Jon Wang (he/him)
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jonwang.bsky.social
Jon Wang (he/him)
@jonwang.bsky.social
1.1K followers 1.7K following 72 posts
Queer, Asian-American ecologist interested in global change. Wildfires, carbon, and land cover with remote sensing and machine learning. Leads the Dynamic Carbon and Ecosystems lab (www.dycelab.net) at the University of Utah.
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jonwang.bsky.social
Put me in!
January 17, 2025 at 6:45 AM
jonwang.bsky.social
Put me in part 2!
November 19, 2024 at 2:59 AM
jonwang.bsky.social
Many thanks to collaborators at University of California, Irvine's Dept of Earth System Science who helped guide this study and the University of Utah School of Biological Sciences for the support! Not sure who is on the bsky yet. 7/7
November 17, 2024 at 8:31 PM
jonwang.bsky.social
Categories of fire severity (high vs low) are hard to interpret, and might miss climate trends. Remote sensing advances are revealing nuance across ecoregions (big expansion of fire in dense northern forests!). Hope this can improve wildfires observation, forest management, and ecosystem models! 6/7
Two maps of California, with varying shades of green indicating the amount of tree cover in each area. Burned areas indicated in orange for the first decade, 1986-1996, on the left and the last decade, 2011-2021, on the right. Fires are present, but modest in area, on the left. Fires are much larger in extent on the right, particularly in the northern forests.
November 17, 2024 at 8:31 PM
jonwang.bsky.social
Using a simple model of regional tree loss using burned area, fire severity, and forest exposure, we show that 47% (nearly half!) of observed tree losses can be attributed to increasing trends in fire severity and forest exposure. Climate warming will exacerbate this. 5/7
Line graph showing time on the x axis: year, 1985-2021 and cumulative tree loss in fire on the y axis. Lines and show the cumulative tree loss in modeling scenarios from 1985-2021 based on several scenarios. Black lines show the observed losses, reaching about 13,000 kilometers squared. The purple line represents a model scenario where fire severity is held constant, and it reaches about 10,000 kilometers squared. The red line shows the scenario where forest exposure is held constant, reaching about 8500 kilometers squared. The blue line shows the scenario where fire severity and forest exposure are held constant, and only burned area increases. It ends around 7500 kilometers squared.
November 17, 2024 at 8:31 PM
jonwang.bsky.social
Increased forest exposure suggests more dense forests are vulnerable to severe wildfire. In the last decade, wildfire moved in climate space, impacting forests adapted to moister, cooler environments that might have resisted disturbance. 4/7
Graph showing summer temperature on the x-axis and precipitation on the y-axis. Each climate bin is colored with the average tree cover (grey to green, 0 to 80%) occupying that part of climate space in California. Black points indicate the location in climate space of fires in the first decade. Blue indicates the same for the middle decade, and red for the last. Large points show the decadal average. The large blue and black points in are clustered around 20 degrees C and 750 mm precipitation. The large red point (last decade) is located at about 18 degrees C and 850 mm precipitation.
November 17, 2024 at 8:31 PM
jonwang.bsky.social
Average fire severity and forest exposure rose by 30% and 41%, respectively, from 1985-2021. The average tree cover loss per burned area used to be 20%, but recently it has been 34%, on average (+70%!). Increased burned area drives most tree loss, but is not the sole factor! 3/7
Four panels. First panel: line graph with red line showing increasing burned area, black line showing increasing tree cover loss from 1985-2021. Second panel: Average forest exposure (as points) and standard deviation (as lines) increasing steadily from 1985-2021. Third Panel: Average fire severity and standard deviation (again, points and lines) increasing steadily over 1985-2021. Fourth panel: the average and standard deviation of the combined effect of forest exposure and fire severity (tree cover loss), again as points and lines, showing steady increases from 1985-2021.
November 17, 2024 at 8:31 PM
jonwang.bsky.social
We used remotely sensed fractional veg cover and disturbance data to quantify forest exposure (how densely treed were burned areas) and fire severity (relative tree loss) in the average wildfire. Disturbance data: doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CVTNLY Veg data: doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KMBYYM 2/7
November 17, 2024 at 8:31 PM
jonwang.bsky.social
My first field work experience was in a bog! We ate wild huckleberries the whole time.
November 16, 2024 at 3:00 AM
jonwang.bsky.social
Bogs!!
November 15, 2024 at 3:07 AM
jonwang.bsky.social
Neat!! Thanks for putting this together.
November 9, 2024 at 8:19 PM
jonwang.bsky.social
this week!
November 16, 2024 at 8:55 AM
jonwang.bsky.social
n/n
November 16, 2024 at 9:58 AM
jonwang.bsky.social
By the way, the vegetation and disturbance datasets are publicly available.
Fractional vegetation cover (tree shrub herb bare), 1985-2021, at 30 m resolution: <a href="http://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KMBYYM." class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link="bsky">http://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KMBYYM.
Disturbance type, also 1985-2021 and 30 m resolution: <a href="http://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CVTNLY..." class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400 no-card-link" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link="bsky">http://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CVTNLY...
Error: DOI Not Found
doi.org
November 16, 2024 at 9:49 AM