Presenter: Megan Poling, PhD Student, Northern Arizona University
In the last three decades nearly 5 million hectares have burned in all vegetation types in the Southwest and the largest fires in documented history have occurred in the past two decades. However, trends in severity, or how fires are burning have not been well documented in forest and woodland ecosystems in the Southwest. We quantified trends in high severity fire in seven different forest and woodland ecosystems (i.e. Ecological Response Units [ERU] Fire Regime Types) in the southwestern USA over a 30 year time span. We showed that fires are getting more frequent, larger, and more severe across all vegetation types. We also showed that area burned and area burned severely are increasing in all forest and woodland ERU Fire Regime Types while percent of high severity fire is increasing in four ERU Fire Regime Types. Increasing trends may be an indicator of changing fire patterns and thus, large-scale change to the Southwest landscape. View webinar recording here!
