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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Fire

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Modeling Fire Observations, Ignition Sources, And Novel Fuels To Understand Human Impacts On Fire Regimes Across The U.S., Emily Fusco Jul 2019

Modeling Fire Observations, Ignition Sources, And Novel Fuels To Understand Human Impacts On Fire Regimes Across The U.S., Emily Fusco

Doctoral Dissertations

Fire is a natural, and necessary, component of many ecosystems. However, people are changing the spatial and temporal distribution of wildfires in the U.S. at great economic and ecological costs. My dissertation addresses the impacts of humans on U.S. fires both through the introduction of ignition sources and flammable grasses. Further, I evaluate fire datasets that are widely used to investigate these phenomena over large spatial and temporal scales. Finally, I create an aboveground carbon map that can be used to estimate the potential carbon loss consequences in western U.S. ecosystems most at risk to fire. My work shows that …


Quantifying The Human Influence On Fire Ignition Across The Western Usa, Emily J. Fusco, John T. Abatzoglou, Jennifer K. Balch, John T. Finn, Bethany Bradley Jan 2016

Quantifying The Human Influence On Fire Ignition Across The Western Usa, Emily J. Fusco, John T. Abatzoglou, Jennifer K. Balch, John T. Finn, Bethany Bradley

Environmental Conservation Faculty Publication Series

Humans have a profound effect on fire regimes by increasing the frequency of ignitions. Although ignition is an integral component of understanding and predicting fire, to date fire models have not been able to isolate the ignition location, leading to inconsistent use of anthropogenic ignition proxies. Here, we identified fire ignitions from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Burned Area Product (2000–2012) to create the first remotely sensed, consistently derived, and regionally comprehensive fire ignition data set for the western United States. We quantified the spatial relationships between several anthropogenic land-use/disturbance features and ignition for ecoregions within the study area …