Project Funding: 2011 - 2014

NRA: 2009 NASA: Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
Project Summary: Fire is an integral but poorly understood component of the Earth system. Interdisciplinary research is needed to estimate future climate change effects upon the fire environment and resultant feedbacks with human land use and mitigation efforts. To this end, we have assembled a talented multidisciplinary team of scientists to conduct integrated research on fire in the Earth system. Our areas of expertise include quantitative and applied remote sensing, fire and landscape ecology, spatial analysis and statistics, dynamic vegetation and land use modeling, economics, land use and land cover change research, geographic information science, and fire management. In response to NASA’s Interdisciplinary Research in Earth Science call for proposals in the area of Integrated Earth System Responses to Extreme Disturbances (Subelement 1), we propose to investigate the propensity for extreme fire occurrence as functions of climate, land cover and land use/management across 3 continents; Australia (entire), North America (lower 48 states U.S.) and South America (Brazilian Amazonia). We will provide comparable tests of proposed hypotheses and estimation of future climate change effects across multiple ecoregions within most of the world’s terrestrial biome types (boreal tundra and taiga will be the only major vegetated biome types not examined). Only through this type of large-scale study that incorporates many of the world’s ecosystems, land management approaches and climates, will it be possible to provide the context necessary to understand how fire is responding to climate change. We will quantify changes in fire danger since 1901 (since 1948 in Amazonia) as well as fire incidence and fire effects in recent decades. The probability and locations of exacerbated fire regimes under projected future climate scenarios will be investigated. Expected significance: The proposed project will make use of NASA assets (Landsat, MODIS) and produce the first multicontinent analyses of fire regime shifts due to climate and land use changes and also estimate the effectiveness of ongoing mitigation efforts. Only through large scale analyses is it possible to determine the degree to which climate may be changing landscape level fire behavior and the propensity for future extreme fire events to occur. Such knowledge is critical for society in order for proper development planning, regional adaptation and mitigation efforts to take place. Our proposed work will address four of the five requested components: 1. Characterize the nature, magnitude, and distinguishing attributes of extreme fire events. 2. Assess many natural (ecological, biogeochemical, climatic, biogeographic) and human (land use, conservation, socio-economic) aspects of extreme fire disturbances. 3. Quantify the effectiveness of many types of fire mitigation efforts over large regions. 4. Investigate the Earth system feedbacks among climate and land use changes and the placement, timing and characteristics of extreme fires over time. By applying what we learn to our analyses of projected future climate changes and simulated increases in climate variability, we will provide a solid understanding of when and in which ecoregions altered fire regimes may pose a risk to both human and natural resources. If large-scale, integrated, multidisciplinary research such as this is not conducted, then fire’s function in the Earth system will remain poorly understood and humanity will be left increasingly vulnerable to unforeseen and potentially catastrophic fire regime shifts as the climate continues to change.

Publications:

Arima, E. Y. 2016. A Spatial Probit Econometric Model of Land Change: The Case of Infrastructure Development in Western Amazonia, Peru. PLOS ONE. 11(3), e0152058. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0152058

Arima, E. Y., Barreto, P., Araujo, E., Soares-Filho, B. 2014. Public policies can reduce tropical deforestation: Lessons and challenges from Brazil. Land Use Policy. 41, 465-473. DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2014.06.026

Barber, C. P., Cochrane, M. A., Souza, C. M., Laurance, W. F. 2014. Roads, deforestation, and the mitigating effect of protected areas in the Amazon. Biological Conservation. 177, 203-209. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2014.07.004

Boer, M. M., Bowman, D. M. J. S., Murphy, B. P., Cary, G. J., Cochrane, M. A., Fensham, R. J., Krawchuk, M. A., Price, O. F., De Dios, V. R., Williams, R. J., Bradstock, R. A. 2016. Future changes in climatic water balance determine potential for transformational shifts in Australian fire regimes. Environmental Research Letters. 11(6), 065002. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/6/065002

Bowman, D. M. J. S., Murphy, B. P., Williamson, G. J., Cochrane, M. A. 2014. Pyrogeographic models, feedbacks and the future of global fire regimes. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 23(7), 821-824. DOI: 10.1111/geb.12180

Bowman, D. M. J. S., Williamson, G. J., Abatzoglou, J. T., Kolden, C. A., Cochrane, M. A., Smith, A. M. S. 2017. Human exposure and sensitivity to globally extreme wildfire events. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 1(3). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-016-0058

Bowman, D. M., Murphy, B. P., Boer, M. M., Bradstock, R. A., Cary, G. J., Cochrane, M. A., Fensham, R. J., Krawchuk, M. A., Price, O. F., Williams, R. J. 2013. Forest fire management, climate change, and the risk of catastrophic carbon losses. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 11(2), 66-67. DOI: 10.1890/13.WB.005

Cochrane, M. A. 2013. Introduction to A.M.A. Aubreville's Article. Fire Ecology. 9(2), 1-2. DOI: 10.4996/fireecology.0902001

COSTA, O. B. D., MATRICARDI, E. A. T., PEDLOWSKI, M. A., COCHRANE, M. A., FERNANDES, L. C. 2017. Spatiotemporal mapping of soybean plantations in Rondonia, Western Brazilian Amazon. Acta Amazonica. 47(1), 29-38. DOI: 10.1590/1809-4392201601544

Freeborn, P. H., Cochrane, M. A., Jolly, W. M. 2015. Relationships between fire danger and the daily number and daily growth of active incidents burning in the northern Rocky Mountains, USA. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 24(7), 900. DOI: 10.1071/WF14152

Freeborn, P. H., Jolly, W. M., Cochrane, M. A. 2016. Impacts of changing fire weather conditions on reconstructed trends in U.S. wildland fire activity from 1979 to 2014. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. 121(11), 2856-2876. DOI: 10.1002/2016JG003617

Freeborn, P. H., Wooster, M. J., Roy, D. P., Cochrane, M. A. 2014. Quantification of MODIS fire radiative power (FRP) measurement uncertainty for use in satellite-based active fire characterization and biomass burning estimation. Geophysical Research Letters. 41(6), 1988-1994. DOI: 10.1002/2013GL059086

Freeborn, P., Cochrane, M., Wooster, M. 2014. A Decade Long, Multi-Scale Map Comparison of Fire Regime Parameters Derived from Three Publically Available Satellite-Based Fire Products: A Case Study in the Central African Republic. Remote Sensing. 6(5), 4061-4089. DOI: 10.3390/rs6054061

Jolly, W. M., Cochrane, M. A., Freeborn, P. H., Holden, Z. A., Brown, T. J., Williamson, G. J., Bowman, D. M. J. S. 2015. Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013. Nature Communications. 6(1). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8537

Kumar, S. S., Roy, D. P., Cochrane, M. A., Souza, C. M., Barber, C. P., Boschetti, L. 2014. A quantitative study of the proximity of satellite detected active fires to roads and rivers in the Brazilian tropical moist forest biome. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 23(4), 532. DOI: 10.1071/wf13106

Laue, J. E., Arima, E. Y. 2015. Spatially explicit models of land abandonment in the Amazon. Journal of Land Use Science. 11(1), 48-75. DOI: 10.1080/1747423X.2014.993341

Murphy, B. P., Bradstock, R. A., Boer, M. M., Carter, J., Cary, G. J., Cochrane, M. A., Fensham, R. J., Russell-Smith, J., Williamson, G. J., Bowman, D. M. J. S. 2013. Fire regimes of Australia: a pyrogeographic model system. Journal of Biogeography. 40(6), 1048-1058. DOI: 10.1111/jbi.12065

Murphy, B. P., Cochrane, M. A., Russell-Smith, J. 2015. Prescribed burning protects endangered tropical heathlands of the Arnhem Plateau, northern Australia. Journal of Applied Ecology. 52(4), 980-991. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12455

Prior, L. D., Murphy, B. P., Williamson, G. J., Cochrane, M. A., Jolly, W. M., Bowman, D. M. J. S. 2016. Does inherent flammability of grass and litter fuels contribute to continental patterns of landscape fire activity? Journal of Biogeography. 44(6), 1225-1238. DOI: 10.1111/jbi.12889

Souza, Jr, C., Siqueira, J., Sales, M., Fonseca, A., Ribeiro, J., Numata, I., Cochrane, M., Barber, C., Roberts, D., Barlow, J. 2013. Ten-Year Landsat Classification of Deforestation and Forest Degradation in the Brazilian Amazon. Remote Sensing. 5(11), 5493-5513. DOI: 10.3390/rs5115493

Tasker, K. A., Arima, E. Y. 2016. Fire regimes in Amazonia: The relative roles of policy and precipitation. Anthropocene. 14, 46-57. DOI: 10.1016/j.ancene.2016.06.001

Williamson, G. J., Prior, L. D., Jolly, W. M., Cochrane, M. A., Murphy, B. P., Bowman, D. M. J. S. 2016. Measurement of inter- and intra-annual variability of landscape fire activity at a continental scale: the Australian case. Environmental Research Letters. 11(3), 035003. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/3/035003

2013 NASA Terrestrial Ecology Science Team Meeting Poster(s)

• Climate and Land Use Dynamics Affecting Fire Regimes of the United States, Australia and the Brazilian Amazonia   --   (Mark A. Cochrane, David Bowman, Carlos Jr. Souza, Christopher Barber, Izaya Numata, Kevin Ryan, Jinxun Liu, Brett Murphy, Grant Williamson, Christopher Moran, Sanath Sathyachandran, Dominic Neyland, Eugenio Arima, Patrick Freeborn, Matt Jolly, Tom Loveland, Michael Wimberly, David P Roy)   [abstract]

2011 NASA Carbon Cycle & Ecosystems Joint Science Workshop Poster(s)

• Shifting Fire Regimes of the US, Australia and Brazilian Amazonia: The Roles of Climate Change, Land Use and Mitigation Efforts   --   (Mark Alan Cochrane, David Bowman, Brett Murphy, Kevin Ryan, William Jolly, Eugenio Arima, Carlos Souza, Jinxun Liu, Thomas Loveland, Michael Wimberly, Christopher Moran, Christopher Barber, Grant Williamson, David Roy)   [abstract]

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile