A stochastic simulation model, Fire-Scenario Builder, to predict daily fire events at regional scales

Expected changes in climate are predicted to increase the extent, and possibly the frequency and severity, of wildfire. Wildfire affects both local and regional air quality, and increased wildfire across the American West may degrade the visibility of mountain landscapes, particularly those classified as “pristine areas” and the focus of national air-quality standards. Future projections of air quality on mountain landscapes are challenging, not only for the need to integrate disciplines (climatology, fire ecology, air chemistry), but also to be robust across temporal (hourly to decadal) and spatial scales (local to global). In response to this challenge, we developed a stochastic model to simulate daily fire occurrence at the coarse spatial scales. The Fire Scenario Builder (FSB) integrates spatially explicit fuel information and meteorological data to simulate daily fire starts and area burned, which can be linked to smoke-modeling frameworks, such as BlueSky, to produce daily emissions and local and regional dispersion. The FSB currently simulates fire events across the American West, at 36-km resolution, for both current and future fire seasons. Future enhancements include finer-scale (12-km) simulations, improved algorithms to predict fire starts, and improved baseline vegetation maps to capture spatial and temporal variability in fuels. by 128.208.123.99 on 5-23-2011-->