Wild, tamed, and domesticated: Three fire macroregimes for global pyrogeography in the Anthropocene.

Climate and natural vegetation dynamics are key drivers of global vegetation fire, but anthropogenic burning now prevails over vast areas of the planet. Fire regime classification and mapping may contribute towards improved understanding of relationships between those fire drivers. We used 15 years of daily active fire data from the MODIS fire product (MCD14ML, collection 6) to create global maps of six fire descriptors (incidence, size inequality, season length, interannual variability, intensity, and fire season modality).

Fire spread predictions: Sweeping uncertainty under the rug.

Predicting fire spread and behavior correctly is crucial to minimize the dramatic consequences of wildfires. However, our capability of accurately predicting fire spread is still very limited, undermining the utility of such simulations to support decision-making. Improving fire spread predictions for fire management purposes, by using higher quality input data or enhanced models, can be expensive, unfeasible or even impossible.

Probabilistic fire spread forecast as a management tool in an operational setting.

Background: An approach to predict fire growth in an operational setting, with the potential to be used as a decision-support tool for fire management, is described and evaluated. The operational use of fire behaviour models has mostly followed a deterministic approach, however, the uncertainty associated with model predictions needs to be quantified and included in wildfire planning and decision-making process during fire suppression activities. We use FARSITE to simulate the growth of a large wildfire.

Deciphering the impact of uncertainty on the accuracy of large wildfire spread simulations.

Predicting wildfire spread is a challenging task fraught with uncertainties. 'Perfect' predictions are unfeasible since uncertainties will always be present. Improving fire spread predictions is important to reduce its negative environmental impacts.