5 Conclusion
Bridging local meteorological conditions, vegetation, and anthropogenic
influences to understand fine-scale fire regimes, our identification of
ecoregion flammability thresholds (EFTs) is an essential step in
providing managers and researchers a way to monitor the ongoing shifts
in local fire regimes, as well as anticipate changing fire seasonality.
Our results also highlight precipitation, temperature, and seasonality
as important climatic drivers of EFTs, providing insight into how those
critical thresholds and their association with the local environment can
further shift under anticipated widespread drying trends. Additionally,
our analyses further highlight regional variability in the role fuel
moisture plays with fire – that, for example, an assumed threshold of
between 8 and 12% commonly used in prior research does not work for all
temperate coniferous forests (Figures 2a, 3). We present a dataset of
772 identified EFTs representing critical thresholds with fire for much
of the Earth’s terrestrial surface. Additionally, we identify the
inflection point slope estimate (IPSE), an essential component in
interpreting the EFT as a driver of wildfire. These global data can and
should be used as a steppingstone for understanding and managing fire
regimes at the ecoregion level under continued anthropogenic climate
change and constantly evolving land-use practices. Identifying the
critical EFT as we have done therefore provides an important stage for
future wildfire research.