Wildfires are one of the greatest threats to human infrastructure and the ecosystem services humans value in the western US, but are also necessary in fire-adapted ecosystems. Wildfire activity is widely projected to increase in response to climate change in the Northwest, but we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of what this increase will look like or what its impacts will be on a variety of ecological and hydrologic systems. This project addressed one critical part of those impacts: the islands of unburned vegetation within wildfires. Unburned islands occur naturally as wildfires burn across landscapes, and are important habitat refuges for species -- places where plants and animals survive the fire and subsequently regenerate [...]
Summary
Wildfires are one of the greatest threats to human infrastructure and the ecosystem services humans value in the western US, but are also necessary in fire-adapted ecosystems. Wildfire activity is widely projected to increase in response to climate change in the Northwest, but we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of what this increase will look like or what its impacts will be on a variety of ecological and hydrologic systems. This project addressed one critical part of those impacts: the islands of unburned vegetation within wildfires. Unburned islands occur naturally as wildfires burn across landscapes, and are important habitat refuges for species -- places where plants and animals survive the fire and subsequently regenerate across the recently burned landscape. Since they are naturally resistant to burning, understanding how climate change impacts these islands helps us understand what species may be in even more danger from wildfires if these refuges disappear. Studying them and copying their characteristics also helps humans build our homes and communities to be more resistant to wildfire. This project aimed to understand and model unburned islands within wildfires to inform both conservation and restoration planning and community wildfire protection planning efforts.
Click on title to download individual files attached to this item.
NW-2014-5_Wildfire_YNP_MikeLewelling_NPS.jpg “Wildfire, Yellowstone National Park - Credit: Mike Lewelling, NPS”
2.14 MB
image/jpeg
Project Extension
parts
type
Technical Summary
value
The primary objectives of this proposal are to 1) identify the climatic factors controlling frequency and distribution of unburned islands in Northwest landscapes impacted by wildfire and 2) test the hypothesis that a warming climate will significantly reduce or eliminate unburned refuges, resulting in smaller fragments of good habitat and lowered ecosystem resilience. Unburned islands within wildfire perimeters are estimated to comprise 20-25% of the area within wildfire perimeters in the western US. They play critical ecological roles, particularly as refugia for flora and fauna during and after wildfire. However, there has been no effort to characterize unburned islands across space and time in order to understand their top-down and bottom-up drivers, particularly climate and land use and land cover. This understanding is critical given the widespread projected increases in wildfire activity across the Pacific Northwest with anthropogenic climate change. In addition, conservation groups, land and fire managers, and urban-interface communities and the private sector need this information to alter management practices or develop new strategies for preserving or promoting the formation of unburned islands during wildfires. To characterize unburned islands, we will conduct two field seasons in 2013 (funded by Idaho NSF EPSCoR) and 2014 (requested here) to collect ground observations of unburned islands and classify spectral maps derived from satellite data. We will then use non-parametric modeling techniques to quantify the relative influence of climate, land use, and fuel treatments on development of unburned islands, and model projected changes in unburned islands formation under climate change. Expected products from this research include peer-reviewed journal articles, webinars delivered to non-technical stakeholders such as land managers and NGO partners through established regional outreach consortia (NRFSN and GNLCC), presentations at conferences, two geospatial databases made publicly available online, and management publications similar to Fact Sheets or research briefs.
projectStatus
Completed
Budget Extension
annualBudgets
year
2014
totalFunds
85109.19
year
2015
totalFunds
277702.55
parts
type
Agreement Type
value
Grant
type
Agreement Number
value
G14AP00177
totalFunds
362811.74
Preview Image
Wildfire, Yellowstone National Park - Credit: Mike Lewelling, NPS