Effects of fire on North American lake ecosystems #FireAndFury

McCullough, I. M., Cheruvelil, K. S., Lapierre, J., Lottig, N. R., Moritz, M. A., Stachelek, J. and P. A. Soranno. Do lakes feel the burn? Ecological consequences of increasing exposure of lakes to fire in the continental US

Status: In press at Global Change Biology (Apr 2019)

This manuscript:

1. documents increasing exposure of lakes to fire in the continental US
2. reviews past lake-fire research
3. synthesizes research from aquatic, terrestrial, landscape and fire ecology into a novel conceptual model for effects of fire on physical, chemical and biological properties of lakes
4. proposes research priorities for future lake-fire research

lake_fire_history: contains lake-specific fire history files (fire type, area burned, ignition dates)

lake_fire_history_severity: contains lake-specific fire history files by burn severity

baileys_provinces_burned_lakes.csv: lake watershed fires by Bailey's provinces

Burned1500mBuffs.csv: table of lagoslakeids (unique lake IDs) with at least 1 watershed fire, any type

Burned1500mBuffs_Rx.csv: table of lagoslakeids (unique lake IDs) with at least 1 watershed prescribed fire

Burned1500mBuffs_WF.csv: table of lagoslakeids (unique lake IDs) with at least 1 watershed wildfire

fire_area_severity_year: total burn severity in lake watersheds by year (hectares by burn severity class)

states_burned_lakes.csv: lake watershed fires by US state (lower 48; continental US)

baileys_ecoregions:

Baileys_ecoreg_map.mxd: used to create supplemental map of Bailey's provinces

baileys_provinces_propBurned.shp: shapefile of proportion of lakes per Bailey's province with fire

eco_us_province_dissolved.shp: shapefile of Bailey's provinces; see baileys_provinces_burned_lakes.csv for column descriptions
(but note auto-truncation of column names when exported from R using rgdal:writeOGR)

US_states:

lower48.shp: shapefile of lower 48 US states (continental US)

state_prop_lakes_burned.shp: shapefile of proportion of lakes per state with fire; see states_burned_lakes.csv for column
descriptions (but note auto-truncation of column names when exported from R using rgdal:writeOGR)

CompareIWS_toBuffers.R: compare watersheds to 1500m buffer areas based on 51000 lakes in LAGOSNE (Soranno et al. 2017). Compare lake area to 1500 m buffer area for all US lakes in analysis (~137000)

CumulativeWatershedBurnSeverity.R: calculate cumulative burn severity by lake watershed

Fire_by_State_Ecoregion.R: analyzing watershed fire by US state and Bailey's provinces

LakeFires_vs_AllFires.R: analyze recent fire activity in lake watersheds vs. background fire activity in continental US

PercentWatershedBurned.R: executes percent_watershed_burned_cumulative.R (see functions) and produces output shapefile for mapping in ArcGIS

Watershed_FireSeverity.R: executes tabulate_burn_severity.R and Buffer_erase_lagoslakeid.R (see functions) to generate lake- specific fire histories based on burn severity class (ExportedData/lake_fire_history_severity/)

WatershedAreaBurned.R: executes zones_that_burned_all.R to identify lakes with watershed fires. Executes lagoslakeid_fire_history_watershed.R to generate lake-specific fire histories based on fire type (ExportedData/lake_fire_history/). Executes_zones_that_burned_given_year.R to count number of watersheds with different fire types by year. Executes number_fires_by_lake.R to count number of fires by type in individual years. Executes annual_area_burn_firetype.R to calculate annual area burned by fire type in individual years, based on output of lagoslakeid_fire_history_watershed.R.

functions:

annual_area_burn_firetype.R: calculates annual wildfire, prescribed, wildland fire use, unknown type and total area burned from pre-calculated fire histories (output of lagoslakeid_fire_history_watershed.R)

Buffer_erase_lagoslakeid.R: buffers lakes, erases lake area (serving as lake watersheds)

lagoslakeid_fire_history_watershed.R: calculates area burned through time in lake watersheds, uses intersection between fire and watershed polygons (watershed polygons can be substituted by lake buffer polygons)

number_fires_by_lake.R: counts number of fires by lake (lagoslakeid) based on pre-calculated lake-specific fire histories
(output of lagoslakeid_fire_history_watershed.R)

percent_watershed_burned_cumulative.R: calculates % watershed burned by lagoslakeid using pre-calculated data (output of
lagoslakeid_fire_history_watershed.R)

tabulate_burn_severity.R: returns table of hectares and percent of each severity class

zones_that_burned_all.R: determines which lakes (by lagoslakeid) that have experienced fire (any fire type)

zones_that_burned_given_year_fire_type.R: determines how many lakes (by lagoslakeid) that have experienced different fire types (wildfire, prescribed, wildland fire use, unknown)