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Land-Use Type as a Driver of Large Wildfire Occurrence in the U.S. Great Plains
- Source :
- Remote Sensing, Vol 12, Iss 11, p 1869 (2020)
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- MDPI AG, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Wildfire activity has surged in North America’s temperate grassland biome. Like many biomes, this system has undergone drastic land-use change over the last century; however, how various land-use types contribute to wildfire patterns in grassland systems is unclear. We determine if certain land-use types have a greater propensity for large wildfire in the U.S. Great Plains and how this changes given the percentage of land covered by a given land-use type. Almost 90% of the area burned in the Great Plains occurred in woody and grassland land-use types. Although grassland comprised the greatest area burned by large wildfires, woody vegetation burned disproportionately more than any other land-use type in the Great Plains. Wildfires were more likely to occur when woody vegetation composed greater than 20% of the landscape. Wildfires were unlikely to occur in croplands, pasture/hay fields, and developed areas. Although these patterns varied by region, wildfire was most likely to occur in woody vegetation and/or grassland in 13 of 14 ecoregions we assessed. Because woody vegetation is more conducive to extreme wildfire behaviour than other land-use types in the Great Plains, woody encroachment could pose a large risk for increasing wildfire exposure. Regional planning could leverage differential wildfire activity across land-uses to devise targeted approaches that decrease human exposure in a system prone to fire.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20724292
- Volume :
- 12
- Issue :
- 11
- Database :
- Directory of Open Access Journals
- Journal :
- Remote Sensing
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- edsdoj.0a76eae4854ef5b037ceddf0cc7b64
- Document Type :
- article
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12111869