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Project ID: 03-1-1-22

Year: 2003

Date Started: 07/29/2003

Date Completed: 11/08/2007

Title: Fire-Climate Interactions and Predicting Fire Season Severity in the Mediterranean Climate Areas of California, Southern Oregon, and Western Nevada

Project Proposal Abstract: Climate strongly influences the occurrence and extent of fires and managers desire the ability to predict problematic fire seasons in advance. Currently, they must wait until the climatic pattern for the current year is well in place before the potential severity of the coming fire season becomes apparent. However, hemispheric atmospheric circulation patterns are predictable to an extent (weeks to years) depending on the teleconnections involved. Consequently, there is the potential to use the predictability of hemispheric atmospheric circulation patterns to predict classes of fire season severity. In order to develop and evaluate this approach to predicting fire season severity, the functional links between fire activity and patterns of atmospheric circulation must be identified over a range of spatial and temporal scales. The goal of this project is to identify the relationships of inter-annual and intra-decadal climate variation and multi-decadal and multi-century climate change on sub-regional variation in montane forest fire regimes in the Mediterranean Climate Area (MCA) of the Pacific Coast. Specific objectives are to: 1) determine how the dominant modes of climatic circulation (El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific/North America pattern (PNA), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)) are related to surface fire weather (i.e. fire danger rating indices), secondary circulation features (i.e. pressure systems, jet streams) and spatial and temporal variation in 20th century fire extent; 2) determine how multi-century records of fire extent, climate variability, climatic change, dominant circulation modes (ENSO,PNA,PDO) and fire danger rating indices vary within MCA; and 3) identify the key variables associated with circulation modes that can be used for spatially explicit prediction of problematic fire seasons in different parts of MCA months to years in advance. Technology transfer will occur with a combination of written materials, visual representations of fire/climate relationships, presentations to agency staff and interagency organizations, and a world wide web site.

Principal Investigator: Carl N. Skinner

Agency/Organization: Forest Service

Branch or Dept: PSW-Silviculture Lab-Redding

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	Andrew M. Carleton	Pennsylvania State University	Department of Geography
Co-Principal Investigator	Walter Herzog	BLM-Bureau of Land Management	Redding Field Office
Co-Principal Investigator	John Karish	NPS-National Park Service	Northeast Region-Integrated Pest Management
Co-Principal Investigator	Scott L. Stephens	University of California-Berkeley	Department of Environmental Sciences-Policy & Management
Co-Principal Investigator	Alan H. Taylor	Pennsylvania State University	Department of Geography
Federal Cooperator	James H. Perkins	Forest Service	Klamath National Forest

Project Locations

Consortium

California

Great Basin

Northwest

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.")

	ID	Type	Title
	7280	Refereed Publication	Climatic Influences on Fire Regimes in Montane Forests of the Southern Cascades, California, USA
	7275	Refereed Publication	Interannual Variations in Fire Weather, Fire Extent, and Synoptic-Scale Circulation Patterns in Northern California and Oregon
	7276	Refereed Publication	Fire-Climate Interactions in Forests of the American Pacific Coast

Supporting Documents

The following supporting documents are available for this project.

Brief

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