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The extent to which the apparent increase in wildfire incidence and burn area in California from 1990 to 2006 is affected by population and temperature increases is examined. Using generalized linear models with random effects, we focus on the estimated impacts of increases in mean daily temperatures and populations in different counties on wildfire in those counties, after essentially controlling for the overall differences between counties in their overall mean temperatures and populations. We find that temperature increase appears to have a significant positive impact on both total burn area and number of observed wildfires. Population growth appears to have a much less pronounced impact on total burn area than do annual temperature increases, and population growth appears to be negatively correlated with the total number of observed wildfires. These effects are especially pronounced in the winter season and in Southern California counties. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earthquake focal mechanism estimates have been posited to have predictive value for forecasting future seismicity. In particular, for strike‐slip earthquakes, aftershocks should occur roughly along the estimated mainshock strike. However, the errors in such estimated strike angles are considerable. We compare the degree to which estimated strike angles forecast the direction of future seismicity around a given earthquake with that of uniformly distributed angles and with strike angles estimated based on previous seismicity. The fit of nonparametrically estimated Hawkes models using the estimated strike angle that best fits the post‐mainshock set of events for each mainshock is compared with that of corresponding models that exclude these estimates. Strike angle estimates are shown to have marginal predictive value for forecasting the direction of future seismicity but no more than the better fitting of a uniformly distributed angle and its complement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]