Building resilience to compounding impacts of wildfire and snowpack declines

Start Date

Research Theme
Primary Investigators

Geographic Region

The research objectives are to utilize historical and future snowpack simulations to understand the evolving risk of wildfire across the WWA three-state region. The novelty of the proposed work lies in: 1) better characterizing connections between fire and historic and future snowpack regimes through leveraging ground observations, satellite data, and modeling; and 2) utilizing a recently developed technique to consider the compounded effects of future snowpack loss and summer precipitation/temperature extremes on wildfire risk. This project has profound implications for future wildfire management and adaptation, particularly in the water sector.

Once completed, the proposed work will contribute to understanding future wildfire risks across diverse, fire-prone areas of the Intermountain West and will improve stakeholder resilience to climate change. We will share results with stakeholders and forest managers in user-oriented products to improve wildfire management and prescribed fire planning. The results will provide cross-disciplinary knowledge of historic and future hydrological and ecological hazards, which will benefit not only water managers but also forest management agencies. Results from this project will also inform stakeholder-focused activities.

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