Abstract
Fire is an intrinsic element of many forest ecosystems; it shapes their ecological processes, determines species composition and influences landscape structure. However, wildfires may: have undesirable effects on biodiversity and vegetation coverage; produce carbon emissions to the atmosphere; release smoke affecting human health; and cause loss of lives and property. There have been increasing concerns about the potential impacts of climate variability and change on forest fires. Climate change can alter factors that influence the occurrence of fire ignitions, fuel availability and fuel flammability. This review paper aims to identify tools and methods used for gathering information about the impacts of climate variability and change on forest fires, forest fuels and the probability of fires. Tools to assess the impacts of climate variability and change on forest fires include: remote sensing, dynamic global vegetation and landscape models, integrated fire-vegetation models, fire danger rating systems, empirical models and fire behavior models. This review outlines each tool in terms of its characteristics, spatial and temporal resolution, limitations and applicability of the results. To enhance and improve tool performance, each must be continuously tested in all types of forest ecosystems.
Highlights
Fire is an important driver of ecological processes in many forests and determines their species composition and landscape structure [1]
The review included systems used for predicting the future evolution of forest fuels, models to assess factors influencing the probability of fire occurrence, models generating scenarios regarding the combined evolution of forests and fires, and models simulating the behavior of fire under current or future climate conditions
Vegetation simulation models include The Lund-Potsdam-Jena Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (LPJ-DGVM) [86], LANDIS II [87], LANDCLIM [88,89], HyLand [90], the Hybrid DGVM [90], ORCHIDEE [90], Sheffield DGVM [90], TRIFFID [90] and CACTOS [91], but here we focus on two that have been used to assess how fire activity evolves with respect to climate, vegetation dynamics, and landscape pattern
Summary
Fire is an important driver of ecological processes in many forests and determines their species composition and landscape structure [1]. Changing climate may modify short-term climate variability, leading to higher temperatures, lower humidity and stronger winds, which may be undesirable in some cases These conditions may increase fuel flammability and fire spread [21,24]. The review included systems used for predicting the future evolution of forest fuels, models to assess factors influencing the probability of fire occurrence, models generating scenarios regarding the combined evolution of forests and fires, and models simulating the behavior of fire under current or future climate conditions. We obtained this literature from several sources. Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) search engine, libraries’ and authors’ collections
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