Smoke from the 2022 North Waugh prescribed fire near Canon City, Colorado.  Photo by Damon Kurtz, BLM

Climate and Wildfire

Decision support and planning for future scenarios of wildland fire

We support proactive planning for future scenarios of wildland fire, including changes in fire simultaneity, seasonality, and severity.  We also examine the atmospheric drivers of these changes. Additionally, we have formed a collaboration with researchers from the University of Washington and University of California, Merced to provide solutions to wildfire related problems facing stakeholders including fire managers, fire ecologists, and land managers for tribal and US government agencies. This effort focuses on converging a number of disciplines including decision science, climate science, statistics, and fire science to provide actionable science. Additional information on this collaborative effort can be found here: Managing Future Risk of Increasing Simultaneous Megafires

We’ve also published code to calculate multiple fire weather indices from climate information: https://github.com/NCAR/fire-indices

Partners

  • University of Washington
  • University of California Merced

Representative Projects

  • Managing Future Risk of Increasing Simultaneous Megafires - This research effort tackles the challenges that simultaneous megafires currently pose to decision makers and stakeholders, and supports proactive planning for future scenarios to mitigate risk
  • A Framework for Improving Analysis and Modeling of Earth System and Intersectoral Dynamics at Regional Scales - HyperFACETS

Contact

Seth McGinnis

Associate Scientist

email