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Registration Now Open for TRBN Annual Conference 2024
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Join us in Chattanooga for the 2024 Tennessee River Basin Annual Conference.
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Registration Now Open | TRBN's 2021 Annual Meeting (August 10-11th)
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Join us for the Tennessee River Basin Network's Annual Meeting
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Registration Open | TRBN Annual Conference | August 24-25, Knoxville TN
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CONNECT and NETWORK with your peers working to safeguard the Tennessee River Basin's aquatic and human life!
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Rego et al 2002.pdf
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PEK-RIC
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Rehder 1949.pdf
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PEK-RIC
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Reiter, Mark
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Relationship between fire, climate oscillations, and drought in British Columbia, Canada, 1920–2000
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Climate oscillations such as El Nin ̃o–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) are known to affect temperature and precipitation regimes and fire in different regions of the world. Understanding the relationships between climate oscillations, drought, and area burned in the past is required for anticipating potential impacts of regional climate change and for effective wildfire-hazard management. These relationships have been investigated for British Columbia (BC), Canada, either as part of national studies with coarse spatial resolution or for single ecosystems. Because of BC’s complex terrain and strong climatic gradients, an investigation with higher spatial resolution may allow for a spatially complete but differentiated picture. In this study, we analyzed the annual proportion burned– climate oscillation–drought relationships for the province’s 16 Biogeoclimatic Ecosystem Classification (BEC) zones. Analyses are based on a digital, spatially explicit fire database, climate oscillation indices, and monthly precipitation and temperature data with a spatial resolution of 400 m for the period 1920–2000. Results show that (1) fire variability is better related to summer drought than to climate oscillations, and that (2) fire variability is most strongly related to both, climate oscillations and summer drought in southeastern BC. The relationship of area burned and summer drought is strong for lower elevations in western BC as well. The influence of climate oscillations on drought is strongest and most extensive in winter and spring, with higher indices being related to drier conditions. Winter and spring PDO and additive winter and spring PDO ENSO indices show BC’s most extensive significant relationship to fire variability. Western BC is too wet to show a moisture deficit in summer that would increase annual area burned due to teleconnections.
Keywords: area burned, aridity index, Canada, ENSO, PDO, wildfire
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Relationships of Fire and Precipitation Regimes in Temperate Forests of the Eastern United States
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Fire affects virtually all terrestrial ecosystems but occurs more commonly in some than in others. This paper investigates how climate, specifically the moisture regime, influences the flammability of different landscapes in the eastern United States. A previous study of spatial differ- ences in fire regimes across the central Appalachian Mountains suggested that intra-annual precipitation variability influences fire occurrence more strongly than does total annual precipitation. The results presented here support that conclusion. The relationship of fire occurrence to moisture regime is also considered for the entire eastern United States. To do so, mean annual wildfire density and mean annual area burned were calculated for 34 national forests and parks representing the major vegetation and climatic conditions throughout the eastern forests. The relationship between fire activity and two climate variables was analyzed: mean annual moisture balance [precipitation P 2 potential evapotranspiration (PET)] and daily precipitation variability (coefficient of variability for daily precipitation). Fire activity is related to both climate variables but displays a stronger relationship with precipitation vari- ability. The southeastern United States is particularly noteworthy for its high wildfire activity, which is associated with a warm, humid climate and a variable precipitation regime, which promote heavy fuel production and rapid drying of fuels.
KEYWORDS: Wildfire; Fire climatology; Precipitation variability; Climatic variability
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Reliability of Indicators of Decline in Abundance
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Although there are many indicators of endangerment (i.e., whether populations or species meet criteria that justify conservation action), their reliability has rarely been tested. Such indicators may fail to identify that a population or species meets criteria for conservation action (false negative) or may incorrectly show that such criteria have been met (false positive). To quantify the rate of both types of error for 20 com- monly used indicators of declining abundance (threat indicators), we used receiver operating characteristic curves derived from historical (1938–2007) data for 18 sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) populations in the Fraser River, British Columbia, Canada. We retrospectively determined each population’s yearly status (reflected by change in abundance over time) on the basis of each indicator. We then compared that popu- lation’s status in a given year with the status in subsequent years (determined by the magnitude of decline in abundance across those years). For each sockeye population, we calculated how often each indicator of past status matched subsequent status. No single threat indicator provided error-free estimates of status, but indicators that reflected the extent (i.e., magnitude) of past decline in abundance (through comparison of current abundance with some historical baseline abundance) tended to better reflect status in subsequent years than the rate of decline over the previous 3 generations (a widely used indicator). We recommend that when possible, the reliability of various threat indicators be evaluated with empirical analyses before such indicators are used to determine the need for conservation action. These indicators should include estimates from the entire data set to take into account a historical baseline.
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Reminder! TRBN Warrior Award Nominations
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Deadline extended: June 30, 2024.
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