Taking Another Sup From The Firehose
A smattering of recent future fire-themed journal articles
Time for another short list of what to read, or at least download. Let’s completely ignore the headings I used last time and make some new ones.
Disclaimer: any resemblance between my comments and the contents of these papers is purely coincidental, as I have not read them yet…
Impact modelling
Higuera et al. 2023 Shifting socio-ecological fire regimes explain increasing structure loss from Western wildfires
They don’t even bother to say Western U.S. anymore
Structure here is jargon for buildings ‘n’ stuff like that
PNAS Nexus seems cool to me. I think it’s the shine of the parent journal PNAS (not yet diluted by 468 sibling journals) + the logo + the font. Check it:
AghaKouchak et al. 2023 Toward impact-based monitoring of drought and its cascading hazards
Cast of thousands on this one (ok: 22 authors)
Nature Reviews one of the more prestigious of Nature / Springer’s stable of 45,000 journals
I have pondered building an impact-based catalogue of fire myself. Believe it or not but Wikipedia is actually one of the better fire references out there on the web, in terms of ease of access, clarity and putting in one place a bunch of facts about individual fire seasons. Honestly, why isn’t anyone else doing this? Another job for the Bureau of Pyrology, the new national centre for fire monitoring, reporting and public curating I invented in my mind several years ago.
Hulse et al. 2016 Anticipating surprise: Using agent-based alternative futures simulation modeling to identify and map surprising fires in the Willamette Valley, Oregon USA
This is by some of the same authors of the study I mentioned in my last list. I decided rather than try to understand the paper myself, I would invite them to our group catchup to explain it.
Bonus points for including a paradox in the title
As it is more than five years old it is clearly of scholarly interest only
Akter 2023 Australia’s Black Summer wildfires recovery: A difference-in-differences analysis using nightlights
Really interesting approach to post-fire recovery mapping - monthly night-time radiance makes an appearance!
A rare species in the peer-reviewed literature, a single author paper. I have decided that some time in my career I will put out a single author paper and it will be Good.
Sonia was kind enough to answer my email the other day, I am interested in hearing more as I ponder whether I can make a contribution to our understanding of the costs and benefits of wildfire and fire management (piece of cake!)
Ok, this is not technically impact modelling. So sue me.
Fire is old
Adeleye et al. 2023 Long‑term stability of temperate Australian wet forest‑moorland mosaics despite recurrent fires associated with late Holocene climate change
Paleo study based in Tasmania, the abstract includes this Seussian sentence “Sediment sequence from sink-hole lake”
Fire and its drivers
Lindenmayer et al. 2023 What environmental and climatic factors influence multidecadal fire frequency?
Looks like a very valuable analysis of differences in fire activity in Victoria between the last two sets of 20 years.
A missed chance to test the Zylstra ‘long unburnt = less flammable’ hypothesis? (and a missed a chance to cite a similar paper from 10 years ago)
Liu et al. 2023 Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation modulates the relationship between El Niño–Southern Oscillation and fire weather in Australia
If you’re interested in what the recently declared El Nino means for bushfire, spare a thought for the modulators of the modulator - in this case the AMO.
See also this nice ABC visual article, which includes a quote from me about the challenge of holding two different things in your head at the same time
Brown et al. 2023 Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California
There is obviously a connection between climate change and wildfires. Not many people doubt that. Trying to quantify the link is hard because, as readers of this humble substack will know, fire is flamin’ complicated. Well done to Brown and colleagues for building a link between temperature and fire growth, such that they can put a number on what human-caused increases in temperature have done to the risk of fire spread.
My colleague Tom alerted me to an almighty hoo-ha / brouhaha when the lead author of this claimed that there was a big conspiracy about only publishing climate change-related articles about fire. Sadly there is little evidence for the assertion. Check out this explainer of the whole ordeal if you dare.
Yang et al. 2023 Predicting sub-continental fuel hazard under future climate and rising atmospheric CO2 concentration
Tackles one of the thornier elements of future fire, fuel. Specifically fuel hazard, those aspects of fuel thought to be relevant to fires starting and spreading.
Many former colleagues and current collaborators here so I am hopelessly biased.
Fox-Hughes 2023 Synoptic and mesoscale aspects of exceptional fire weather during the New Year period 2019-20 in southeastern New South Wales, Australia
Another single author paper!
Dang it, another author contributing to our understanding of fire weather during the Black Summer fires that has published before me
Cai et al. 2023 Improvement of human-induced wildfire occurrence modeling from a spatial variation of anthropogenic ignition factor in the CLM5
Enter the land surface model! I am still scarred from my run-ins with a land surface model during my PhD.
Pietruszka et al. 2023 Consequential lightning‑caused wildfires and the “let burn” narrative
Some more important evidence gathering to add to the debate about when fires should or should not be allowed to burn.
I like the word consequential because of the implied scorn of its antonym.
Hoecker et al. 2023 Widespread exposure to altered fire regimes under 2°C warming is projected to transform conifer forests of the Western United States
Fieldwork
Gordon et al. 2023 Wildfire and climate impacts tree hollow density in a temperature Australian forest
Hallelujah and thank you to Chris and the others on this list for doing the dirty work of primary data collection, thereby allowing leeches like me to continue to exist and prosper within the academic ecosystem
Review, comment
Bowman & Sharples 2023 Taming the flame, from local to global extreme wildfires
Opinion piece in leading journal Science
Kudos for new fire-themed play on words. I would push back and say that wilderness and domestication are not useful concepts in our current attempts to understand and coexist with fire. I would also respectfully request no one apply such pedantic critiques to my own use of fire-themed puns. Where there’s smoke etc etc
A couple of incredible photos of flaming trees
Brownie points from me for a nice concept figure
Santos et al. 2023 The eco-evolutionary role of fire in shaping terrestrial ecosystems
Synthesis of contributions to a special issue on fire as a dynamic ecological and evolutionary force
Yang et al. 2023 Evapotranspiration on a greening earth
Another Nature Reviews article, another cast of thousands (ok: 17 authors)
I’d like to understand more about this topic. I suspect there could be additional interaction between ET researchers and fire researchers (sometimes they are one and the same, I’ll grant. Also I’m not talking about extraterrestrials, ET is the abbreviation for evapotranspiration)
Kelly et al. 2023 Understanding fire regimes for a better Anthropocene
Luke is one of many fire stars at the University of Melbourne. I am hoping to become one by dint of my presence alone, rather than actually accomplishing anything.
Annual Reviews is one of the more prestigious review journals out there - you can just tell by the font, the elegant shading and use of sidebars.
To me a significant contribution here is the centrality of First Nations knowledge
There is a useful catalogue of some fire regimes around the world that have undergone change, including southern and eastern Australian forests.
If you’re looking for an intro to fire, you’d do worse than picking this one
To me the title harks back to Better Living Through Chemistry, the early twentieth century Dupont slogan, the album by dance club favourite Fatboy Slim and the 2014 movie featuring one of my faves, Sam Rockwell.
Social science
Weir et al. 2022 The recalibration of our relationships with science (and nature) by natural hazard risk mitigation practitioners
My deepest apologies for including something as ancient as this on the list
Kudos to the authors for including an aside in brackets in the article title
Awesome title
Rodman et al. 2023 Refuge-yeah or refuge-nah? Predicting locations of forest
resistance and recruitment in a fiery world
Ok, the gauntlet has been thrown down in the contest for funniest and corniest paper title of the year. Who can trump this?
I have been likening overnight weather conditions to refugia - temporal refugia. What do you think - accurate? Corny?
Another great list of reading Hamish.
I do question why I keep reading fire stuff ... old habits ? genuine interest ? preparing for further study/research ? a change from historical fiction, natural history & biographies ?
I'll consider this at the end of my 'gap year' in January !