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Wildfires and global change
Author(s) -
Pausas Juli G,
Keeley Jon E
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
frontiers in ecology and the environment
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.918
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1540-9309
pISSN - 1540-9295
DOI - 10.1002/fee.2359
Subject(s) - environmental science , climate change , fragmentation (computing) , climatology , fire regime , atmospheric sciences , physical geography , geography , ecology , ecosystem , geology , biology
No single factor produces wildfires; rather, they occur when fire thresholds (ignitions, fuels, and drought) are crossed. Anomalous weather events may lower these thresholds and thereby enhance the likelihood and spread of wildfires. Climate change increases the frequency with which some of these thresholds are crossed, extending the duration of the fire season and increasing the frequency of dry years. However, climate‐related factors do not explain all of the complexity of global fire‐regime changes, as altered ignition patterns (eg human behavior) and fuel structures (eg land‐use changes, fire suppression, drought‐induced dieback, fragmentation) are extremely important. When the thresholds are crossed, the size of a fire will largely depend on the duration of the fire weather and the extent of the available area with continuous fuels in the landscape.