Presenter: Clare Aslan, Northern Arizona University
Date: May 30, 2019 1-3pm AZ (2-4pm MDT)
Arizona’s Sonoran Desert is home to unique species, sites of immense cultural and historical value, and more than 5 million people. This sensitive region is also threatened by a changing fire regime, spurred by climate change, long-term drought, and invasive plants. We used social and climate sciences to predict future fire regimes and resilience across the ecoregion. We worked with land managers and stakeholders to determine where predicted changes may impede management and to identify alternative management strategies likely to be successful under future conditions. In this webinar, we will present maps of future fire risk and coupled human-ecological fire resilience across the region. These maps, as planning tools, incorporate the management needs of those living and working across the land. The Sonoran FireAdapt project is a Joint Fire Science Program-funded effort supporting the Northern Arizona University Landscape Conservation Initiative and Conservation Science Partners to map fire regime shifts and resilience in order to inform management in the Sonoran Desert.The project is wrapping up this summer, and we hope that we can share some project outcomes and discuss what’s next with you during the webinar and/or workshop listed below.
The webinar included an overview of the project and its outcomes, including a variety of fire maps, resilience maps, and other spatial data. View a recording of this webinar here.
The workshop was an opportunity to discuss fire adaptation across organizations, explore data developed for the project in-depth, and discuss current and future fire management research and collaboration needs in the Sonoran desert.
