Changes in Fire Incidence and Area Burned Under Climate Change Scenarios

New methods and tools are required to (i) provide insight into spatio-temporal climate effects concerning forests and fire events (ii) provide policy-makers with quantified estimates of fire activity under changing climate scenarios as well as well-defined historical models for seasonality and the occurrence of extremes (iii) be useful in a wide variety of modeling scenarios which investigate extremes and climate change effects (iv) be disseminated broadly and hence provide forest researchers with key information on climate effects (v) provide substantial interdisciplinary expertise to the student involved.
This project will develop and test new empirical models to describe (i) the seasonality of fire incidence and area burned in forests over space and (ii) how the spatial seasonality of these variables is changing over time, incorporating effects due to fuel, weather and fire-suppression activity.
The project will also assist in predicting changes to these systems based on climate change.
The data available include data on fire- weather for each day of each fire in a 50-year historical record of fires, from 1960 to 2010, forest type, fire-weather indices, various moisture codes, weather (temperature, rainfall, wind), cost of fire suppression activity, as well as a variety of relevant fire dates tracing the start and stop of suppression activities, date of control, etc. and area burned.

Faculty Supervisor:

Charmaine Dean

Student:

Yujia You

Partner:

Discipline:

Statistics / Actuarial sciences

Sector:

University:

Western University

Program:

Globalink