Climate change is altering the patterns and characteristics of fire across natural systems in the United States. Resource managers in the Southwest are faced with making natural resource and fire management decisions now, despite a lack of accessible information about how those decisions will play out as fire regimes, and their associated disturbances, will change across the landscape. Decision makers in natural-resource management increasingly require information about projected future changes in fire regimes to effectively prepare for and adapt to climate change impacts. An accessible and forward-looking summary of what we know about the “future of fire” is urgently required in the Southwest and across the country to support resource management decision-making.
To meet this need, the project team will conduct a synthesis of changing fire dynamics in the Southwest, and it will relate these changes to natural resource management options and opportunities. A post-doctoral fellow will lead this research and will conduct an assessment of: 1) the state of the science on how climate change is affecting intentional fire use (specifically cultural burning) in the Southwest; 2) how those changes relate to the broader national context of changing fire patterns and trends; and 3) the implications of these changes for natural resource management and climate change adaptation in the Southwest. The Southwest project, in particular, will assess the policy barriers and opportunities to implementing Indigenous-led traditional burning across land jurisdictions and ecosystems through engagement with Tribal communities and community-based projects. With the USGS Climate Adaptation Postdoctoral Fellows cohort, knowledge about the state of Indigenous-led traditional burning across land jurisdictions and ecosystems in the Southwest, will be integrated into a national-scope synthesis of strategies to adapt people and ecosystems to the future of fire.
