[MCN] Real estate policy & fire: Save houses, and wildlife too??

[Lance Olsen]

Syphard, A. D., V. Butsic, A. Bar-Massada, J. E. Keeley, J. A. 
Tracey, and R. N. Fisher. 2016.
Setting priorities for private land conservation in fire-prone 
landscapes: Are fire risk reduction and biodiversity conservation 
competing or compatible objectives?.
Ecology and Society 21(3):2.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-08410-210302

ABSTRACT
Although wildfire plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity 
in many ecosystems, fire management to protect human assets is often 
carried out by different agencies than those tasked for conserving 
biodiversity. In fact, fire risk reduction and biodiversity 
conservation are often viewed as competing objectives. Here we 
explored the role of management through private land conservation and 
asked whether we could identify private land acquisition strategies 
that fulfill the mutual objectives of biodiversity conservation and 
fire risk reduction, or whether the maximization of one objective 
comes at a detriment to the other. Using a fixed budget and number of 
homes slated for development, we simulated 20 years of housing growth 
under alternative conservation selection strategies, and then 
projected the mean risk of fires destroying structures and the area 
and configuration of important habitat types in San Diego County, 
California, USA. We found clear differences in both fire risk 
projections and biodiversity impacts based on the way conservation 
lands are prioritized for selection, but these differences were split 
between two distinct groupings. If no conservation lands were 
purchased, or if purchases were prioritized based on cost or 
likelihood of development, both the projected fire risk and 
biodiversity impacts were much higher than if conservation lands were 
purchased in areas with high fire hazard or high species richness. 
Thus, conserving land focused on either of the two objectives 
resulted in nearly equivalent mutual benefits for both. These 
benefits not only resulted from preventing development in sensitive 
areas, but they were also due to the different housing patterns and 
arrangements that occurred as development was displaced from those 
areas. Although biodiversity conflicts may still arise using other 
fire management strategies, this study shows that mutual objectives 
can be attained through land-use planning in this region. These 
results likely generalize to any place where high species richness 
overlaps with hazardous wildland vegetation.



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What is a flash drought?

Could the Imminent U.S. Heat Wave Trigger a Flash Drought?

By: Bob Henson , 12:36 AM GMT on July 19, 2016

Excerpt

It wasn't too long ago--in 2012--that a promising-looking spring 
morphed into a terrible summer for the U.S. Midwest. A long-term 
drought that began in late 2010 had intensified over the Southern 
Plains in 2011, punishing farmers and ranchers and facilitating the 
loss of roughly 10% of all trees in Texas.

The real shocker was how quickly drought conditions took hold further 
north across the Midwest in the summer of 2012, leading to the most 
widespread U.S. drought conditions since the 1930s. "Nobody called 
that [in advance]," said Mark Svoboda (National Drought Mitigation 
Center). Even NOAA's 30-day and seasonal drought outlooks from June 
2012 failed to predict that month's emergence of drought in the 
Midwest, according to Svoboda.

While long-term drought can emerge simply through a lack of 
precipitation, a flash drought is closely linked to hot summer 
weather. The type of flash drought most often observed in the Midwest 
develops as a torrid air mass sweeps in for a period of a few days to 
several weeks.

At first, the landscape may not be particularly dry, in which case 
large amounts of water vapor flow from vegetation and soils into the 
scorching surface air (as is expected later this week [July 19, 
2016]). If the heat is strong and sustained enough, the landscape 
quickly dries out and a flash drought takes hold.

https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/could-the-imminent-us-heat-wave-trigger-a-flash-drought
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