Abstract
Devisscher, T., E. Boyd, and Y. Malhi. 2016. Anticipating future risk in social-ecological systems using fuzzy cognitive mapping: the case of wildfire in the Chiquitania, Bolivia. Ecology and Society 21(4):18.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08599-210418
Highlights
Forest fires are likely to become more dominant in Amazonia because of increasing feedbacks between rapid frontier expansion and droughts (Cochrane and Laurence 2008, Lee et al 2011, Davidson et al 2012, Brando et al 2014)
Despite increasing efforts in studying the feedbacks between climate, fire, and land use change, understanding these dynamics and future wildfire risk remains challenging. This partly relates to (i) uncertainty linked to internal variability within the wildfire system, (ii) unknown future behavior of fire use, (iii) multiple forcing functions of biophysical and anthropogenic origin that influence the dynamics of wildfire, and (iv) nonlinear effects caused by these interacting drivers
Across all fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) the central variables ranged between 3 to 5, which showed how people’s understanding of complex dynamics tend to focus on fewer important variables, with a larger number of variables playing less of a central role (Fig. 4)
Summary
Forest fires are likely to become more dominant in Amazonia because of increasing feedbacks between rapid frontier expansion and droughts (Cochrane and Laurence 2008, Lee et al 2011, Davidson et al 2012, Brando et al 2014). The 2010 severe drought in this region can be considered a proxy to examine the impacts of reduced precipitation and higher temperatures than average (Lewis et al 2011, Saatchi et al 2013, Anderson et al 2015) This and other recent widespread droughts have contributed to higher susceptibility of forests to wildfire during the dry season (Lee et al 2011, Brando et al 2014), and in the future this could be further exacerbated by increased moisture stress (Cox et al 2004, Christensen et al 2007, Williams et al 2007), rapid land use change, logging, and spreading use of fire (Alencar et al 2004, Nepstad et al 2004, Aragão et al 2008, Barlow et al 2012). Scenarios would represent alternatives that capture uncertainty about the future of a system, and provide insights into drivers of change, implications of current trajectories, and different options for action (Peterson et al 2003)
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