TY - JOUR
T1 - Widespread fire years in the US-Mexico Sky Islands are contingent on both winter and monsoon precipitation
AU - Arizpe, Alexis H.
AU - Falk, Donald A.
AU - Woodhouse, Connie A.
AU - Swetnam, Thomas W.
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was supported by National Science Foundation grant no. DEB-0640351 and by the Coronado National Forest FireScape Project. Thanks to Mark Kaib for sharing his unique fire history collections. Thanks to Jesse Minor, Kyle Miller, Kit O’Connor, Anastasia Rabin, Ruben Ruiz, Ben Schippers and Craig Wilcox for field assistance. Thanks to Chris Baisan and Josh Farella for laboratory assistance. Thanks to Calvin Farris, Pete Fulé, Jose Iniguez, Jed Meunier and Kiyomi Morino for their fire history work, and to Erica Bigio and Chris Guiterman for support and encouragement. Comments and suggestions from two anonymous reviewers were very helpful in revising the original manuscript, and we express our appreciation to them and the Journal’s editors.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 IAWF Open Access.
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - The climate of the south-western United States and northern Mexico borderlands is marked by a bimodal precipitation regime with the majority of moisture arriving during the cool season via Pacific frontal storm systems, and intense convective storms during the North American Monsoon (NAM). The fire season occurs primarily during the arid foresummer in May and June, before the development of the NAM. Most tree-ring studies of fire climatology in the region have evaluated only the role of winter precipitation. We used tree-ring-width-based reconstructions of both winter and monsoon precipitation, coupled with fire scar reconstructions of fire history from mountain ranges in the US and Mexico, to quantify the historical role and interactions of both seasons of precipitation in modulating widespread fire years. Winter precipitation was the primary driver of widespread fire years in the region, but years with drought in both seasons had the highest fire frequency and most widespread fires. These relationships define a unique monsoon fire regime, in which the timing and amount of monsoon precipitation are important factors in limiting the length of fire season and regulating widespread fire years.
AB - The climate of the south-western United States and northern Mexico borderlands is marked by a bimodal precipitation regime with the majority of moisture arriving during the cool season via Pacific frontal storm systems, and intense convective storms during the North American Monsoon (NAM). The fire season occurs primarily during the arid foresummer in May and June, before the development of the NAM. Most tree-ring studies of fire climatology in the region have evaluated only the role of winter precipitation. We used tree-ring-width-based reconstructions of both winter and monsoon precipitation, coupled with fire scar reconstructions of fire history from mountain ranges in the US and Mexico, to quantify the historical role and interactions of both seasons of precipitation in modulating widespread fire years. Winter precipitation was the primary driver of widespread fire years in the region, but years with drought in both seasons had the highest fire frequency and most widespread fires. These relationships define a unique monsoon fire regime, in which the timing and amount of monsoon precipitation are important factors in limiting the length of fire season and regulating widespread fire years.
KW - North American Monsoon
KW - climate regulation
KW - monsoon fire regime
KW - summer precipitation index
KW - synchrony
KW - winter precipitation index
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U2 - 10.1071/WF19181
DO - 10.1071/WF19181
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85096567632
SN - 1049-8001
VL - 29
SP - 1072
EP - 1087
JO - International Journal of Wildland Fire
JF - International Journal of Wildland Fire
IS - 12
ER -