Global wildland fire and climate change

Wildland fire is ubiquitous. Global wildland fire is the result of the interaction between climate/weather, fuels and people. Our climate is changing rapidly primarily through the release of greenhouse gases that may have profound and possibly unexpected impacts on global fire activity. We review the current understanding of what the future may bring with respect to wildland fire and discusses future options for research and management. To date, research suggests a general increase in area burned and fire occurrence but there is a lot of spatial variability with some areas of no change or even decreases in area burned and occurrence. Fire seasons are lengthening for temperate and boreal regions and this trend should continue in a warmer world. Future trends of fire severity and intensity are difficult to determine due to the complex and non-linear interactions between weather, vegetation and people. Improved fire data are required along with continued global studies that dynamically include weather, vegetation, people and other disturbances.