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General Interest
Fire danger forecast for 2008
February 14, 2008
By Stephanie Doster
A University of Arizona researcher was among a small group of climatologists, meteorologists, and fire experts who prepared a 2008 fire danger forecast used to brief the secretary of the Department of Interior and help regional and state officials anticipate and manage wildfire in the eastern and southern U.S.
Gregg Garfin, a climatologist and deputy director for translational science and outreach at the UA’s Institute for the Study of Planet Earth, helped organize the National Seasonal Assessment Workshop for the Eastern and Southern Geographic Areas, which was held January 29–30, 2008, in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
“Wildland fire suppression reliably costs taxpayers $1 billion per year. Homes and other structures and lives are at risk, so it is critical for us to use all the tools at our disposal to lessen wildfire risk, while using wildfire to restore ecosystems,” Garfin said. “These workshops are useful at blending climate and fire science knowledge in a way that can inform managers, especially at the regional and national scale, where to pre-position resources, where to make extra investments in public awareness, and where the opportunities are to safely restore ecosystems through prescribed fire and other management tools.”
The goal of the assessment workshop is to create a regional comprehensive seasonal analysis that combines weather, climate, and fire fuels for a given year. The roughly thirty experts who participated in the workshop drafted the assessment report.
This year’s assessment predicts above-normal fire potential for most of Florida, parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, and the Eastern Seaboard through at least May. Central Texas and Oklahoma are also primed for fire this winter and spring, due to high abundance of grass and fine fuels, and dry conditions that are predicted to last through the spring.
“The tricky part about predicting fire potential for the East is the high number of human-caused fire starts,” said Garfin.
The Southeast is subject to many of the same climate-related factors as the Southwest, in particular a strong response to desiccating La Niña events. Fire in the Northeast, which has maximum fire activity in the spring and fall, depends sensitively on a combination of fuel factors, such as insect or wind damaged trees; timing of snow melt, which exposes grass and brushy fuels; and multi-day high pressure systems, which can rapidly elevate fire danger.
The workshop also revealed links between fire issues in the East and West that could have profound implications for western forests. Bark beetles, for example, which can ravage water-stressed trees, are taking advantage of climate change, threading their way north with warmer temperatures. Beetle populations on both sides of the country are wreaking havoc with pine forests and are emerging in new habitat. The dead trees left in their wake would create more fuel for wildfires in the short-term, Garfin said.
The seasonal assessment workshops are an outgrowth of efforts at the UA to bridge the worlds of science and management practice. The UA’s Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) project has been at the center of these efforts that bring federal agencies and university scientists together to better inform management decisions. In the 2007 report, that group accurately predicted the above-normal wildfire activity that Florida and Georgia saw last year. The seasonal assessments, now in their fifth year, are a prime example of an enduring and improving decision support process.
The workshop was coordinated by Predictive Services at the National Interagency Coordination Center, the Climate Assessment for the Southwest project at the University of Arizona, and the Program for Climate, Ecosystem and Fire Applications at the Desert Research Institute. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Program Office and the National Interagency Fire Center funded the workshop.
An assessment workshop focusing on the western states and Alaska will be held April 22–24, 2008.
Read the executive summary