Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Climate change causing more severe wildfires, larger insect outbreaks in temperate forests
A warmer, drier climate is expected is increase the likelihood of larger-scale forest disturbances such as wildfires, insect outbreaks, disease and drought, according to a new study co-authored by a Portland State University professor.
The study, published Oct. 19 in the journal Nature Communications, sought to provide a more complete snapshot of disturbances in the world's temperate forests by quantifying the size, shape and prevalence of disturbances and understanding their drivers.
The study found that while many temperate forests are dominated by small-scale disturbance events -- driven largely by windstorms and cooler, wetter conditions -- there was also a strong link between high disturbance activity and warmer and drier-than-average climate conditions. Andrés Holz, a co-author and geography professor in PSU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said this suggests that with a warming climate, disturbances are expected to become larger and more severe in some temperate forests including the western U.S.
"Under the warmer conditions we have been seeing, it is likely that we're going to see a higher probability of areas that tend to have very big disturbances," he said.
Among the study's findings:
Areas with low disturbance activity were largely associated with windstorms under cooler, rainy conditions, while areas with large disturbance activity were largely associated with wildfires, bark beetle outbreaks and drought under warmer, drier conditions.
In the majority of landscapes outside protected areas, disturbance patches were generally larger and less complex in shape than in protected areas. For example, human-made disturbances like logging are simpler in shape than the path a wildfire, storm or insect outbreak might take inside a protected area. But in landscapes affected by large-scale fires or outbreaks, the size and complexity of what happens inside and outside the protected areas are more comparable.
"Climate change is mimicking the footprint of disturbances in protected areas to what we are doing through land-use change outside of protected areas," Holz said. "Under warmer conditions, we might see more similarities between protected areas and their surroundings in some temperate forests globally."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 14 2018, @04:28PM (3 children)
Not... exactly?
Forestry management has been improving and controlled burns in california have been an actually used tool in the toolbox of wildfire prevention for at least a decade. And on-the-whole over-accumulated leaf detritus is about the same as it was when people first started raising the objection you have now(instead of getting way worse).
Regardless, the kind of factor analysis this paper is doing can often see past other signals like that when they're accounted for in the models to measure other variables like, say, climate change. From the paper:
So they're not ignoring that at all.
(Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Wednesday November 14 2018, @10:28PM (2 children)
Do you have any citations for what you've said?
Better management is awesome. Forests need fires every so often apparently, or humans need to clear the brush out to continually reduce the fire risk. If we are doing better, that is good to know.
I'm interested in citations for this. Do you have any resources where this is quantified?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 14 2018, @10:59PM (1 child)
National planning guidelines for causing a prescribed burn [nwcg.gov] was accepted as a department of the interior protocol in 2015
Yale describing how California has been begining to apply prescribed fires [yale.edu] over the last couple years in the Sierra Nevada. And further reporting about how they're applied all across the country.
It's still very much hampered by nimbyism, but it's absolutely applied.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday November 14 2018, @11:41PM
Thanks
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.