Climate and changes in fire potential for southeastern United States

Fire is an integral part of many ecosystems throughout the southeastern United States. Most of the fire each year in the South is prescribed fire; however, if climate change leads to a warmer and drier climate that balance could change as we may find ourselves out of prescription on a more frequent basis. Using data from the Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs data set (http://maca.northwestknowledge.net/) we examine potential changes in fire potential as expressed through two meteorological indices (Keetch-Byram Drought Index and Fosberg Fire Weather Index) for 5 different climate models for the period of 1950-2100. Wavelet analysis is used to examine time series of the fire potential indices looking for shifts in periodicity of prescribed fire windows for five National Forests across the region.