Cooperative Agreement for CESU-affiliated Partner with Rocky Mountain Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU)

U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Powell Center is offering a funding opportunity for research on “Synthesis of the new North American tree-ring fire-scar network: using past and present fire-climate relationships to improve projections of future wildfire.” The project will address how climate change will drive future fire potential on the continent. Researchers are expected to synthesize the North American fire scar network and combine it with modern fire records to create a multi-century record of fire across North America. Recent advances in paleoclimate methods and the continental-scale network of tree-ring chronologies are expected to be used to reconstruct seasonal climate variables tailored to better understand variability in climate drivers of fire. Specific approaches are expected to include: 1) multi-century spatio-temporal dynamics of fire-climate relationships across North America; 2) climate drivers of changing synchrony of wildfire (e.g., widespread fire years); 3) cyclical properties of fire occurrence that can provide predictive capacity, including relationships with ocean-atmosphere oscillations (e.g., El Nino/Southern Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation); and 4) combining historical and modern fire-climate relationships to project future wildfire potential at regional to continental scales.