Synthesis of Knowledge: Fire History and Climate Change

This report synthesizes available fire history and climate change scientific knowledge to aid managers with fire decisions in the face of ongoing 21st century climate change. Fire history and climate change (FHCC) have been ongoing for over 400 million years of Earth history, but increasing human influences during the Holocene Epoch have changed both climate and fire regimes. We describe basic concepts of climate science and explain the causes of accelerating 21st century climate change. Fire regimes and ecosystem classifications serve to unify ecological and climate factors influencing fire, and are useful for applying fire history and climate change information to specific ecosystems. Variable and changing patterns of climate-fire interaction occur over different time and space scales that shape use of FHCC knowledge. Ecosystem differences in fire regimes, climate change, and available fire history mean that using an ecosystem-specific view will be beneficial when applying FHCC knowledge

Overview of the Kepler Science Processing Pipeline

The Kepler Mission Science Operations Center (SOC) performs several critical functions including managing the ~156,000 target stars, associated target tables, science data compression tables and parameters, as well as processing the raw photometric data downlinked from the spacecraft each month. The raw data are first calibrated at the pixel level to correct for bias, smear induced by a shutterless readout, and other detector and electronic effects. A background sky flux is estimated from ~4500 pixels on each of the 84 CCD readout channels, and simple aperture photometry is performed on an optimal aperture for each star. Ancillary engineering data and diagnostic information extracted from the science data are used to remove systematic errors in the flux time series that are correlated with these data prior to searching for signatures of transiting planets with a wavelet-based, adaptive matched filter. Stars with signatures exceeding 7.1 sigma are subjected to a suite of statistical tests including an examination of each star's centroid motion to reject false positives caused by background eclipsing binaries. Physical parameters for each planetary candidate are fitted to the transit signature, and signatures of additional transiting planets are sought in the residual light curve. The pipeline is operational, finding planetary signatures and providing robust eliminations of false positives.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Fire history, fire regimes, and climate change – integrating information for management and planning

Background/Question/Methods 
Federal and other natural resource managers in the United States are now required to consider climate change in their planning. Wildland fire is a major component included in many of these planning efforts. Fire is a widespread ecosystem disturbance process that is global in scope with local to regional, event driven, resource and societal impacts. The frequency, severity and extent of Wildland fires are largely a function of interactions between vegetation and atmospheric processes. Fire activity and management costs have increased significantly over the last few decades. There is growing evidence that these increases relate to measured changes in climate variables. Our understanding of fire history, fire regimes, and past interactions between fire and climate has grown substantially in recent years. Fire regimes provide a context for interpreting fire history to facilitate our understanding of fire in relation to climate and other factors, and provide a bridge between ecosystem characteristics and climate change projections. The challenge is to provide managers with placed-based information about fire and climate change, involving multiple scales of atmospheric and ecosystem process interaction, that they can use for planning and communication purposes. 
Results/Conclusions We present results of an on going study that integrates fire history, fire regime, and climate change information in formats designed for use by managers in their climate change planning efforts. A representative group of land managers reviewed our proposed information structure in an interactive workshop setting, and provided recommendations for how to make this information accessible and useful to them. We characterize atmospheric scales of importance to fire as the climate change, climate variability, and event scales. These relate to long-term evolution of vegetation, seasonal to decadal drought, and fire events. We use Bailey's vegetation classification at various ecosystem scales to organize the fire history and fire regime information. Bailey classifications also serve as a bridge to LANDFIRE components, such as the Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC), and as a link to GCM-based climate projections. In addition to reporting overall findings, we present examples of specific place-based information for representative ecosystems in different areas of the United States.
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Synthesis of Knowledge: Fire History and Climate Change

This report synthesizes available fire history climate change scientific knowledge to aid managers with fire decisions in tile face of ongoing 21st Century cIimate change. Fire history and climate change mange (FHCC} have been ongoing for over 400 million years of Earth history, but increasing human influences during tile Holocene epoch have changed both climate and fire regimes. We describe basic concepts of climate science and explain the causes of accelerating 21H Century climate change. Fire regimes and ecosystems classification serve to unify ecological and climate factors influencing fire, and are useful for applying fire history and climate manage information to specific ecosystems. Variable and changing patterns of climate-fire interaction occur over different time and space scales that shape use of FHCC knowledge. Ecosystem differences in fire regimes, climate change and available fire history mean that using an ecosystem specific view will be beneficial when applying FHCC knowledge

Parental Knowledge/Monitoring and Depressive Symptoms During Adolescence: Protective Factor or Spurious Association?

Parental knowledge/monitoring is negatively associated with adolescents' depressive symptoms, suggesting monitoring could be a target for prevention and treatment. However, no study has rigorously addressed the possibility that this association is spurious, leaving the clinical and etiological implications unclear. The goal of this study was to conduct a more rigorous test of whether knowledge/monitoring is causally related to depressive symptoms. 7940 youth (ages 10.5-15.6 years, 49% female) at 21 sites across the U.S. completed measures of parental knowledge/monitoring and their own depressive symptoms at four waves 11-22 weeks apart during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, monitoring and depression were examined in standard, between-family regression models. Second, within-family changes in monitoring and depression between assessments were examined in first differenced regressions. Because the latter models control for stable, between-family differences, they comprise a stronger test of a causal relation. In standard, between-family models, parental monitoring and youths' depressive symptoms were negatively associated (standardized [Formula: see text]= -0.22, 95% CI = [-0.25, -0.20], p < 0.001). In first-differenced, within-family models, the association shrunk by about 55% (standardized [Formula: see text]= -0.10, 95% CI = [-0.12, -0.08], p < 0.001). The magnitude of within-family association remained similar when adjusting for potential time-varying confounders and did not vary significantly by youth sex, age, or history of depressive disorder. Thus, in this community-based sample, much of the prima facie association between parental knowledge/monitoring and youths' depressive symptoms was driven by confounding variables rather than a causal process. Given the evidence to date, a clinical focus on increasing parental knowledge/monitoring should not be expected to produce meaningfully large improvements in youths' depression

Parental knowledge/monitoring and adolescent substance use: A causal relationship?

Many studies have shown that parental knowledge/monitoring is correlated with adolescent substance use, but the association may be confounded by the many preexisting differences between families with low versus high monitoring. We attempted to produce more rigorous evidence for a causal relation using a longitudinal design that took advantage of within-family fluctuations in knowledge/monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe