Progress 09/01/12 to 08/31/17
Outputs
Target Audience:Throughout this project, the researchers primarily focused on engagement with a diverse array of potential stakeholders, including the USFS in the Tahoe Basin, Nevada Department of Forestry, Nevada Department of Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Nevada Air Quality, Washoe Air Quality, California Air Quality Board representatives, local fire management agencies, and the Lake Tahoe West Restoration Team. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Shuang Liang (Hurteau Lab) successfully defended her dissertation entitled "Simulating the effects of climate change, wildfire and fuel treatment on Sierra Nevada forests" in February 2017. Alisa Keyser (Westerling Lab) successfully defended her dissertation entitled "Quantifying the relative importance and potential interactive effects of multiple indices when predicting fire risk and severity in the Western U.S." in December 2016. Both students gave presentations at scientific conferences on the results of their work related to this project. Hurteau and colleagues organized a special session - Understanding climate, disturbance, and forest dynamics from regional to individual tree scales - at the 2014 meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Both Liang and Keyser were invited to give presentations in this session. Graduate Student Presentations Keyser, A.R., A. Westerling, M.D. Hurteau, C. Wiedinmyer, B. Bryant. Examining the impact of changes in climate and vegetation on future fire activity in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California. 2014 meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Liang, S., M.D. Hurteau, A.L. Westerling. Simulating forest carbon dynamics in response to large-scale fuel reduction treatments under projected climate-fire interactions in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, USA. 2016 American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting. Liang, S., M.D. Hurteau, A.L. Westerling. Projecting carbon carrying capacity and species composition under future climate-wildfire interactions in Sierra Nevada forests, CA. 2016 meeting of the Ecological Society of America. Liang, S., M.D. Hurteau, A.L. Westerling. Modeling forest composition and carbon dynamics under projected climate-fire interactions in the Sierra Nevada, California. 2014 American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting. Liang, S., M.D. Hurteau. Modeling the effects of projected climate on forest diversity and carbon dynamics in the Sierra Nevada, California. 2014 meeting of the Ecological Society of America. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Project outreach and information gathering for development of the decision support tool began in 2012 with interviewing key stakeholders. We held the first stakeholder workshop with the Tahoe Basin working group on March 26th, 2013 at the USFS Tahoe Basin Management Unit in South Lake Tahoe, CA. Participants included representatives from California and Nevada land management agencies and air quality divisions. The workshop focused on the presentation of initial model outputs by project researchers and using a facilitated process, identified key future management concerns and priorities that the project could potentially use as model inputs and to refine outreach efforts and materials. We also live-streamed the presentations of project model results to the National Wildfire Training S490 class being held at the USFS training center in McClellan, CA. Working with the USFS Truckee District Fuels Management Program, we jointly held a stakeholder workshop on Oct. 1, 2014 in Truckee, CA with representatives from USFS, Nevada Department of Forestry, Nevada Department of Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Nevada Air Quality, Washoe Air Quality, and California Air Quality Board representatives. Dr. Christine Wiedinmyer presented her work in the project on estimating air pollutant emissions from fires and Dr. Leroy Westerling presented on his fuel treatment scenarios for modeling. We also identified possible model inputs of interest to the stakeholders and how model outputs can best be represented in the scenario planning process. Researchers presented at the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team (TFFT) meeting in April 2016 to introduce the project and follow up with a second meeting to discuss model outputs and management needs in June 2016. In 2016, the research team met with the newly formed Lake Tahoe West Restoration (LTW) Partnership Team during their 2016 meetings and monthly calls to develop an interview guide and identify a key group of managers in the Tahoe Basin to interview regarding their need and use of decision support tools. Dr. VanderMolen began working on the project as well, in support of engagement and research on decision support tools in the region. Co-Investigator Tamara Wall is also currently providing some demo opportunities for the Decision Support Tool with stakeholders in the Lake Tahoe Basin. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
One of the challenges facing forest and fire managers is the uncertainty associated with projected climate and climate-driven changes in area burned. Additionally, these same sources of uncertainty are problematic for policy makers in their efforts to mitigate increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations that are in part dependent on continued carbon uptake by forest ecosystems. The results of our research and outreach provided data products to help land managers and policy makers understand the range of potential futures for forested ecosystems in the Sierra Nevada. Our simulations of large wildfires and the effects changing climate and increasing area burned on Sierra Nevada forests provided data layers for our decision support tool. The decision support tool is available to land managers to aid in planning and decision making in the context of potential future fire behavior and effects across the Sierra Nevada. Through active engagement with state officials in California, we have delivered the results of our work to ensure these decision makers have current research to inform their policy objectives for climate change mitigation and adaptation. This engagement included meetings and a presentation at the state capital and a two day field trip. Fire, Forest, Emissions Modeling We refined statistical models for the presence and number of large fires and generated simulations of large fire activity, using a fire history for the Sierra Nevada provided by USFS Region 5 and climate data generated for the Fourth Climate Assessment for California. We analyzed relationships between extreme fire size distributions and climate and simulated biomass. We estimated a generalized pareto distribution for Sierra Nevada fires greater than 200 ha, where distribution scale parameters are a function of cumulative water year moisture deficit and monthly average temperature and distribution shape parameters are a function of total simulated biomass. We developed a package of code and data in R integrating these models, to allow iterative adjustments to fire risk and vegetation characteristics on a decadal basis. We integrated the area burned distributions into the LANDIS-II modeling framework and ran simulations for the Sierra Nevada that included projected climate and completed simulations of projected climate and large wildfire frequency for the Sierra Nevada. We modeled projected wildfire emissions for California (Hurteau et al. 2014). We modeled the effects of changing climate and climate-driven changes in area burned for the Sierra Nevada (Liang et al. 2017a). We also modeled the projected effects of climate area burned stabilizing at late-century conditions under a moderate-high emission scenario on carbon dynamics across three transects in the northern, central, and southern Sierra Nevada (Liang et al. 2017b). We ran simulations that included simulating mechanical thinning and prescribed burning across all lands not legally excluded from active management and quantified the effects of management on altering the carbon dynamics and fire emissions trajectories observed in the no-management scenarios simulated in Liang et al. (2017a). This work is in review at Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Outreach/Decision Support Tool The outreach component of this research included engagement with a diverse set of stakeholders. Work in 2012 was focused on interviewing key stakeholders in the region in an attempt to better understand how climate change was impacting wildfire policy and management in the Tahoe Basin. Key findings included 1) the need for better ways to communicate trade-offs with the public regarding fuel treatments and large fire growth potential; 2) the need to have more quantitative methods for assessing fuel treatment and air quality impacts from wildfire tradeoffs, particularly in the context of prescribed fire/burning treatments; and 3) a better understanding of how different fuel treatments and vegetation changes impacted large fire growth potential. We continued to interview key stakeholders in both California and Nevada involved in fuel management and planning and from state and local air quality agencies. This project and other recent work in the Lake Tahoe Basin produced a set of spatial model outputs (datasets) that we have incorporated into the decision support tool developed for this project. These datasets characterize potential future fire behavior and effects across the Sierra Nevada under various fuel treatment schemes and under climate change. As summarized in the literature, this type of information gives managers general guidance on how Sierra Nevada fuel management programs might be improved and adapted to climate change. In our interviews and outreach meetings with stakeholders in the Lake Tahoe Region, we found significant interest in tools and methods for making such scenarios more actionable. Stakeholders were not only interested in these types of model outputs, but wished to integrate them directly in the context of ongoing fuels mitigation planning. Benefit Cost Ratios, or BCRs, are a mandatory component of most Federally-supported projects, with rules established by FEMA. In addition, the USFS has been under considerable pressure from OMB to rationalize and justify its fuel management proposals. Therefore, we developed a prototype tool and set of methods which connects future scenario outputs to the BCR process, as well as supporting additional scenario planning for a range of climate impacts. The resulting prototype system is available online at http://sierra.geodesigntech.com. The general user interface has three major functions: 1) Viewing parcel characteristics, 2) Viewing historic treatments, and 3) Testing alternative future treatments. The BECO system has the basic characteristics requested by our initial user group. It summarizes potential fire effects on specific individual parcels, and shows how these effects could be modulated by a particular treatment types. It similarly can be used to evaluate how these treatment effects might be expected to vary under climate change. Relatively simple spatial statistical models of structural ignition were used. Future efforts could add a direct link between LIDAR-based forest conditions observations and fuel models. Additional non-structural effects could also be quantified using similar methods.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Liang S, MD Hurteau, AL Westerling. 2017. Potential decline in carbon carrying capacity under projected climate-wildfire interactions in the Sierra Nevada. Scientific Reports 7:2420.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Liang S, MD Hurteau, AL Westerling. 2017. Response of Sierra Nevada forests to projected climate-wildfire interactions. Global Change Biology 23:2016-2030.
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Progress 09/01/15 to 08/31/16
Outputs
Target Audience:Researchers presented at the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team (TFFT) meeting in April 2016 to introduce the project and follow up with a second meeting to discuss model outputs and management needs in June 2016. The TFFT is a multi-agency group of fire management agencies (federal, state, local), air quality agencies, and NGOs in the Tahoe Basin. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Matthew Hurteau and Anthony Westerling are each training one PhD student on this project. Shuang Liang (Hurteau lab) isbeing mentored in landscape forest simulation. Alisa Keyser (Westerling lab) is being mentored in fire modeling. Tamara Wall is mentoring one PhD student in the Department of Geography at the University of Nevada, Reno (Randy Striplin), who is working with the team to incorporate model outputs of climate change impacts into his dissertation research on prescribed fire burn windows. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?New outreach materials were developed to begin working with fire and fuel managers in the Tahoe Basin and a coordinate effort has begun to start a strategic scenario planning process that will utilize model outputs from the project. Researchers presented at the Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team (TFFT) meeting in April 2016 to introduce the project and follow up with a second meeting to discuss model outputs and management needs in June 2016. The TFFT is a multi-agency group of fire management agencies (federal, state, local), air quality agencies, and NGOs in the Tahoe Basin. We have started organizing a one-day workshop with the TFFT for fall 2016 that will identify the key issues, drivers of change, change states, and how the project model outputs can be utilized, to begin developing preliminary scenario sets. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?During the next reporting period we will develop an integrated suite of models for fire size as a function of climate and simulated biomass in northern rocky mountain forests. We will quantify the wildfire emissions associated with forest projections for the Sierra Nevada. We will hold 3 workshops in the Tahoe Basin with stakeholders from federal, state, local and NGO fire management, natural resources, air quality, and conservation agencies and organizations to develop a set of spatially explicit scenarios that incorporate the modeling outputs, providing mangers in the region with a decision support tool that can be used in support of fuel management and planning efforts. Workshop 1 will be held in October or November, workshop 2 in January 2017, and the final workshop to disseminate the final scenario sets and introduce the decision support tool interface will be the spring of 2017.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We refined statistical models for the presence and number of large fires and generated simulations of large fire activity, using a fire history for the Sierra Nevada provided by USFS Region 5 and climate data generated for the Fourth Climate Assessment for California. We analyzed relationships between extreme fire size distributions and climate and simulated biomass. We estimated a generalized pareto distribution for Sierra Nevada fires greater than 200 ha, where distribution scale parameters are a function of cumulative water year moisture deficit and monthly average temperature and distribution shape parameters are a function of total simulated biomass. We developed a package of code and data in R integrating these models, to allow iterative adjustments to fire risk and vegetation characteristics on a decadal basis. We completed simulations of projected climate and large wildfire frequency for the Sierra Nevada. We have drafted a manuscript reporting on these results that is currently in review. These results will be presented at the 2016 meeting of the Ecological Society of America by Shuang Liang. We are currently completing simulations that include the effects of forest management for the Sierra Nevada.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/14 to 08/31/15
Outputs
Target Audience:Working with the USFS Truckee District Fuels Management Program, we jointly held a stakeholder workshop on Oct. 1, 2014 in Truckee, CA with representatives from USFS, Nevada Department of Forestry, Nevada Department of Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Nevada Air Quality, Washoe Air Quality, and California Air Quality Board representatives. Changes/Problems:The FTE data is a different timeframe based on the timing of the report. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Two graduate students are currently working on the fire and forest modeling. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?During this reporting period, we continued to identify possible natural resource management teams in the Sierras to begin working through a scenario planning process with the modeling outputs. Working with the USFS Truckee District Fuels Management Program, we jointly held a stakeholder workshop on Oct. 1, 2014 in Truckee, CA with representatives from USFS, Nevada Department of Forestry, Nevada Department of Wildlife, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Nevada Air Quality, Washoe Air Quality, and California Air Quality Board representatives. Dr. Christine Wiedinmyer presented her work in the project on estimating air pollutant emissions from fires and Dr. Leroy Westerling presented on his fuel treatment scenarios for modeling. We also identified possible model inputs of interest to the stakeholders and how model outputs can best be represented in the scenario planning process. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will usehistorical forest biomass and species type data from Hurteau's labconfigured at the new 1/16th degree gridwith the new gridded PET data to re-estimate our fire model parameters at 1/16th degree resolution. These will then be packaged with the necessary data sets so that fire simulations can be run in parallel with vegetation simulations at the Hurteau lab. Landscape simulations with the revised fire simulations will be processed with the FINN model to quantifyfire emissions from the different climate scenarios. In the fall of 2015 and spring of 2016, we expect to begin engaging extensively with stakeholders from one or more natural resource agencies and organizations in the Sierras to utilize model outputs in a participatory scenario planning process. This will begin an iterative process of identifying how model results can be actively integrated into current and future planning activities and provide decision support for management actions.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We developed revised statistical models for fire occurrence, fire number, fire size, and high severity burned area on a 1x8 degree grid over federally managed Sierra Nevada forests, and simulated wildfire activity and emissions from wildfires for three AR3 climate scenarios and several fuels management scenarios provided by the forest service. we tested biomass and other variables provided by Hurteau's lab as covariates for fire severity, size, etc. We obtained daily AR5 climate scenarios and hydrologic simulations for the region downscaled to 1/16 degree lat/lon grid from our partners at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. these data were processed into monthly cumulative variables on a 1/16th degree grid. We also obtained and/or produced an array of vegetation and topographic layers at the new 1/16 degree resolution for use with climate and hydrologic data sets to generate potential evapotranspiration using the Penman Montieth equations. These PET data will be completed around the end of June. We are in the process of developing recalculated statistical models of wildfire driven by climate and landsurface characteristics at the new 1/16th degree resolution. We have obtained emissions factors for coarse vegetation categories from our partners at NCAR for use with area burned and fire severity simulations to generate emissions for wildfire scenarios. We have run forest simulations with and without wildfire using projected climate from three models for the Sierra Nevada. The scenarios with wildfire utilized climate-driven wildfire projections from Westerling's lab.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/13 to 08/31/14
Outputs
Target Audience: During this reporting period, we continued to interview key stakeholders in both California and Nevada involved in fuel management and planning and from state and local air quality agencies. We held the first stakeholder workshop with the Tahoe Basin working group on March 26th, 2013 at the USFS Tahoe Basin Management Unit in South Lake Tahoe, CA. Participants included representatives from California and Nevada land management agencies and air quality divisions. The workshop focused on the presentation of initial model outputs by project researchers and using a facilitated process, identified key future management concerns and priorities that the project could potentially use as model inputs and to refine outreach efforts and materials. We also live-streamed the presentations of project model results to the National Wildfire Training S490 class being held at the USFS training center in McClellan, CA. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Matthew Hurteau and Anthony Westerling are each training one PhD student on this project. Shuang Liang (Hurteau lab) is being mentored in landscape forest simulation. Alisa Keyser (Westerling lab) is being mentored in fire modeling. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? A series of meetings were held with USFS stakeholders in Sacramento, CA and supplemented with conference calls. We will be providing preliminary products from the fire size distribution modeling this summer to Region 5 for incorporation into the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan revision. Preliminary results for extreme fire size distributions dependence on fuels conditions for scenarios based around the Rim Fire were communicated to State of California lawmakers and staffers at the California Climate Science Seminar for Policymakers on May 29th in Sacramento, sponsored by Governor Brown's office, Stanford University's Earth Innovation Institute and UC Berkeley. The next set of results will be presented at a meeting of the Upper Merced River Watershed Council on August 21st. Hurteau has organized a session at the 2014 annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America. The session, entitled "Understanding climate, disturbance, and forest dynamics from regioinal to individual tree scales in the Sierra Nevada" will feature fire and forest growth simulation results from this project. The talks include: Keyser, A, A Westerling, MD Hurteau, C Widinmyer, B Bryant. Examining the impact of changes in climate and vegetation on future fire activity in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California. Liang, S and MD Hurteau. Modeling the effects of projected climate on forest diversity and carbon dynamics in the Sierra Nevada, California. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? In the next reporting period, we will continue to identify how stakeholders can contribute to model inputs, and how model results can be best framed to meet management objectives and concerns identified in Workshop 1. If possible, we will look at using a participatory simulation process with the stakeholders to provide inputs in GIS in a second workshop. If the timing to do this is incompatible with modeling efforts, we will focus on outreach to stakeholders that emphasizes reviewing the model outputs, accepting feedback, and gathering their input for the design of final products. In addition, since some of the management concerns identified in Workshop 1 include concerns over future EPA summer ozone levels, we will attempt to involve EPA representatives in Workshop 2, as well as fuel/fire managers and air quality representatives. Fire and forest modeling will continue for the Sierra Nevada, including the incorporation of planned USFS Region 5 fuels treatment simulations. The forest modeling will also include stakeholder information obtained during the first meeting regarding post-wildfire regeneration. We will also use the forest simulations that include wildfire as inputs to inform subsequent wildfire modeling. These simulated landscapes will provide key elements for incorporating the influence of prior fire events on future fire probability.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We developed and tested preliminary versions of new fire size distribution models incorporating fuels conditions, climate and topography as covariates with the fire size distribution scale parameter. We continued development and testing of high severity fire burned area models for Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain forests. This work was presented by a graduate student at the Missoula, MT Large Fire Conference in May. Portions of it will be presented in August at the ESA annual meeting by a graduate student (Alissa Keyser) and a PI (Leroy Westerling). We prepared common updated data sets for climate, topographic and landsurface variables that will be used to drive fire frequency and size models. We obtained fuels management scenarios from USFS stakeholders for the Sierra Nevada and processed these into appropriate variables for use in our modeling, with common data formats and organization to be compatible with our other land surface data sets. We completed acquisition and analysis of USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis data for the Sierra Nevada. We have used these data to develop initial communities surfaces for the Sierra Nevada. We have completed forest model parameterization for the Sierra Nevada and have run a series of simulations under the different climate scenarios. These results will be presented at the 2014 meeting of the Ecological Society of America by a graduate student (Shuang Liang).
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Hurteau, MD, AL Westerling, C Wiedinmyer, BP Bryant. 2014. Projected effects of climate and development on California wildfire emissions through 2100. Environmental Science and Technology, 48:2298-2304.
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Progress 09/01/12 to 08/31/13
Outputs
Target Audience:
Nothing Reported
Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? One graduate student will be presenting a poster at the Ecological Society of America annual meeting in August. The poster presents the results of initial forest growth modeling results for a portion of the Sierra Nevada. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Following completion of forest growth modeling parameterization for the Sierra Nevada, the first series of simulations exclusive of wildfire will be run. Following completion of this simulation, we will intersect the forest modeling with the wildfire modeling to simulate feedbacks between these two aspects of the model. During the next reporting period we will hold our first formal stakeholder meeting to present the initial modeling outputs and obtain feedback on product development to facilitate applicability to management decision making.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
During this reporting period we have made progress toward modeling large wildfire frequency, modeling climate effects on forest growth, and developing our stakeholder network for the social science research and outreach portions of this project. Climate-driven wildfire models are currently being refined for the Rocky Mountains. We are currently parameterizing models for the forest growth portion of the research for the Sierra Nevada. All FIA data have been downloaded and processed for the forest growth modeling component. Progress with the Lake Tahoe Basin stakeholder group has included working with advisory board members and other stakeholders to identify additional stakeholders for the research product development process. Several key stakeholders, including air quality managers, have been interviewed to develop baseline expectations for research products.
Publications
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