Members of these communities tend to experience worse health outcomes from disasters, have fewer resources for responding and rebuilding, and receive less assistance from state, local, and federal agencies. Because burning wood releases particulate matter and other toxicants, the health effects of wildfires extend well beyond burns. In addition, deposition of toxicants in soil and water can result in chronic as well as acute exposures. On June 4-5, 2019, four different entities within the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop titled Implications of the California Wildfires for Health, Communities, and Preparedness at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at the University of California, Davis. The workshop explored the population health, environmental health, emergency preparedness, and health equity consequences of increasingly strong and numerous wildfires, particularly in California. This publication is a summary of the presentations and discussion of the workshop.
Download or read book Fire Phenomena and the Earth System written by Claire M. Belcher and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-08 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fire plays a key role in Earth system processes. Wildfires influence the carbon cycle and the nutrient balance of our planet, and may even play a role in regulating the oxygen content of our atmosphere. The evolutionary history of plants has been intimately tied to fire and this in part explains the distribution of our ecosystems and their ability to withstand the effects of natural fires today. Fire Phenomena and the Earth System brings together the various subdisciplines within fire science to provide a synthesis of our understanding of the role of wildfire in the Earth system. The book shows how knowledge of fire phenomena and the nature of combustion of natural fuels can be used to understand modern wildfires, interpret fire events in the geological record and to understand the role of fire in a variety of Earth system processes. By bringing together chapters written by leading international researchers from a range of geological, environmental, chemical and engineering disciplines, the book will stimulate the exchange of ideas and knowledge across these subject areas. Fire Phenomena and the Earth System provides a truly interdisciplinary guide that can inform us about Earth’s past, present and beyond. Readership: Advanced students and researchers across a wide range of earth, environmental and life sciences, including biogeochemistry, paleoclimatology, atmospheric science, palaeontology and paleoecology, combustion science, ecology and forestry.
Download or read book Landslides Disaster Risk Reduction written by Kyoji Sassa and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-10-27 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents the First World Landslide Forum, which was jointly organized by the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), eight UN organizations (UNESCO, WMO, FAO, UN/ISDR, UNU, UNEP, World Bank, UNDP) and four NGOs (International Council for Science, World Federation of Engineering Organizations, Kyoto Univ. and Japan Landslide Society) in Tokyo in 2008. The material consists of four parts: The Open Forum "Progress of IPL Activities; Four Thematic Lectures in the Plenary Symposium "Global Landslide Risk Reduction"; Six Keynote Lectures in the Plenary session; and the aims and overviews of eighteen parallel sessions (dealing with various aspects necessary for landslide disaster risk reduction such as: observations from space; climate change and slope instability; landslides threatening heritage sites; the economic and social impact of landslides; monitoring, prediction and early warning; and risk-management strategies in urban area, etc.) Thus it enables the reader to benefit from a wide range of research intended to reduce risk due to landslide disasters as presented in the first global multi-disciplinary meeting.
