Modeling risks of climate-driven wildfires in boreal forest: the FLAM approach

Krasovskiy, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0940-9366, Corning, S., Cimdins, R., & Kraxner, F. (2023). Modeling risks of climate-driven wildfires in boreal forest: the FLAM approach. In: 20th IBFRA Conference, 28-31 August 2023, Helsinki.

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Abstract

Extreme forest fires have been a historic concern in the forests of Canada, the Russian Federation, and the USA,and are now an increasing threat in boreal Europe. We will present approaches to modeling wildfire dynamicsusing the wildFire cLimate impacts and Adaptation Model (FLAM) being developed at the International Instituteof Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). FLAM operates on a daily time step and uses mechanistic algorithms toparametrize the impacts of climate, human activities, and fuel availability on wildfire probabilities, frequencies,and burned areas. Model validation on historical GIS and remote sensing data and future projections underclimate change scenarios will be discussed at various scales and resolutions for the boreal forest. We willpresent modeling results for the boreal forest, including: (i) simulation of burned areas and adaptation options;(ii) projections of burned areas driven by climate change scenarios until 2100; (iii) regional variability and drivingforces behind forest fires in Sweden. Our results support international analyses that, irrespective of changes inmanagement, it is evident that climate change is very likely to increase the frequency and impact of wildlandfires in the coming decades, also in the boreal forest.

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