Defining extreme wildland fires using geospatial and ancillary metrics

摘要: There is a growing professional and public perception that 'extreme' wildland fires are becoming more common due to changing climatic conditions. This concern heightened in the wildland-urban interface where social ecological effects converge. 'Mega-fires', 'conflagrations', 'catastrophic' descriptors interchangeably used increasingly describe recent decades US globally. It necessary have consistent, meaningful quantitative metrics define these perceived fires, given studies predict an increased frequency of large intense wildfires many ecosystems as response climate change. Using Monitoring Trends Burn Severity dataset, we identified both widespread fire years individual potentially extreme during period 1984-2009 across 91.2 × 106-ha area north-western United States. The included distributions size, duration, burn severity distance interface. Widespread for study region 1988, 2000, 2006 2007. When considering intersection all four using at 90th percentile, less than 1.5% were fires. At stringent 95th 99th percentiles, percentage reduced