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Climate change and rising sea levels in Miami(Anya)

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Climate change and rising sea levels in Miami(Anya)

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If the amount of emissions produced continues sea levels could possibly rise to six and a half feet, this could flood cities like New york, and shanghai. Sea level rise is posing a great threat and in florida has risen 3.5 inches and slowly continues to rise. These rises would place about 187 million people at risk.

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/ CBS Miami

MIAMI (CBSMiami/CNN) - A new study has a grim forecast for several coastal cities around the globe.

Global sea levels could rise more than six and a half feet by the end of this century if emissions continue unchecked, swamping major cities such as New York and Shanghai and displacing up to 187 million people, a new study warns.

Since 1992, the sea level has risen 3.5 inches in South Florida and it's not stopping.

"We've been increasing at a small level every year," Jane Gilbert said.

Gilbert is the City if Miami's chief resilience officer. It's a role meant to literally keep families above water.

The greatest threat now from sea level rise, is flooding especially as Hurricane Season approaches.

"The combination of higher storm surge and more precipitation. That could increase the flood risk," Gilbert said.

She also monitors climate change studies.

The study, released on Monday, says sea levels may rise much faster than previously estimated due to the accelerating melting of ice sheets in both Greenland and Antarctica.

The international researchers predict that in the worst case scenario under which global temperatures increase by 9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, sea levels could rise by more than 6.6 feet in the same period -- double the upper limit outlined by the UN climate science panel's last major report.

Such a situation would be "catastrophic," the authors of the study warn.

In South Florida, a prediction map on ClimateControl.Org showed a worst-case scenario where Monroe, Miami-Dade, and mostly all of Broward disappeared because of water in 2100.

"It really is pretty grim," lead author Jonathan Bamber, a Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Bristol told CNN. "Two meters is not a good scenario."

He said the mass displacement of people in low-lying coastal areas would likely result in serious social upheaval. It would also pose an "existential threat" to small island nations in the Pacific which would be left pretty much uninhabitable.

The researchers found that under the extreme-case scenario, about 1.79 million square kilometers (691,120 sq miles) -- an area more than three times the size of California -- would be lost to the sea.

Such a rise would place up to 187 million people at risk, which is about 2.5% of the world's total population.

While the authors acknowledge that the chance of a worst-case scenario could be small, around 5%, they say it should not be discounted.

"Our study suggests that there is a real risk, a plausible risk of very substantial sea level rise coming from both ice sheets," Bamber said.

He added that humankind had quite a narrow window of opportunity to avoid some of the worst consequences, such as very high sea level rise.

"What we decide to do collectively as a species politically, globally, over the next decade is going to determine the future of the next generations in terms of the habitability of the planet and what sort of environment they live in."

The United Nations climate panel's last major report in 2013 predicted that sea levels would rise between 52 and 98 cm (20.4 inches and 38.5 inches) by 2100 at the current trajectory. But many experts saw those findings as conservative.

Scientists are worried that the current models used to predict the influence of massive melting ice sheets have flaws, and fail to capture all of the uncertainties.

To try to get a clearer picture, the report's authors asked 22 ice sheet experts to estimate how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets might respond to future climate change, using newly advanced regional- and continental-scale, process-based models.

Scientists say there is still time to avoid the worst if global greenhouse gas emissions are cut sharply in the coming decades.

The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences.

In November 2017, voters approved a $400 Million Miami Forever Bond. Nearly half the funds go toward tackling sea level rise.

"We believe that there are solutions to keep Miami forever, like the Miami forever bond, Gilbert said.

On May 30th, mayors in South Florida will release a report called "Resilient 305" which will give details what they're doing to battle sea level rise.

(©2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company, contributed to this report.)

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Faster Than Previously Predicted, Rising Sea Levels Could Submerge Huge Coastal Cities

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CBS Miami MIAMI (CBSMiami/CNN) - A new study has a grim forecast for several coastal cities around the globe. Global sea levels could rise more than six and a half feet by the end of this century if emissions continue unchecked, swamping major cities such as New York and Shanghai and displacing up to 187 million people, a new study warns.

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This is a very interesting article, it tells us about the whole series and process of climate change, gives us different examples and effects, the air, water and land of the world are all related to climate. Any small rise in average global temperatures over a long period of time could trigger a chain reaction of global climate change. Low rainfall can lead to droughts, while too much rainfall can lead to flooding. During hotter weather throughout the year, crops can dry up, affecting humans, plants and animals. In many places, people will struggle to cope with changing circumstances.

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GLOBAL IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE The Earth’s air, water and land are all linked to the climate. Any small increase...

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This article is more about a solution that we found may can help with the  climate change but also commercially viable.
climate change make the large industry betting big on biomass as a feedstock.this article is talking an example of bioenergy, more specifically is corn biofuels.corn by fermentation process and add ethanol in ethanol plant  produce gasoline.and the CO2 from the process can stay in deep below ground in to sandstone rock.cause the CO2 is soaked up by the corn plants as they grow and injecting the gas in to sandstone  forever stores it.So the process of making biofuels also is the process to pull CO2 from the atmosphere.

but this process also provides more fuels and use by car than  new CO2 emissions .well as the harvesting and trucking the corn.we are unclear that con-based ethanol can yield a reduction in atmosphere CO2.

But overall biomass use in many industries to make Environmental impact lower, helping the Climate change . for example electricity , bioplastics and fuel.

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How Climate Change Strategies That Use Biomass Can Be More Realistic

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Current plans for drawing down carbon dioxide call for more trees, grasses and crop residues than Earth can spare

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Climate Change is Making the Skies Worse for Astronomy (Mikael)

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Climate Change is Making the Skies Worse for Astronomy (Mikael)

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All around the world, ground-based telescopes are used to advance humanity's understanding of space and the wider universe. In order to do this, the machines require extremely stable conditions, with minimal overhead atmospheric disturbances. Since climate change is putting more water vapour into the atmosphere, these constant viewing conditions will be threatened for many observatories. This will almost certainly affect the quality of data that the telescopes are able to obtain. As well, the extra water vapour in the atmosphere could form condensation which damages the telescopes. To avoid future problems, we must consider the atmospheric conditions at a selected observatory site significantly farther into the future than we are now.

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Light pollution. Satellite trains and radio frequency interference. Encroaching civilization. These all pose threats to ground-based astronomy. But, did anyone ever think that global climate change might wreak havoc on observatories? It turns out the answer is "yes."

We're all familiar with the predictions about global climate change. It will make hot places hotter, cold places colder, and bring wilder weather to places around the planet. Economically, its effects already make a dent in global trading and are changing living conditions for millions of people. And, inevitably, it will change astronomy and the places where astronomers do their work.

Observatories Need Dry, Clear Air

Observations from ground-based telescopes are incredibly sensitive to local atmospheric conditions. Most observatories are located well above sea level. Less atmosphere to peek through means better astronomical data. And, there are other factors, too. For example, observatories on the Big Island of Hawai'i sit atop a 4,000-meter volcano. Infrared-sensitive instruments, like those at the Subaru and Gemini observatories, function very effectively there. That's because there is so little water vapor in the high-altitude air and near-infrared light can slip right through. Many telescopes are also built in deserts, which also have less cloudy nights and lower water vapor content. Those observing sites are much more sensitive to climate change. Wilder conditions will adversely affect observatories long before their instrument lifetimes are up.

Back when these places were planned and built, selection committees only looked at shorter-term atmospheric analyses (like five years or so of weather data). They also used older climate models to project future conditions at the sites. As astronomy faces the challenges of global climate change, it looks like it'll have to improve its site selection criteria and look at longer-term climate predictions.

That's the conclusion a team of researchers came to, led by Caroline Haslebacher at the University of Bern and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS. They analyzed environmental conditions at a number of the world's sites. The group also looked at the site selection process for each facility. Team members recommend that planners use longer timeframes and newer climate models to predict atmospheric conditions at new sites.

Climate Change and Ground-based Observatories

So, how will things change for astronomy in the age of anthropogenic climate change? For one thing, global warming has the effect of putting more water into the atmosphere. To be specific, major astronomical observatories from Hawai'i to the Canary Islands, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, and Australia will experience an increase in temperature and atmospheric water content by 2050. Those changes will affect observing time and the quality of data they obtain.

Global climate change's effects will reach right up the skies, affecting such places as the VLTI in Chile. Courtesy ESO.

"Nowadays, astronomical observatories are designed to work under the current site conditions and only have a few possibilities for adaptation," said Haslebacher, the lead author of the study. "Potential consequences of the climatic conditions for telescopes, therefore, include a higher risk of condensation due to an increased dew point or malfunctioning cooling systems, which can lead to more air turbulence in the telescope dome."

It's likely that the technology and observing practices in current facilities can adjust to these conditions in the short term. However, for future observatories, planners should use better atmospheric models in site selection criteria. Haslebacher points out that improved data is the key to avoiding the degradation of ground-based astronomy. "Even though telescopes usually have a lifetime of several decades, site selection processes only consider the atmospheric conditions over a short timeframe. Usually over the past five years - too short to capture long-term trends, let alone future changes caused by global warming," she said.

What's Next for Observatories in an Age of Climate Change?

The fact that past planners didn't take the effects of climate change into account was not simply an oversight. They had to plan with the information they had. Study co-author Marie-Estelle Demory (of the Wyss Academy at the University of Bern, Switzerland) points out that state-of-the-art climate models are incredibly important for future observatory sites. "Thanks to the higher resolution of the global climate models developed through the Horizon 2020 PRIMAVERA project, we were able to examine the conditions at various locations of the globe with great fidelity," she said. "This is something that we were unable to do with conventional models. These models are valuable tools for the work we do at the Wyss Academy."

Global climate change isn't going away. It's something that we'll all have to deal with in the coming decades. For astronomers, it's yet another challenge to face. The silver lining is that the data are there to help, according to Haslebacher. "This now allows us to say with certainty that anthropogenic climate change must be taken into account in the site selection for next-generation telescopes, and in the construction and maintenance of astronomical facilities," she said.

For More Information
How global warming affects astronomical observations
Impact of climate change on site characteristics of eight major astronomical observatories using high-resolution global climate projections until 2050

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Climate Change is Making the Skies Worse for Astronomy

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Light pollution. Satellite trains and radio frequency interference. Encroaching civilization. These all pose threats to ground-based astronomy. But, did anyone ever think that global climate change might wreak havoc on observatories? It turns out the answer is "yes." We're all familiar with the predictions about global climate change.

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Climate Change Could Cut World Economy by $23 Trillion in 2050, Insurance Giant Warns(William)

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Climate Change Could Cut World Economy by $23 Trillion in 2050, Insurance Giant Warns(William)

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In poor countries especially, the impact of extreme weather such as hurricane, drought and such. Rising temperatures are likely to reduce the global economy significantly as crop yields fall, disease spreads and rising seas consume coastal cities. As well as the global temperature is expected to rise up to 2.6 degrees by 2050.  small and poor countries will be extremely had to keep up with the damage the weathers cause. if the global temperature is rising up to 2.6 degrees, levels of wealth in Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand would drop almost by half compared with a world with no climate change. The economy of Indonesia would be 40 percent smaller. India’s would be 35 percent smaller.

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Climate Change Could Cut World Economy by $23 Trillion in 2050, Insurance Giant Warns (Published 2021)

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Poor nations would be particularly hard hit, but few would escape, Swiss Re said. The findings could influence how the industry prices insurance and invests its mammoth portfolios.

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Mark      Extinction risk from climate change

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Mark      Extinction risk from climate change

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As the climate warms, more species are on the brink of extinction. Increased temperatures make their original habitat uninhabitable and gradually die out. As people emit more carbon dioxide, the ocean is gradually acidifying. This disrupted some pH-sensitive ecosystems and led to the extinction of some organisms.

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Extinction risk from climate change - Wikipedia

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The extinction risk of climate change is the risk of species becoming extinct due to the effects of climate change. Climate change is the long-term conversion of temperature and average weather patterns.[2] Currently, 19% of species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species are already being impact…

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Polar bear population decline a wake up call for climate change action - 

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Polar bear population decline a wake up call for climate change action - 

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Climate change is the main threat facing polar bears. There is around a 40% drop in the Polar Bear population in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Territories. This is because of melting sea ice due to climate change. This is a huge impact on the Polar bears because they rely on the sea ice to hunt seals which is one of their main food sources, breed and rest. Since they are losing their habitat and not gathering enough nutrition puts them at risk of extinction.  - Alyssa

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Forty percent. That's the stunning population loss for polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea. The news comes from a new study linking the dramatic decline in this polar bear subpopulation in northeast Alaska and Canada to a loss of sea ice due to climate change.

How does climate change affect polar bears so dramatically? Polar bears rely on sea ice to access the seals that are their primary source of food as well as to rest and breed. With less sea ice every year, polar bears and many other ice-dependent creatures are at risk.

Today's study, published in Ecological Applications, analyzed data on polar bears in northeast Alaska and the Northwest Territories and documented a 40 percent population loss between 2001-2010 from 1,500 to 900 bears.
An urgent need to address climate change
Climate change is the main threat facing polar bears. But we also know the effects are being seen around the world. Now is the time we must speak up and demand global action.

"This is a clear warning sign of the impact a warming Arctic has on ice-dependent species like the polar bear," said Dr. Pete Ewins, WWF's Senior Species Officer in Canada. "Given this subpopulation is at the edge of the range, it's no surprise to see this happening so soon."

Added Margaret Williams, Managing Director of WWF's Arctic Program, "Here are concrete numbers to show us that the impacts of climate change are happening now. We need to change course if we want to stop further habitat loss and ensure resilient wildlife populations, both in the Arctic and around the world."

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Polar bear population decline a wake up call for climate change action

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Forty percent. That's the stunning population loss for polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea. The news comes from a new study linking the dramatic decline in this polar bear subpopulation in northeast Alaska and Canada to a loss of sea ice due to climate change.

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Ocean acidification | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (noaa.gov)

Within the 200 years, the ocean's pH level has increased by 0.1 units. This means a 30% increase in acidity. Since the ocean dissolves 30% of the atmosphere's CO₂, and CO₂ is acidic, it causes the oceans to become more acidic. This means that shell-builders, such as oysters and corals, can't build their shells as well, which causes them harm.

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Climate change and California drought in the 21st century (Remi)

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Climate change and California drought in the 21st century (Remi)

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https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1503667112
In the last few years, California has been experiencing extreme drought. There has been a lack of precipitation and lack of runoff in water basins. There are concerns if California can keep up with with water demand for industrial use. Climate change is strengthening atmospheric circulation which is impacting the severity droughts.

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Climate change and California drought in the 21st century | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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Climate change and California drought in the 21st century

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Climate Change effecting floods - Carson

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Climate Change effecting floods - Carson

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Climate change is having a very interesting effect on floods. Climate change has undoubtedly intensified heavy precipitation events, but, unexpectedly, there has been no corresponding increase in flood events. As the climate warms, higher rates of evaporation cause soils to dry out more rapidly. drier soils may be able to absorb most of the rainfall. This reduces the smaller river flood events. With larger flood events, that initial soil moisture matters less “because there’s so much water that the soil wouldn’t be able to absorb all of it, anyway,” This type of flooding is increasing due to ocean levels rising.
https://www.nytimes.com/article/flooding-climate-change.html

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Ocean Acidification occurs when the concentration of hydrogen ions increases and thus, lowers the pH of the water. Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human-driven actions means there is more CO₂ being absorbed by the oceans (~30%) and thus, more hydrogen ions in the water. pH scale is logarithmic, therefore pH of 3 is 10x more acidic then pH of 4 and -0.1 in pH=+28% in acidity. It's predicted that the oceans' pH will be 7.8 by the end of the century, which will put the aquatic ecosystems, industries, and food webs at risk

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Due to the increase in temperatures the sea levels start rising due to the glaciers and ice sheets that are on land. If sea levels keep rising it affects people around the world living by the coast where people will need to migrate more inland also destroying habitats of animals as well.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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98 (± 4.0) mm

This is the "uncertainty margin," or the range from the mean (average) within which there is a high probability that the true number resides. For example, when we say global sea level has risen 101 mm +/- 4 mm, the true value has a high probability of being between 97 and 105 mm. The uncertainty margin exists both because of sea level variability (sea level above the first point in the time series) in the ocean and the accuracy with which we measure the individual values.

Key Takeaway:

Global sea levels are rising as a result of human-caused global warming, with recent rates being unprecedented over the past 2,500-plus years.

Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers, and the expansion of seawater as it warms. The first graph tracks the change in global sea level since 1993, as observed by satellites.

The second graph, which is from coastal tide gauge and satellite data, shows how much sea level changed from about 1900 to 2018. Items with pluses (+) are factors that cause global sea level to increase, while minuses (-) are what cause sea level to decrease. These items are displayed at the time they were affecting sea level.

The data shown are the latest available, with a four- to five-month delay needed for processing.

* You now need to create an Earthdata account to access NASA's sea level data. Register here for free. Once logged in, click the "download data" button on this page to access the data.
NASA Sea Level Change

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. Current news and data streams about global warming and climate change from NASA.

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Infectious diseases & insect-borne diseases will be worsened by global warming esp in warm areas. Warmth means more mosquito & it has contributed to the spread of many diseases like malaria.
Heatwaves are becoming more common & in areas not equipped to withstand high heat, heatstrokes will become more common & infrastructure is also impacted.
Agriculture will become less productive which also impacts warmer, dryer areas more- resulting in water and food shortages, for example.
Those with asthma/respiratory/heart diseases will have symptoms worsen due to heat & more ozone which damages lungs. The heart will work harder to keep body cool.

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Climate Change causing more droughts (matilda)

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Climate Change causing more droughts (matilda)

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Climate change is causing more frequent and severe droughts. NASA satellites provide data about water availability to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which helps farmers prepare for droughts, and to help determine where and what to feed their livestock.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Sofie Bates,
NASA’s Earth Science News Team

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Drought Makes its Home on the Range – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Climate change is making droughts more frequent, severe, and pervasive. NASA satellites provide data about water availability to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which helps farmers prepare for drought, determining where and what to feed their livestock.

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Global temperatures are warming, sea levels are rising

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Global temperatures are warming, sea levels are rising

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Landy

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Sea level has risen 8-9 inches since 1880, and the rate is accelerating thanks to glacier and ice sheet melt.

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The melting of glaciers and seas (Bella)

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The melting of glaciers and seas (Bella)

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https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/why-are-glaciers-and-sea-ice-melting

Glaciers are important because they support the planet's life systems and influence our everyday lives. Sea ice forms and melts in the ocean but glaciers are formed on land. Glaciers melt because water is stored on land, the runoffs which increases the amount of water in the ocean and contributes to global sea level rise. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions have raised temperatures higher and glaciers are rapidly melting along with the sea and retreating on land. This has a negative effect as this adds to sea level rises.

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Since the early 1900s, many glaciers around the world have been rapidly melting.

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Climate change is causing hurricanes to become more intense (dom)

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Climate change is causing hurricanes to become more intense (dom)

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Human-caused climate change is increasing both the maximum intensity that a storm can achieve and the rate at which a storm reaches its maximum intensity. Typhoon Noru and Hurricane Ian are both good examples of this.

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Climate change is causing hurricanes to intensify faster than ever | CNN

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The climate crisis is pushing ocean temperatures higher and laying the groundwork for tropical storms to explode at breakneck pace into deadly major hurricanes.

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The article talk about the causes and consequences of forest fire, and talk about the relation between them

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Cristina Aponte A D , William J. de Groot B and B. Mike Wotton C

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

A School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne, 500 Yarra Boulevard, Richmond, Vic. 3121, Australia.

B Natural Resources Canada - Canadian Forest Service, Great Lakes Forestry Centre, 1219 Queen Street East, Sault Ste. Marie, ON P6A 2E5, Canada.

C Natural Resources Canada - Canadian Forest Service, Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto, 33 Willcocks Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3B3, Canada.

D Corresponding author. Email: caponte@unimelb.edu.au

International Journal of Wildland Fire 25(8) i-ii https://doi.org/10.1071/WFv25n8_FO
Published: 29 July 2016

Fire is, in many cases, an essential ecosystem component that ensures the sustainability of its processes and communities. Since its emergence, fire has played a key role as an environmental filter, selecting for species and their traits, and shaping ecosystems' communities. However, not all fires are the same and ecosystems exposed to fire regimes out of their historical range of variability might become vulnerable and suffer irreversible changes.

During the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) World Congress held in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States (5-11 October 2014), two technical sessions - 'Forests, fire and climate change dynamics' and 'Managing forests for fire in a changing climate' - addressed the interactions between climate change and forest fire regimes, their ecological impacts and consequences, and the role of landscape management to mitigate those impacts. This special section brings together papers presented during those technical sessions and assembles studies by scholars from North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. It is a reflection of the relevance of the fire and climate change interactions worldwide.

The papers in this section focus on three main themes that emerged during the sessions. First, fire regimes are changing as a result of changes in climate conditions. Second, changes in fire regimes may have significant ecological consequences because the newly emerged regimes could affect the ecosystem's ability to recover and provide services. Third, there is an opportunity for land management to mitigate these impacts, either by limiting changes in fire regime or by maintaining and enhancing landscape resilience.

Fire regimes are determined by climate-weather, vegetation and direct human influence ( Flannigan et al. 2009), with climate being recognised as a major determinant of fire patterns on a global scale ( Marlon et al. 2008). Fire frequency and intensity, two attributes commonly used to describe fire regimes, are predicted to increase, at least in the medium-term, in areas where climate change will increase aridity, leading to new fire regimes ( Flannigan et al. 2009). Several mechanisms underpin this link between climate change and the emergence of new fire regimes, including increases in fuel availability. Krasovskii et al. (2016) evaluate the effect of including a function reflecting fuel moisture in a mechanistic fire modelling algorithm employed to reproduce burned areas at a country scale for historical climate. Accounting for fuel moisture resulted in a dramatic improvement in accuracy of modelled burned areas for a range of European countries. The results point to the potential consequences that changes in fuel moisture, as a result of changing climate and weather conditions, may have on fire patterns ( Tian et al. 2014).

Another important interaction between climate and fire regimes comes from anticipated changes in fuel loads. Ruthrof et al. (2016) address the idea that changes in forest structure resulting from a climate induced die-off could lead to subsequent changes in fire behaviour. In their paper, the authors quantify changes in fuel loads and understorey microclimate following a forest die-off in south-western Australia. Their results indicate that the measured increases in dead wood mass and increased near-ground solar radiation associated with the die-off could lead to increases in fire spread of up to 30%. This is a striking finding given the greater number of die-off events from increasing drought in many regions of the world ( Allen et al. 2015)

Impacts on ecosystems' species composition and functioning are expected as new fire regimes approximate to the extremes of the historical range of variability that current ecosystems have evolved within. In their review, Fairman et al. (2016) analyse the impacts of increasing wildfire frequency on temperate forests, using the fire tolerant (resprouter) and fire sensitive (obligate seeder) eucalypt forests of south-eastern Australia as a case study. The authors review historical and recent evidence that suggests that recurrent wildfires could lead to a shift from fire sensitive (obligate seeder) forest to non-forest state if fire intervals are shorter than the species' juvenile period. Thought-provoking is their analysis on the impacts of increased fire frequency on fire tolerant resprouter forests, which points to potential changes in forest structure resulting from increased tree mortality and reduced recruitment. Nevertheless, some ecosystems may show higher resilience to fire frequency in terms of species composition. For example, Chick et al. (2016) analyse the diversity and functional composition of the soil seedbank of a heathland in south-eastern Australia. Their findings suggest that the richness and functional diversity of the propagules in the soil seedbank did not change with time since fire. Therefore, it is possible that in these fire-prone and fire-dependent systems, recurrent fires will not have a negative impact on the belowground diversity reservoir.

As an ecosystem's species composition and structure change in response to new fire regimes, so does its ability to provide services and values. Cai and Yang (2016) explore the link between high-severity fires, which are predicted to increase under climate change, and forest aboveground productivity via shifts in stand structure in a boreal forest in north-eastern China. Their results show that, a decade after a stand-replacing fire, forest stands that had been burned with high severity had significantly lower forest regeneration net primary productivity than those burned with low severity. This difference was a result of both a lower tree sapling density and understorey vegetation abundance in the high-severity areas. The authors suggest that a change in fire regime towards high-severity fires could result in a shift in forest structure, which may influence future forests' capacity to sequester carbon.

Land management can contribute to mitigating the impacts of emergent fire regimes on ecosystems ( Shive et al. 2014). In a modelling exercise comparing wildfire scenarios with and without fuel treatments, Elliot et al. (2016) found a significant reduction in post-fire erosion and runoff, and therefore an increase in the forest's ability to provide clean water, when fuel reduction treatments were applied in a forested watershed in California, USA. This mitigation effect was related to a reduction in the fire probability and intensity that resulted from reducing the amount and type of fuel available for a wildfire.

The contributions in this special section offer a contrast in approaches and concepts, and illustrate the importance of addressing the uncertainties around the emergence of new fire regimes from multiple perspectives: the causes, the consequences and the management alternatives. We hope that these studies will prompt further work and evaluation of the problem of forest fires in a changing climate.

References

Allen CD, Breshears DD, McDowell NG (2015) On underestimation of global vulnerability to tree mortality and forest die-off from hotter drought in the Anthropocene. Ecosphere 6, 129
| Crossref | Google Scholar |

Cai W, Yang J (2016) High severity fire reduces early successional boreal larch forest aboveground productivity by shifting stand density in northeastern China. International Journal of Wildland Fire 27, 861-875.
| Crossref | Google Scholar |

Chick MP, Cohn JS, Nitschke CR, York A (2016) Lack of soil seedbank change with time since fire: relevance to seed supply after prescribed burns. International Journal of Wildland Fire 27, 849-860.
| Crossref | Google Scholar |

Elliot W, Miller M, Enstice N (2016) Targeting forest management through fire and erosion modelling. International Journal of Wildland Fire 27, 876-887.
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Connect with IJWF

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international association of wildland fire

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Forest fires and climate change: causes, consequences and management options

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
International Journal of Wildland Fire publishes papers on the principles of fire as a process, on its ecological impact at the stand level and the landscape level, modelling fire and its effects, or presenting information on how to effectively and efficiently manage fire