The talk starts at 12:15.

Please note that due to COVID-19, the participants can watch the streamed talk on Teams with a link (coming soon).

Speaker: Sigrid Jørgensen Bakke

Location: Click here to join the meeting

Title: Identifying dominant drivers of Fennoscandian wildfires and the potential of a data driven prediction model

Abstract: Wildfires are recurrent natural hazards that affect terrestrial ecosystems, the carbon cycle, climate and society. An ignition can lead to a wildfire when there is biomass available for burning, typically in combination with dry and windy conditions. The availability of burnable biomass is itself driven by conditions such as soil moisture, temperature, precipitation, etc. Identifying a selection of dominant controls can ultimately improve predictions and projections of wildfires in both current and future climate. In this study, we apply a supervised learning approach to identify dominant factors determining burned area over Fennoscandia. A monthly 2001-2019 burned area product derived from satellite observations is used as target variable, and multiple hydrometeorological metrics are tested as potential predictors in a random forest model. The derived relationship between wildfires and its compound drivers can further be used to assess the potential changes in such a combination of factors under different climate scenarios using large-ensemble global climate simulations.

Welcome!
Best regards,
Thea Roksvåg and Lars Henry Berge Olsen.