FireBGCv2 is a highly successful modeling platform that has been designed to iteratively generate fire regimes and ecological dynamics on real world landscapes.

FireBGCv2 is a highly successful modeling platform that has beendesigned to iteratively generate fire regimes and ecological dynamics on real world landscapes. The FireBGCv2 simulation modeling platform contains a powerful mechanistic vegetation succession model, a spatially explicit fire model incorporating ignition, spread, and effects on ecosystem components, and a detailed fuel treatment module, all with stochastic properties implemented in a spatial domain. FireBGCv2 dynamically simulates synergistic and interacting effects of weather and climatology, vegetation growth and succession, disturbance (e.g. wildfire, bark beetles), and land management (e.g. prescribed fire, thinning) on landscape structure and ecosystem processes.

Download current model executable, parameter files, and other information via ftp.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The FireBGCv2 simulation modeling platform is currently used to address six main research areas within the arena of climate-disturbance interactions: 1) exploration of climate-wildfire interactions such as shifting fire regimes and fire severity, disturbance thresholds, and disturbance synergies; 2) effects on ecosystem patterns and processes including vegetation composition, wildlife habitat suitability, forest structure, net primary productivity, and landscape resilience/vulnerability; 3) integration of ecosystem modeling with long-term tree-ring, fire scar, and paleoecological records; 4) effects of climate changes and disturbance processes on landscape carbon dynamics, especially in the context of potential regime shifts; 5) threshold shifts or tipping points, at which relatively small perturbations of forcing variables result in large, abrupt, and long-term changes in ecosystem properties; and 6) potential land management strategies to reduce ecological vulnerability to climate and landscape change. The FireBGCv2 simulation modeling design incorporates climate change scenarios drawn from downscaled Global Circulation Models to define potential future conditions, and simulation landscapes are well-distributed across latitudinal and longitudinal gradients in Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, and Colorado.

Current FireBGCv2 simulation landscapes

PUBLICATIONS

Keane, Robert E.; Loehman, Rachel A.; Holsinger, Lisa M. 2011. The FireBGCv2 landscape fire and succession model: a research simulation platform for exploring fire and vegetation dynamics. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-255. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 137 p. PDF version

Webinar Presentation by Robert Keane, May 26, 2011: Simulating vegetation, fire, and climate dynamics in a northern Rocky Mountain landscape

PROJECT STATUS

Current FireBGCv2 research projects:

CLIME: Quantifying climate- and disturbance-driven shifts in landscape patterns and process across ecological gradients.

Wildlife HSI: Modeling wildlife habitat suitability under potential future climate regimes, with incorporation of potential management strategies to restore or sustain critical habitat.

TIPPING POINTS:Assessing critical climate-driven thresholds in landscape dynamics using spatial simulation modeling: climate change tipping points in fire management.

FIRECLIM:Assessing and adaptively managing wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface for future climate and landuse changes.

PALEOBGC:Linking the past with the future: Reconstruction of historic and prehistoric ecosystem dynamics through integration of fire and forest histories and dynamic ecosystem modeling.

Cross-Model Comparison: Comparison of process scales and climate change drivers among three vegetation-fire simulation modeling platforms: FireBGCv2, MC1, and Climate-FVS.

WildFIRE PIRE - Feedbacks and consequences of altered fire regimes in the face of climate and land-use change in Tasmania, New Zealand, and the western U.S. (http://www.wildfirepire.org/)

HERBIVORY-BGC:Strategic role of large herbivore grazing on succession, fuels, and fire dynamics in a changing climate.

FUNDING ORGANIZATIONS

FireBGCv2 research projects acknowledge funding from the Joint Fire Sciences Program, the National Science Foundation, and Rocky Mountain Research Station. See project pages for more information.