Physical and Environmental Geography Commons^™

Climate Drivers Of Wildfire Activity In The Magdalena Mountains Of New Mexico, U.S.A., Elizabeth Anne Schneider

Masters Theses

In recent years, crown fires have raged through mixed-conifer forests in the American Southwest that historically experienced frequent, low-severity wildfires. Land management agencies now wish to restore wildfires to their historical range of variability, but this requires information on fire regimes before Euro-American disturbance took place. We characterized the historical fire regime of a high elevation, mixed-conifer forest in the Magdalena Mountains, New Mexico. This research evaluated the different climate drivers, represented by the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), that influence the occurrence of …