Extreme Fire Spread Events Burn More Severely and Homogenize Postfire Landscapes in the Southwestern United States.

ABSTRACT: Extreme fire spread events rapidly burn large areas with disproportionate impacts on people and ecosystems. Such events are associated with warmer and drier fire seasons and are expected to increase in the future. Our understanding of the landscape outcomes of extreme events is limited, particularly regarding whether they burn more severely or produce spatial patterns less conducive to ecosystem recovery. To assess relationships between fire spread rates and landscape burn severity patterns, we used satellite fire detections to create day-of-burning maps for 623 fires comprising 4267 single-day events within forested ecoregions of the southwestern United States. We related satellite-measured burn severity and a suite of high-severity patch metrics to daily area burned. Extreme fire spread

SUBMITTER: McFarland JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11862873 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature