Collaborative Research: GCR: Managing Future Risk of Increasing Simultaneous Megafires

特大火灾是指火灾规模相对于其所处位置而言异常巨大，或者由于对生命、财产和/或基础设施构成巨大威胁而需要采取复杂和积极的消防措施的火灾。当美国同时发生多起特大火灾时，国家消防资源可能会超出承受能力。一个具有决策科学、气候科学、统计学和火灾科学专业知识的研究人员团队，与地面决策者和利益相关者（包括火灾管理人员、火灾生态学家、部落和政府机构的土地管理人员）合作，共同努力，在自然和人类系统的交叉点推动火灾科学和管理的前沿。他们的目标是通过改进短期和长期气候预测，为管理决策提供有关灾难性野火事件带来的风险的信息。这项研究将支持有关土地利用、燃料管理（疏林和规定燃烧）和野火扑灭政策的决策，从而帮助保护社会免受未来生命、财产、基础设施和自然资源的损失。该项目将模拟同时发生特大火灾事件的未来模式和不确定性，为火灾风险管理提供信息。在此过程中，它旨在解决两个核心问题：(1)气候变化将如何改变未来野火的模式，特别是同时发生的特大火灾？(2)这对风险管理决策有什么启示？该项目将包括开发统计模型，以表示生物地球物理和人为因素（例如，点火、灭火政策、土地和燃料管理）之间的关系，以及与消防管理决策相关的地理尺度上的消防资源需求。这些资源需求和风险管理模型将基于野火特征、气候、天气和土地历史协变量。这项研究将考虑与未来野火活动有关的三个假设。首先，研究人员假设，随着气候变暖，点火效率将进一步提高，从而促进闪电点火的增加，从而增加同时发生的野火事件。其次，他们假设，当国家层面的灭火资源变得紧张时，可能会出现正反馈，从而降低管理活火和新火源的效率，并进一步增加资源紧张和相对燃烧面积。第三，他们假设短期火灾管理决策（例如，燃料管理和灭火）具有显著的延迟影响，并且需要新的科学支持的决策工具，明确考虑自然系统和人类系统的持续相互作用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Megafires are fires that are unusually large for their location or that require a complex and aggressive firefighting response because they pose a dramatic threat to lives, property, and/or infrastructure. When multiple megafires occur simultaneously in the U.S., national firefighting resources may be strained beyond capacity. A convergent team of researchers with expertise in decision science, climate science, statistics, and fire science in collaboration with on the ground decision makers and stakeholders, including fire managers, fire ecologists, and land managers for tribes and government agencies will work together to push the frontiers of fire science and management at the intersection of natural and human systems. Their goal is to inform management decisions about the risk posed by catastrophic wildfire events with improved short and long term climate projections. The research will support decisions about land use, as well as fuel management (thinning and prescribed burning), and wildfire suppression policy, thereby helping to safeguard society against the future loss of life, property, infrastructure, and natural resources.The project will model future patterns and uncertainty in the simultaneous co-occurrence of megafire events to inform fire risk management. In doing so, it aims to address two central questions: (1) How will climate change alter future patterns of wildfire, particularly co-occurring megafires? (2) What implications does this hold for risk management decisions? The project will include development of statistical models to represent relationships between biogeophysical and human factors (e.g., ignitions, suppression policy, land and fuel management), and firefighting resource demand at geographical scales relevant to firefighting management decision-making. These resource demand and risk management models will be based on wildfire characteristics, climate, weather and land history covariates. The research will consider three hypotheses as they relate to future wildfire activity. First, the researchers hypothesize that ignition efficiency will increase further with warming, facilitating increased lightning-ignitions, and consequently increases in simultaneous wildfire events. Second, they hypothesize that a positive feedback may occur where fire suppression resources at the national level become strained, reducing the efficacy of managing active fires and new ignitions, and further increasing resource strain and relative burned area. Third, they hypothesize that short term fire management decisions (e.g., both fuel management and fire suppression) have significant delayed impacts, and demand new scientifically supported decision tools that explicitly account for the continuing interaction of natural and human systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.