Download or read book Climate Change Causes a Western Cascades Watershed to Become Less Flammability-limited written by Rebecca Gustine and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change has altered wildfire regimes in the Western United States in the past few decades. Fire season is becoming longer and burned area in the Western Cascades is projected to increase 200-400% above contemporary levels by the end of the century. Such changes in fire regimes can have cascading consequences for human and natural systems, including degradation of downstream water quality. Understanding the potential consequences of an altered fire regime will be necessary for managing forested watersheds to protect highly valued resources, especially high-quality drinking water, with the threat of a wildfire occurrence. In this study, we apply the ecohydrologic model RHESSys, coupled with the fire spread model WMFire and a fire effects model, to investigate how climate change and forest management techniques, such as stand thinning, can affect wildfire regimes in the Cedar River Watershed in Western Washington, which provides drinking water for people in the greater Seattle area. We run multiple simulations with different forest management and future representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios to assess future changes in fire activity due to climate change and the efficacy of management practices for reducing fire severity in this watershed. Both forest management and climate change alter the fire regime in the Cedar River watershed. With climate change, this basin becomes progressively more fuel-limited, which creates fuel conditions that allow thinning to become an effective method for managing wildfire.