IMPACT4SOIL OpenAire Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) LAReferencia - Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas Latinoamericanas UnpayWall Crossref Microsoft Academic Graph Europe PubMed Central Science Open Access 2006-07-07 <p>Western United States forest wildfire activity is widely thought to have increased in recent decades, yet neither the extent of recent changes nor the degree to which climate may be driving regional changes in wildfire has been systematically documented. Much of the public and scientific discussion of changes in western United States wildfire has focused instead on the effects of 19th- and 20th-century land-use history. We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt.</p> 13. Climate action Climate change Forest Biology Wildfire 15. Life on land Forest Sciences 01 natural sciences 333 United States 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Anthony L. Westerling, Anthony L. Westerling, Hugo G. Hidalgo, Daniel R. Cayan, Daniel R. Cayan, Thomas W. Swetnam, 2006-08-18 journalpaper <p>Western United States forest wildfire activity is widely thought to have increased in recent decades, yet neither the extent of recent changes nor the degree to which climate may be driving regional changes in wildfire has been systematically documented. Much of the public and scientific discussion of changes in western United States wildfire has focused instead on the effects of 19th- and 20th-century land-use history. We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt.</p> Warming And Earlier Spring Increase Western Us Forest Wildfire Activity 10.1126/science.1128834 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1128834