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Title: HESFIRE: a global fire model to explore the role of anthropogenic and weather drivers

Journal Article · · Biogeosciences (Online)
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Vegetation fires are a major driver of ecosystem dynamics and greenhouse gas emissions. Anticipating potential changes in fire activity and their impacts relies first on a realistic model of fire activity (e.g., fire incidence and interannual variability) and second on a model accounting for fire impacts (e.g., mortality and emissions). In this paper, we focus on our understanding of fire activity and describe a new fire model, HESFIRE (Human–Earth System FIRE), which integrates the influence of weather, vegetation characteristics, and human activities on fires in a stand-alone framework. It was developed with a particular emphasis on allowing fires to spread over consecutive days given their major contribution to burned areas in many ecosystems. A subset of the model parameters was calibrated through an optimization procedure using observation data to enhance our knowledge of regional drivers of fire activity and improve the performance of the model on a global scale. Modeled fire activity showed reasonable agreement with observations of burned area, fire seasonality, and interannual variability in many regions, including for spatial and temporal domains not included in the optimization procedure. Significant discrepancies are investigated, most notably regarding fires in boreal regions and in xeric ecosystems and also fire size distribution. The sensitivity of fire activity to model parameters is analyzed to explore the dominance of specific drivers across regions and ecosystems. The characteristics of HESFIRE and the outcome of its evaluation provide insights into the influence of anthropogenic activities and weather, and their interactions, on fire activity.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Integrated Assessment Research Program
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
1184931
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-107843; KP1703030; 600306000; 600306000
Journal Information:
Biogeosciences (Online), Vol. 12, Issue 3; ISSN 1726-4189
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 31 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (25)

Trends and Variability of Global Fire Emissions Due To Historical Anthropogenic Activities: Trends and Variability of Global Fire Emissions Due To Historical Anthropogenic Activities journal January 2018
Mapping burnt areas in the semi-arid savannahs: an exploration of SVM classification and field surveys journal November 2019
Effects of fossil fuel and total anthropogenic emission removal on public health and climate journal March 2019
After the flames then what? exploring the linkages between wildfires and household food security in the northern Savannah of Ghana journal July 2019
Evaluation of climate-related carbon turnover processes in global vegetation models for boreal and temperate forests journal April 2017
Historical (1700–2012) global multi-model estimates of the fire emissions from the Fire Modeling Intercomparison Project (FireMIP) journal January 2019
Reconstructions of biomass burning from sediment-charcoal records to improve data–model comparisons journal January 2016
The status and challenge of global fire modelling journal January 2016
Varying relationships between fire radiative power and fire size at a global scale journal January 2019
Theoretical uncertainties for global satellite-derived burned area estimates journal January 2019
The Global Fire Atlas of individual fire size, duration, speed, and direction journal January 2018
A data-driven approach to identify controls on global fire activity from satellite and climate observations (SOFIA V1) journal January 2017
A fire model with distinct crop, pasture, and non-agricultural burning: use of new data and a model-fitting algorithm for FINAL.1 journal January 2018
The biophysics, ecology, and biogeochemistry of functionally diverse, vertically and horizontally heterogeneous ecosystems: the Ecosystem Demography model, version 2.2 – Part 1: Model description journal January 2019
Analysis fire patterns and drivers with a global SEVER-FIRE v1.0 model incorporated into dynamic global vegetation model and satellite and on-ground observations journal January 2019
Evaluation of climate-related carbon turnover processes in global vegetation models for boreal and temperate forests. text January 2017
Theoretical uncertainties for global satellite-derived burned area estimates journal April 2019
A fire model with distinct crop, pasture, and non-agricultural burning: Use of new data and a model-fitting algorithm for FINAL.1 text January 2018
The Global Fire Atlas of individual fire size, duration, speed and direction journal January 2019
The status and challenge of global fire modelling text January 2016
Historical (1700–2012) global multi-model estimates of the fire emissions from the Fire Modeling Intercomparison Project (FireMIP) text January 2019
Negligent and intentional fires in Portugal: Spatial distribution characterization journal May 2018
Synergy between land use and climate change increases future fire risk in Amazon forests posted_content January 2017
Quantitative assessment of fire and vegetation properties in simulations with fire-enabled vegetation models from the Fire Model Intercomparison Project journal January 2020
The biophysics, ecology, and biogeochemistry of functionally diverse, vertically- and horizontally-heterogeneous ecosystems: the Ecosystem Demography Model, version 2.2 — Part 1: Model description journal March 2019

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
vegetation fire model
fire ignition/spread/termination
anthropogenic activities
weather
model optimization
model evaluation