Climate change to spur rapid shifts in fire hotspots, projects new analysis

This map shows the invasion (orange) and retreat (blue) of fire risk projected for 2010-2039 under a new climate model that looks at wildfire patterns on a global scale. Click map for larger version . (Meg Krawchuk, UC Berkeley) BERKELEY — Climate change will bring about major shifts in worldwide fire patterns, and those changes are coming fast, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with scientists at Texas Tech University. Researchers used thermal-infrared sensor data obtained between 1996 and 2006 from European Space Agency satellites in their study of pyrogeography - the distribution and behavior of wildfire - on a global scale. They not only got a global view of where wildfires occur, but they determined the common environmental characteristics associated with the risk of those fires. They then incorporated those variables into projections for how future climate scenarios will impact wildfire occurrence worldwide. The research was conducted with support from The Nature Conservancy as part of the organization's effort to integrate information about global fire regimes into planning for biodiversity conservation.