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Project ID: 03-1-1-37

Year: 2003

Date Started: 07/29/2003

Date Completed: 09/27/2007

Title: Atmospheric Fire Risk in a Changed Climate

Project Proposal Abstract: Planning for future fire regimes and fuel conditions involves predicting future fuel loads and conditions, as well as evaluating how the atmospheric potential for large or dangerous fires will change in the future. There have been several studies examining the potential changes in vegetation under proposed climate change conditions, and a small number looking at how the Canadian Fire Weather Index will differ under a future climate from its current values and spatial patterns. There are other measures of atmospheric fire potential that can be evaluated under a changed climate. All but one, the Haines Index, rely on surface atmospheric conditions, which are known to be poorly determined by General Circulation Models (GCMs) of the atmosphere. We propose to 1) examine how well GCMs simulate the variables that enter into the calculation of the Haines Index for the present climate; 2) evaluate the sensitivity of current Haines Index patterns to a changing climate; 3) assess the range of uncertainty associated with projections of the Haines Index for a future climate; and 4) compare the spatial patterns of the projected, future Haines Index climate to known, observed patterns of the Index for the present and recent past climate. We will present maps of current and projected Haines Index climatology, with accompanying discussion of the degree of uncertainty present in the projected climatology and the sources of that uncertainty. Results will be distributed through meetings, workshops and conferences with land and fire management personnel; presentation at scientific conferences; publication in user-oriented journals such as Fire Management Today and Wildfire; publication on the World Wide Web; and publication in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

Principal Investigator: Julie Winkler

Agency/Organization: Michigan State University

Branch or Dept: Department of Geography

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Federal Cooperator	Brian E. Potter	Forest Service	PNW-Seattle-Managing Natural Disturbances

Project Locations

Consortium

Alaska

Appalachian

California

Great Basin

Great Plains

Lake States

Oak Woodlands

Northern Rockies

Northwest

Pacific

South

Southern Rockies

Southwest

Tallgrass

There are no project locations identified for this project.

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

There are no deliverables available for this project.

Supporting Documents

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