Citation

Fill JM, Crandall RM. Glob. Chang. Biol. 2020; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/gcb.15457

PMID

33241651

Abstract

Regional fire regimes, as well as their effects, are influenced by precipitation patterns, including amount and variability. Terando et al. (2020) disagreed that there is precipitation seasonality in the southeastern United States outside of Peninsular Florida. We caution that using cumulative rainfall anomaly (CRA) amplitude and its climatological link to wildfire risk should not be the sole basis for defining meaningful precipitation seasonality in the region. Periods of increasing and decreasing rainfall have implications not only for wildfire risk (via fuel moisture patterns) and prescribed fire decision-making, but also for vegetation and wildlife ecology (e.g., Chandler et al. 2017). Moreover, Terando et al. (2020)'s conclusion resulted from 1) incorrect attempts to replicate Fill et al. (2019)'s CRA analyses and 2) use of the Linveh gridded climatological dataset, which inflates wet-day frequency (Livneh 2019).

Language: en

Keywords

fire ecology; prescribed fire; rainfall; seasonality; wildfire