Understanding the Spatiotemporal Variability of Wildfires and its Correlation with Climatic Factors in the United States

Overview

The intensity, duration, and frequency of wildfires has consistently increased across the US over the past few decades, which has had long-term implications for human health, infrastructure, and the environment. In 2020, more than 10 million acres of land burned, making it one of the deadliest years in recent times. The objective of this research was to understand the spatiotemporal patterns and variability of wildfire occurrences and its correlation with climatic factors across the US. The location and date of fires from 1984-2021 were used to explore trends in wildfire occurrence across different ecoregions in the US. In addition, various climatic variables across these ecoregions were analyzed, and their correlation with burned area and frequency of fire occurrence were examined. Ecoregions with the largest burned areas and greatest number of fires showed significantly increasing trends for both over the years. In addition, increasing trends were observed for temperature and vapor pressure deficit (VPD), while decreasing trends were observed for relative humidity and drought index in the ecoregions with the maximum fire occurrences. Strong significant positive correlations between burned area and both temperature and VPD were observed across most of the ecoregions, while a negative correlation was observed with relative humidity. Results from this study implicates climate as a dominant driver of changing fire activity in the US. Better understanding of the variability in fire occurrence and patterns and their correlation with climatic factors will help in planning for effective fire management.

Competition history

• JSHS 2023 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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