A global assemblage of regional prescribed burn records — GlobalRx
Alice Hsu, Matthew W. Jones, Jane R Thurgood, Adam J. P. Smith, Rachel Carmenta, John T. Abatzoglou, Liana O. Anderson, Hamish Clarke, Stefan H. Doerr, Paulo M. Fernandes, Crystal A. Kolden, Cristina Santín, Tercia Strydom, Corinne Le Quéré, Davide Ascoli, Marc Castellnou, J. G. Goldammer, Nuno Guiomar, Elena A. Kukavskaya, Éric Rigolot, Veerachai Tanpipat, Morgan Varner, Youhei Yamashita, Johan A. Baard, Ricardo Barreto, Javier Becerra, E. Brunn, Niclas Bergius, J Carlsson, Chad Cheney, Dave J. Druce, A. Elliot, Jay D. Evans, Rodrigo de Moraes Falleiro, Nuria Prat‐Guitart, J. Kevin Hiers, Johannes W. Kaiser, Lisa Macher, Dave Morris, Jane Park, César Robles, Rosa María Román-Cuesta, Gernot Ruecker, Francisco Senra, Lara Steil, Jose Alejandro Lopez Valverde, Emma Zerr
Abstract
Prescribed burning (RxB) is a land management tool used widely for reducing wildfire hazard, restoring biodiversity, and managing natural resources. However, RxB can only be carried out safely and effectively under certain seasonal or weather conditions. Under climate change, shifts in the frequency and timing of these weather conditions are expected but analyses of climate change impacts have been restricted to select few regions partly due to a paucity of RxB records at global scale. Here, we introduce GlobalRx, a dataset including 204,517 RxB records from 1979-2023, covering 16 countries and 209 terrestrial ecoregions. For each record, we add a comprehensive suite of meteorological variables that are regularly used in RxB prescriptions by fire management agencies, such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed. We also characterise the environmental setting of each RxB, such as land cover and protected area status. GlobalRx enables the bioclimatic range of conditions suitable for RxB to be defined regionally, thus unlocking new potential to study shifting opportunities for RxB planning and implementation under future climate.