Mid-21st century simulated burn probability projections for moist temperate forests of the Pacific Northwest

Spatial wildfire simulations were conducted for the Westside forests of the Pacific Northwest using the "Large-Fire Simulator", FSim, to study potential changes in fire regimes between a contemporary baseline simulation period (1992-2020), and a projected mid-21st century simulation period (2035-2064) based on projected climate change derived from 12 different global climate models (GCMs). Outputs include 270 meter resolution rasters of burn probability (annual chance of a pixel burning), individually for each of 5 Westside pyromes: Olympics and Puget Lowlands; Washington North Cascades; Washington West Cascades; Oregon West Cascades; and Oregon Coast Range. FSim generates tens of thousands of hypothetical fire years (January 1 - December 31) using daily weather generation, fire growth, and fire suppression algorithms to model fire occurrence and spread. Contemporary baseline (1992-2020) FSim runs were conducted using observed weather records from a Remote Automatic Weather Stations (RAWS) in each pyrome over the 1992-2020 period, and future mid-21st century weather was drawn from 12 individual GCM projections of future climate for each pyrome.
Simulations were conducted as part of the Pacific Northwest Research Station's Westside Wildfire Research Initiative to better understand how climate change may shift fire regimes in the moist, temperate forests of the Westside, characterized as the land west of the Cascade Crest and north of the Siskiyou Mountains.
For a comprehensive description of model calibration, framework, and results, please refer to the companion journal article (Dye et al. 2024). Data were published on 02/09/2024. Minor metadata updates were made on 06/05/2024.