Plant Hydraulic Traits Mediate Live Fuel Moisture's Importance for Wildfire Risk Forecasting
Abstract
Wildfires pose an immense danger to human lives and structures, making it imperative to forecast their risk accurately. Current near-term forecasts of wildfire danger rely on meteorological aridity metrics such as vapor pressure deficit, fire weather index, and precipitation to estimate live fuel moisture (LFM)— a key determinant of fire ignition probability and fire spread. However, LFM can vary substantially from meteorology depending on species composition and their hydraulic traits, leading to inaccurate estimates of LFM and ultimately wildfire danger.
In this work, we test the hypothesis that LFM can improve near-term wildfire danger forecasts compared to what can be achieved through meteorological aridity metrics alone. We further hypothesize that the magnitude of this improvement is mediated by plant hydraulic traits. The hypothesis was tested using LFM estimates over the western United States recently derived from microwave and optical remote sensing without assuming any dependence on meteorological aridity.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMB034.0007R
- Keywords:
-
- 3390 Wildland fire model;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 0439 Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0468 Natural hazards;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0480 Remote sensing;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES