1. Fire Severity and Bark Beetle Infestation in California Elizabeth Pascale, Courtney Lewis, and Rebecca Fisher

2. Motivation Climate change altering ecosystem characteristics Suitable habitat for bark beetle increases to encompass more forests in the Western United States Increased fire severity in Western United States

3. California Fires 1998 - 2001

4. California Fires 2002-2005

5. California Fires 2006 - 2007

6. Click below for animation Fires 1998-2007

7. Fire Threat

8. Fire Threat to People

9. Urban Fire Threat

10. Forest Cover

11. Fire Threat vs. Forest Cover

12. Bark Beetle Risk California forest acres at risk (identified in red on the map; risk is defined as 25% or more volume killed) to bark-beetle caused tree mortality over the next 15 years.

13. Bark Beetle vs. Forest Cover

14. Bark Beetle in CA Forests Aerial survey results from 1994-2007 depicting the percent area flown with insect injury and percent of average precipitation throughout California. Source: USDA FS-Forest Health Monitoring Source: www.fs.fed.us/r5/spf/fhp/socal/2008WBBconditions052908.pdf

15. Bark Beetle Acreage San Bernadino: 360,936.98 Los Angeles: 4,356.47 Riverside: 165274.00 San Diego: 80,245.01

16. Bark Beetle vs. Fire Severity of bark beetle induced mortality and its correlation to Fires in 2003.

17. Results In 2003 there is a noticeable correlation between dire severity and bark beetle induced mortality Lack of information to evaluate current or future trends To do so would require more time and more specific data collection

18. Conclusions Focus: Identifying correlation between wildfires and bark beetle infestation in California. Created maps with background information on California –forest cover fire risk, –fire risk near urban area Attempted to map climate change but found the data hard to access. Data for bark beetle infestation/mortality was also very difficult to find, but we were able to find raster data for 2003 bark-beetle related mortality in Southern California and superimpose it over 2003 fire data. Found vector data from the U.S. Census of insect-related tree mortality for 4 Southern counties in 2003 1998-2007 fire data was extracted and isolated to create a different layer for each year (as well as an animation showing the fires) from a table containing data from California fires since as early as 1900. We wanted to show a similar time trend with bark beetle infestation/mortality, but the information is lacking. This might actually explain the state's weak response to bark beetle outbreaks and subsequent fires. We also found data for bark beetle infestation risk.