Present, and Future Data

Increased levels of burning in the past 40 years are raising public and scientific con-cern about the relative importance of rising temperatures, climate variability, and human actions including management practices in initiating and supporting recent conflagrations. Enormous fires in Australia, North America, Europe, and Russia since 2000 have resulted in billions of dollars in property damage, loss of life, and threats to human and ecological health. Levels of fire activity are expected to increase in the coming decades in many re-gions as temperatures continue to rise and droughts intensify [Moritz et al., 2012]. Linked disturbances such as bark beetle infestations, nonnative plant invasions, and mass-wasting events have also exacerbated the effects of fire in many ecosystems. Understanding the role of biomass burning in the Earth system and its interactions with human activity requires examining its drivers and consequences over multiple temporal and spatial scales. Given the evidence that biomass burning is increasing [Moritz et al., 2012], several disciplines have joined forces to provide a broader understanding of past fire- climate- human linkages under a range of climate conditions and human population densities. As a result of these efforts, scientists now have the capacity to examine the spatial and temporal changes in biomass burning from local to global and seasonal to millen-nial scales