FIRE-MODEL: Collaborative Research: Mapping global fire activity since the Last Glacial Maximum for improved fire modeling and management

Accelerating changes in fire regimes globally--from increases in fire extent and severity in forests to decreasing fire frequency in grasslands--motivate interest in understanding how fire regimes may change in the future. To build this understanding, models are needed that have been tested against robust observations of fire dynamics. Currently, fire models are primarily benchmarked against fire observations from the modern satellite record. Such an approach underutilizes longer-term paleorecords of fire activity. This project aims to produce definitive time series and maps of fire activity going back thousands of years that can be used to evaluate and improve models for fire activity and drive more confident predictions of future fire regime change. The project will have substantial societal impact: wildland fire is changing, and our ability to anticipate, manage, and adapt to future fire regimes depends on a scientific foundation that is currently incomplete without the outcomes of this project. The team will engage directly with fire managers across three continents to inform ecological prescribed fire management and train the next generation of fire scientists in international collaborative research and education. The project will produce new, comprehensive fire synthesis records by reviewing the published literature to ensure that all available existing data are included in a state-of-the-art, multiproxy paleofire dataset (the Fire Proxy Dataset). The dataset will be supplemented with new records and novel methods that will better resolve past fire regimes in regions that are sparsely sampled in the literature. This comprehensive synthesis will allow the team to produce maps of paleofire activity since the Last Glacial Maximum (~22,000 years ago). The new synthesis will be used to evaluate Fire Model Intercomparison Project reconstructions of historical fire activity (1901 to present) and to develop a new model for fire spread in grassy ecosystems, incorporating human impacts on fire ignition and passive fire suppression from fuel fragmentation. Model predictions for fire regime change will then be used to inform ecological fire management in a test set of protected areas in South Africa, Brazil, and the United States, in collaboration with local managers. The project deliverables include open data resources about past fire activity (including an improved Fire Paleo Database and maps of paleofire activity) and a new open-source fire model. This award by the NSF Directorate for Geosciences is jointly supported by the Office of International Science and Engineering. 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.