A new approach to map the current and future global distribution of wildfires

Wildfires serve as an essential disturbance for many ecosystems representing a vital component of the Earth’s systems. On geological time scales wildfires have played an important role affecting Earth’s atmosphere and terrestrial ecosystems. Anthropogenic climate change causes shifts in weather and climate patterns that affect wildfire-related processes shaping the global distribution of wildfires. Globally, many regions are experiencing increases in wildfire frequency, large fire occurrence, severity, and their ecological consequences. Local evidence suggests that some areas that were historically “fire-resistant”, such as Central Europe, might become at risk to wildfires in the future due to increases in fire-conducive conditions and fuel aridity. Changes in the global distribution of fire-prone and fire-resistant areas can have far-reaching ecological and social consequences that are already being observed. However, understanding the global effect of climate change on the future fire dynamics remains to be challenging.

We present a new method that uses statistical modeling to globally map the current and future distribution of fire-prone and fire-resistant areas. This method is unique in that it uses a spatial intersection of the four main hierarchical fire components - accumulated biomass, its availability to burn, fire weather, and ignitions. These four components are then used in a statistical model to explain the susceptibility of a landscape to historical wildfire occurrence. Anthropogenic climate change will likely alter the global spatial distribution of these components, hence affecting the global distribution of fire-prone and fire-resistant areas. Data from global climate models and other ancillary datasets that represent the future global distribution of the four wildfire components will be used together with the statistical model wildfire occurrence to estimate the future global distribution of global “fire-prone” and “fire-resistant” areas. Findings of this research will lead to an improved monitoring and assessment of future global fire behavior and distribution which can contribute to a more sustainable coexistence of people with wildfires, especially in fire-prone regions.