4.5.4 Future Firescape: Worldwide 

“substantial and rapid shifts are projected for future fire activity across vast portions of the globe” Mortiz et al, 2012.

Whether mean surface temperatures rise a little or a lot the impact thereof will be spatially and temporally distributed. Having triangulated data on climatic, vegetative, and ignition patterns across several world regions, modelling by Moritz et al produced mixed results for the near-term fire trajectories of 50% of terrestrial landscapes, but a “pronounced” increase in the period 2070 – 2099 (2012, p.15). Fire, following its fuel sources, is projected to increase at mid-to-high latitudes, as forests, responding to climate change, shift polewards (Ibid), thus aligning unto the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period scenario, as referenced above. However, wherever the three sides of the fire triangle meet in “biomass-rich areas”, fire probabilities will increase whereupon fire weather becomes more frequent (Ibid). Conversely, water-stress induced regime shifts [i.e. desertification] will reduce fire probabilities and change fire behaviour in some regions. 

Both in the near and far-term future, the biome types discussed in this study [Mediterranean forests and shrublands, and temperate conifer forests] are anticipated to incur “increased fire probability across most of their area” (Ibid. p.16). Recent fire activity in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, India, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Canada, and Russia, amongst other regions (Leonard, 2016; Gaworecki, 2016; de Mello, 2016; Gillis and Fountain, 2016; Boren, 2016; Upadhyay, 2016; Kelly et al, 2017; Jones, 2017; Watts, 2017; World Land Trust, 2017) mirror the trajectories as were anticipated. Analysis by Bowman et al (2017) anticipates a 20-50% increase in the number of days “conducive to extreme” wildfires in regions including the Mediterranean Basin and Southern Hemisphere in the near- term future. 

>Continue to Chapter 4.5.5 here.

The thesis is also available in PDF format, downloadable in several parts on Academia and Researchgate.

Note that figures have been removed from the digital version hosted on this site, but are included in the PDFs available at the links above.

Citation: Sterry, M. L., (2018) Panarchistic Architecture: Building Wildland-Urban Interface Resilience to Wildfire through Design Thinking, Practice and Building Codes Modelled on Ecological Systems Theory. PhD Thesis, Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research [AVATAR] group, University of Greenwich, London.