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Project ID: 08-1-1-19

Year: 2008

Date Started: 10/01/2008

Date Completed: 11/14/2012

Title: Assessing Fuels Treatment in Southern California National Forests in the Context of Climate Change

Project Proposal Abstract: One of the key uncertainties in fuels treatments is their longevity under a changing climate. In 2007, southern California experienced one of the most severe fire seasons to date due to record low fuel moistures early in the fire season (culminating in the 2-month Zaca fire) and historic Santa Ana winds late in the season (resulting in several large late October fires). Climate change projections for the region suggest that these extreme conditions will be observed with increasingly greater frequency over the next half century. Southern California has one of the largest Wildland Urban Interface problems in the country, and its extent of WUI is projected to increase significantly over the next 50 years. Fuels treatments are particularly important in mitigating wildland fire risk in WUI areas when extreme fire conditions occur. However, fuels treatments are traditionally designed to withstand historic fire weather conditions (i.e., from FireFamilyPlus), not future conditions, which makes their effectiveness less likely in the future. We propose to address the uncertainties of projected climate change and its impacts on fuel treatments through six case studies of existing and future fuels treatments in four southern California National Forests. We will 1) develop downscaled projections of future climate and fire weather scenarios for southern California, 2) test the effectiveness of existing National Forest fuels treatments under future scenarios, 3) test several proposed fuels treatments to develop thresholds for fuels treatment effectiveness, and 4) develop guidelines and tools for incorporating future climate and fire weather scenarios into fuels treatment development. While this project is focused on southern California, the protocols developed will be generalized and applicable over a broad spectrum of ecoregions so that fuels managers throughout the country can address the impacts of climate change in fuels treatment implementation and retreatment.

Principal Investigator: Timothy J. Brown

Agency/Organization: Desert Research Institute

Branch or Dept: Division of Atmospheric Sciences (DAS)

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	John T. Abatzoglou	University of Idaho	Department of Geography
Co-Principal Investigator	Crystal A. Kolden	University of Idaho	Department of Geography
Federal Cooperator	Francis M. Fujioka	Forest Service	PSW-Forest Fire Lab-Riverside

Project Locations

Consortium

California

Level	State	Agency	Unit
STATE	CA	FS	Los Padres National Forest
STATE	CA	FS	San Bernardino National Forest

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
	10194	Refereed Publication	Development of Gridded Surface Meteorological Data for Ecological Applications and Modelling
	10193	Refereed Publication	A Comparison of Statistical Downscaling Methods Suited for Wildfire Applications

Supporting Documents

There are no supporting documents available for this project.

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