Publications

Perkins, O; Kasoar, M; Voulgarakis, A; Edwards, T; Haas, O; Millington, JDA (2025). The Spatial Distribution and Temporal Drivers of Changing Global Fire Regimes: A Coupled Socio-Ecological Modeling Approach. EARTHS FUTURE, 13(5), e2024EF004770.

Abstract
The limited capacity of fire-enabled vegetation models to represent human influences on fire regimes is a fundamental challenge in fire science. This limitation places a major constraint on our capacity to understand how vegetation fire may change under future scenarios of climate change and socio-economic development. Here, we address this challenge by presenting a novel integration of two process-based models. The first is the Wildfire Human Agency Model (WHAM!), which draws on agent-based approaches to represent anthropogenic fire use and management. The second is JULES-INFERNO, a fire-enabled dynamic global vegetation model, which takes a physically grounded approach to the representation of vegetation-fire dynamics. The combined model enables a coupled socio-ecological simulation of historical burned area. We calibrate the combined model using GFED5 burned area data and perform an independent evaluation using MODIS-based fire radiative power observations. Results suggest that as much as half of all global burned area is generated by managed anthropogenic fires-typically small fires that are lit for, and then spread according to, land user objectives. Furthermore, we demonstrate that including representation of managed anthropogenic fires in a coupled socio-ecological simulation improves understanding of the drivers of unmanaged wildfires. For example, we show how vegetation flammability and landscape fragmentation control inter-annual variability and longer-term change in unmanaged fires. Overall, findings presented here indicate that both socio-economic and climate change will be vital in determining the future trajectory of fire on Earth.

DOI:
10.1029/2024EF004770

ISSN:
2328-4277