EGU24-12529, updated on 09 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-12529
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

GlobalRx: A global assemblage of regional prescribed fire records for use in assessments of climate change impacts

Alice Hsu1, Jane Thurgood1, Adam Smith1, Liana Anderson2, Hamish Clarke3, Stefan Doerr4, Paulo Fernandes5, Crystal Kolden6, Cristina Santín4, Tercia Strydom7, Matthew Jones1, and the GlobalRx Consortium*
Alice Hsu et al.
  • 1Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
  • 2National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN), São José dos Campos, Brazil
  • 3School of Agriculture, Food, and Ecosystem Services, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
  • 4Centre for Wildfire Research, Swansea University, Swansea, UK
  • 5Centre for Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences, University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portuga
  • 6School of Engineering, University of California - Merced, Merced, California, USA
  • 7Scientific Services, South African National Parks (SANParks), Skukuza, South Africa
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

Prescribed (Rx) and controlled fires are an important land management tool used globally for a variety of reasons, including the reduction of hazardous fuel loads, ecological conservation, agriculture, and natural resource management. Its use has important implications for wildfire risk, biodiversity, and carbon storage. However, the use of Rx and controlled fires is highly dependent upon weather conditions, requiring a weather window during which a careful balance of temperature, moisture, and wind ensure that the burns achieve their objectives while minimizing ecological damage or risk to human lives or assets. The planning and execution of Rx burns must also consider how these weather conditions interact with the local vegetation and ecology. As fire weather is projected to grow more extreme under the impacts of climate change, there is a growing need to monitor this effect on the ability to carry out Rx burning.

Here, we introduce a new dataset, GlobalRx, which includes around 140,000 records of Rx and other controlled fires from 16 countries, encompassing 207 ecoregions and 13 biomes around the world. For each record, we have geolocated values of various metrics of fire weather and fire danger (e.g. fire weather indices, vapour pressure deficit) from the ERA5 meteorological reanalysis, as well as the biome, ecoregion, fuelbed type, and protected area status from global thematic layers. We demonstrate the usefulness of this dataset for analyzing viable meteorological windows under which Rx fires may be conducted across diverse environmental settings in the present climate, as well as how these Rx burning windows may shift under the threats of climate change. This dataset has potential to shed light on how Rx burning windows may shift under future climate change, as well as opportunities to understand other drivers and effects of Rx burning.

This project has been supported by valuable contributions from non-public data from a consortium of data providers: Parks Canada, South Africa National Parks, Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, East-Pyrenees Prescribed Burning Team, Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (Portugal), Regional Forest Fire Service (Italy), Russian Federal Forestry Agency, H2020 LifeTaiga Project, Government of the Principality of Asturias, Council of Andalucía, Council of Galicia, Forestry England, National Forestry Commission of Mexico, ZEBRIS Geo-IT GmbH, Hokkaido University, Pau Costa Foundation, Asian Forest Cooperation Organization.

GlobalRx Consortium:

Jay Evans, Emma Zerr, Jane Park, Chad Cheney, Kevin Hiers, Morgan Varner, Lara Steil, Ricardo Barreto, Rodrigo Falleiro, Rosa Maria Cuesta, Eric Rigolot, Nuno Guiomar, Davide Ascoli, Elena Kukavskaya, Niclas Bergius, Julia Carlsson, Jose Alejandro Lopez Valverde, Javier Becerra, Lisa Macher, Dave Morris, Andy Elliot, Gernot Rucker, Cesar Robles, Youhei Yamashita, Marc Castellnou, Nuria Prat-Guitart, Veerachair Tanpipat

How to cite: Hsu, A., Thurgood, J., Smith, A., Anderson, L., Clarke, H., Doerr, S., Fernandes, P., Kolden, C., Santín, C., Strydom, T., and Jones, M. and the GlobalRx Consortium: GlobalRx: A global assemblage of regional prescribed fire records for use in assessments of climate change impacts, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-12529, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-12529, 2024.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material file

Comments on the supplementary material

AC: Author Comment | CC: Community Comment | Report abuse

supplementary materials version 1 – uploaded on 15 Apr 2024, no comments