Fire–Climate Interactions in the Southwest: Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography

Climate-induced changes to fire regimes have cascading effects on ecosystem characteristics. Evidence from forested ecosystems in the western United States suggests that interactions between climate and fire will have lasting effects that alter the ecosystem services and values historically provisioned by these landscapes, especially in the Southwest. A diverse science–management partnership, Southwest Fire-Climate Interactions in Montane Ecosystems (Southwest FireCLIME), was formed to evaluate how fire regimes, fuels, and fire effects will shift across landscapes in the Southwest as climate changes. Here we present the first phase of work by the team and collaborators: an extensive literature search of climate, fire, and vegetation (fuel) dynamics, and the resulting Southwest FireCLIME annotated bibliography. The bibliography contains 200 of the most contemporary and foundational papers related to climate change effects on fire regimes, fuels, and ecosystems from or encompassing the southwestern United States. Most papers focus on forested ecosystems at local and regional scales and a smaller number of articles cover multiple ecosystem types, including nonforested (desert, grassland, scrub, or shrubland) ecosystems, at a global, regional, or local scale. The unique element of this bibliography is that every entry is tagged with 1 or more of 48 “linkages” between climate, fire regime, and ecosystem effects variables identified by the Southwest FireCLIME team. Most studies dealing specifically with climate–fire interactions consider the impacts of drought; others consider changing temperature, relative humidity, or vapor pressure deficit. Collectively, this information can fulfill managers’ and researchers’ needs for a comprehensive reference on changing conditions.