Summer winter precip fire climate ntoes

Check with M. Crimmins to get the latest on instrumental fire-climatology (which could inform the paleo analysis).  Where and when is summer precip important for fire occurrence?


1. multiple linear regression approach - winter precip has the best relationship with fire occurence, but what about the "residuals" (i.e., the years that have high winter precip (based on reconstructions), yet still have fires)?  Maybe there was a monsoon failure (which hopefully shows up as thin LW).


Variables could be # of sites (or trees) recording fire from the SW network + mexican sites if we can get them    - geography would be important so that the precip reconstructions were paired geogrphically with the fire history reconstructions.

Alex A. (in the mex/u.s. border region) had a few years with fires and high winter precip.  I think he found that these years had low summer precip - not sure how he analyzed this (SEA?)


2. Targetting sites (or regions) that might be fuel limited (or have a predominance of warm-season grasses), such that prior-year summer precip might grow grasses that fuel fires in subsequent year (e.g.. Rowe Mesa).  Could use instrumental fire-climatology to focus this approach.