Modeling burned area in Europe with the Community Land Model

Migliavacca, M., Dosio, A., Kloster, S., Ward, D.S., Camia, A., Houborg, R., Houston-Durrant, T., Khabarov, N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5372-4668, et al. (2013). Modeling burned area in Europe with the Community Land Model. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 118 (1) 265-279. 10.1002/jgrg.20026.

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Abstract

In this study, we present simulations of a burned area at a European scale for the period 1990-2009 conducted with the Community Land Model (CLM). By using statistics on fire counts and mean fire suppression time from the European Fire Database, we refined the parameterization of the functions describing human ignition/suppression, and we modified the description of biomass availability for fires. The results obtained with the modified model show an improvement of the description of the spatial an interannual variability of the burned area: the model bias is reduced by 45%, and the explained variance is increased by about 9% compared to the original parameterization of the model. The observed relationships between burned area, climate (temperature and precipitation), and aboveground biomass are also reproduced more accurately by the modified model. This is particularly relevant for the applicability of the model to simulate future fire regimes under different climate conditions. However, results showed an overestimation of the burned area for some European countries (e.g., Spain and France) and an underestimation in years with an extreme fire season in Mediterranean countries. Our results highlight the need for refining the parameterization of human ignition/suppression and fuel availability for regional application of fire models implemented in land surface models.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Fire; Community Land Model; Burned area; Human ignition; Fire suppression; Climatic control
Research Programs: Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM)
Bibliographic Reference: Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences; 118(1):265-279 (March 2013) (Published online 18 March 2013)
Depositing User: IIASA Import
Date Deposited: 15 Jan 2016 08:48
Last Modified: 27 Aug 2021 17:23
URI: https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/10433

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