Winter grazing can reduce wildfire size, intensity and behaviour in a shrub-grassland

Kirk W. Davies; Chad S. Boyd; Jon D. Bates; April Hulet

doi:10.1071/wf15055

Winter grazing can reduce wildfire size, intensity and behaviour in a shrub-grassland

International Journal of Wildland Fire ◽

10.1071/wf15055 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 25 (2) ◽

pp. 191 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Kirk W. Davies ◽

Chad S. Boyd ◽

Jon D. Bates ◽

April Hulet

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Bos Taurus ◽

Flame Height ◽

Maximum Temperature ◽

Fire Intensity ◽

Climate Change Effects ◽

Area Burned ◽

Rate Of Spread ◽

Winter Grazing ◽

Dormant Season

An increase in mega-fires and wildfires is a global issue that is expected to become worse with climate change. Fuel treatments are often recommended to moderate behaviour and decrease severity of wildfires; however, the extensive nature of rangelands limits the use of many treatments. Dormant-season grazing has been suggested as a rangeland fuel treatment, but its effects on fire characteristics are generally unknown. We investigated the influence of dormant-season (winter) grazing by cattle (Bos taurus) on fuel characteristics, fire behaviour and area burned in Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis) shrub-grassland communities in south-eastern Oregon, USA. Winter grazing was applied for 5 years before burning and compared with ungrazed areas. Winter grazing decreased fine fuels and increased fine fuel moisture, which reduced flame height and depth, rate of spread and area burned. Winter-grazed areas also had lower maximum temperature and heat loading during fires than ungrazed areas, and thereby decreased risk of fire-induced mortality of important herbaceous functional groups. These results suggest that winter grazing may be a fuel management treatment that can be applied across vast shrub-grasslands to decrease wildfire risk and fire intensity to mediate climate change effects on wildfire activity.

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Evaluating the climate change effects on temperature, precipitation and evapotranspiration in eastern Iran using CMPI5

Water Science & Technology Water Supply ◽

10.2166/ws.2021.179 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Guangli Fan ◽

Amjad Sarabandi ◽

Mostafa Yaghoobzadeh

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Changes ◽

Maximum Temperature ◽

Emission Scenarios ◽

Future Period ◽

Climate Change Effects ◽

Eastern Iran ◽

Large Fluctuations ◽

Rcp 8.5 ◽

Maximum Temperatures

Abstract In this study, the trend of climate changes during a future period from 2020 to 2039 has been evaluated using the data of the Fifth Climate Change Report under two emission scenarios RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 for Neishabour plain, Iran. Eleven models such as CESM, EC EARTH, HADGEM, MPI, NORESM, CANESM, CSIROM, GFDLCM2, GISS E2, IPSL and MIROC ESM have been used to evaluate changes in minimum and maximum temperatures, precipitation, and evapotranspiration. The results showed that GFDLCM2, MPI and IPSL models were more accurate in terms of precipitation and GISS E2 and GFDLCM2 models were the suitable option for predicting the maximum and minimum temperatures and evapotranspiration. Considering the evaluated parameters, minimum temperature, maximum temperature and evapotranspiration had approximately the constant trends and were accompanied by a slight increase and decrease for the next two decades, but for the precipitation, large fluctuations were predicted for the next period. Moreover, in the study years for the four parameters in all simulated models, the RCP 8.5 scenario has estimated a higher amount than the RCP 4.5 scenario.

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Vegetation Change and Its Response to Climate Change between 2000 and 2016 in Marshes of the Songnen Plain, Northeast China

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12093569 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (9) ◽

pp. 3569 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Yanji Wang ◽

Xiangjin Shen ◽

Ming Jiang ◽

Xianguo Lu

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Vegetation Change ◽

Vegetation Index ◽

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index ◽

Growing Season ◽

Maximum Temperature ◽

Climate Data ◽

Songnen Plain ◽

Asymmetric Effects ◽

Climate Change Effects

Songnen Plain is a representative semi-arid marshland in China. The Songnen Plain marshes have undergone obvious loss during the past decades. In order to protect and restore wetland vegetation, it is urgent to investigate the vegetation change and its response to climate change in the Songnen Plain marshes. Based on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and climate data, we investigated the spatiotemporal change of vegetation and its relationship with temperature and precipitation in the Songnen Plain marshes. During 2000–2016, the growing season mean NDVI of the Songnen Plain marshes significantly (p < 0.01) increased at a rate of 0.06/decade. For the climate change effects on vegetation, the growing season precipitation had a significant positive effect on the growing season NDVI of marshes. In addition, this study first found asymmetric effects of daytime maximum temperature (Tmax) and nighttime minimum temperature (Tmin) on NDVI of the Songnen Plain marshes: The growing season NDVI correlated negatively with Tmax but positively with Tmin. Considering the global asymmetric warming of Tmax and Tmin, more attention should be paid to these asymmetric effects of Tmax and Tmin on the vegetation of marshes.

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A comparison of thermocouples and temperature paints to monitor spatial and temporal characteristics of landscape-scale prescribed fires

International Journal of Wildland Fire ◽

10.1071/wf03063 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 311 ◽

Cited By ~ 54

Author(s):

Louis R. Iverson ◽

Daniel A. Yaussy ◽

Joanne Rebbeck ◽

Todd F. Hutchinson ◽

Robert P. Long ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Grid Point ◽

Heat Index ◽

Maximum Temperature ◽

Fire Intensity ◽

Temperature Sensitive ◽

Burned Areas ◽

Rate Of Spread ◽

Maximum Temperatures ◽

Highly Correlated ◽

Fire Characteristics

A method to better monitor landscape-level fire characteristics is presented. Three study areas in southern Ohio oak-hickory (Quercus-Carya) forests were established with four treatment areas of ~20 ha each: control (C), burn only (B), thin only (T) or thin plus burn (TB). Two independent measures useful for qualitatively characterising fire intensity were established on a 50-m grid, resulting in over 120 sampling locations at each site, in the burned areas: aluminum tags painted with temperature-sensitive paints, and logger-probe units that logged probe temperature every 2 s during burns. Fires were conducted in spring 2001. The logger-probe units allowed five measures qualitatively related to fire intensity or timing to be calculated at each grid point: maximum probe temperature; duration of probe temperature above 30°C; a heat index, defined as the summed temperatures above 30°C; time of maximum temperature; and estimated rate of spread. Maximum temperatures recorded by the two measuring systems were highly correlated (r2 = 0.83). Relative to painted tags, logger-probe units provide information useful for assessing some other components of fire behaviour. The temporal recording of temperatures allowed us to prepare a web-based simulation of the fires. Heat index and rate of spread estimates provided additional fire information. The TB units consistently burned cooler than the B units, perhaps because of uncured slash and a disrupted fuel bed in those units.

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Predicting the influence of climate on grassland area burned in Xilingol, China with dynamic simulations of autoregressive distributed lag models

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0229894 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (4) ◽

pp. e0229894 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ali Hassan Shabbir ◽

Jiquan Zhang ◽

James D. Johnston ◽

Samuel Asumadu Sarkodie ◽

James A. Lutz ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Wind Speed ◽

Inner Mongolia ◽

Northern China ◽

Maximum Temperature ◽

Science Literature ◽

Dynamic Simulations ◽

Area Burned ◽

Distributed Lag ◽

Autoregressive Distributed Lag

The influence of climate change on wildland fire has received considerable attention, but few studies have examined the potential effects of climate variability on grassland area burned within the extensive steppe land of Eurasia. We used a novel statistical approach borrowed from the social science literature—dynamic simulations of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) models—to explore the relationship between temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, wind speed, sunlight, and carbon emissions on grassland area burned in Xilingol, a large grassland-dominated landscape of Inner Mongolia in northern China. We used an ARDL model to describe the influence of these variables on observed area burned between 2001 and 2018 and used dynamic simulations of the model to project the influence of climate on area burned over the next twenty years. Our analysis demonstrates that area burned was most sensitive to wind speed and temperature. A 1% increase in wind speed was associated with a 20.8% and 22.8% increase in observed and predicted area burned respectively, while a 1% increase in maximum temperature was associated with an 8.7% and 9.7% increase in observed and predicted future area burned. Dynamic simulations of ARDL models provide insights into the variability of area burned across Inner Mongolia grasslands in the context of anthropogenic climate change.

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COMPORTAMENTO DO FOGO, EM CONDIÇÕES DE LABORATÓRIO, EM COMBUSTÍVEIS PROVENIENTES DE UM POVOAMENTO DE Pinus elliottii L.

FLORESTA ◽

10.5380/rf.v34i2.2383 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Luciana Valle De Loro ◽

Nelson Akira Hiramatsu

Keyword(s):

Laboratory Test ◽

Fire Behavior ◽

Pinus Elliottii ◽

Fire Spread ◽

Flame Length ◽

Flame Height ◽

Fire Intensity ◽

Forest Fuels ◽

Rate Of Spread ◽

Fire Laboratory

De um povoamento de Pinus elliottii localizado na Fazenda Canguiri-UFPR, foram coletadas seis amostras de material combustível superficial. Este material foi separado em classes, pesado e levado para o laboratório. Efetuou-se a queima da classe acículas num leito de areia no laboratorio, em seis queimas, sendo cada queima com acículas proveniente de cada uma das amostras coletadas. Foram medidas a altura, o comprimento e a velocidade de propagação do fogo. Aplicou-se para cada queima cerca de 746 g de acículas, equivalente a 0,678 Kg/m2, com uma espessura média de 3 cm. Foram obtidos como dados médios: velocidade de propagação de 0,00423 m/s, comprimento da chama de 35,22 cm e altura de 38,79 cm, resultando numa intensidade do fogo igual a 57,07 kW/m. O resíduo médio ficou na ordem de 40,3 %. FIRE BEHAVIOR, IN LABORATORY CONDITIONS, OF FOREST FUELS FROM A Pinus elliottii L. STAND Abstract Pinus elliottii needles from a stand located at Fazenda Canguiri-UFPR were collected to run a laboratory test on fire behavior. The fuel from six samples was separated in classes, weight, and taken to the Federal University of Paraná Forest Fire Laboratory. The pine needles were burned in a sand bed. About 746.0g of each one of the six samples, equivalent to 0.678kg.m-2 and 3cm depth, were used in each fire run. Flame height and length, and rate of spread were measured. The average values obtained were: fire spread, 0,00423 m.s-1, flame length, 35,22cm, and flame height, 38,79cm. Fire intensity was of 57,07 kW.m-1 and residual fuel content about 40,3%.

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