Download or read book Fire Regimes Spatial and Temporal Variability and Their Effects on Forests written by Yves Bergeron and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2018-04-13 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Fire Regimes: Spatial and Temporal Variability and Their Effects on Forests" that was published in Forests

Download or read book Fire Regimes written by Yves Bergeron and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fire and Climatic Change in Temperate Ecosystems of the Western Americas written by Thomas T. Veblen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-05-10 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both fire and climatic variability have monumental impacts on the dynamics of temperate ecosystems. These impacts can sometimes be extreme or devastating as seen in recent El Nino/La Nina cycles and in uncontrolled fire occurrences. This volume brings together research conducted in western North and South America, areas of a great deal of collaborative work on the influence of people and climate change on fire regimes. In order to give perspective to patterns of change over time, it emphasizes the integration of paleoecological studies with studies of modern ecosystems. Data from a range of spatial scales, from individual plants to communities and ecosystems to landscape and regional levels, are included. Contributions come from fire ecology, paleoecology, biogeography, paleoclimatology, landscape and ecosystem ecology, ecological modeling, forest management, plant community ecology and plant morphology. The book gives a synthetic overview of methods, data and simulation models for evaluating fire regime processes in forests, shrublands and woodlands and assembles case studies of fire, climate and land use histories. The unique approach of this book gives researchers the benefits of a north-south comparison as well as the integration of paleoecological histories, current ecosystem dynamics and modeling of future changes.

Download or read book Fire Regimes of the Southern Appalachian Mountains written by William Flatley and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecologists continue to debate the role of fire in forests of the southern Appalachian Mountains. How does climate influence fire in these humid, temperate forests? Did fire regimes change during the transition from Native American settlement to Euro-American settlement? Are fire regime changes resulting in broad vegetation changes in the forests of eastern North America? I used several approaches to address these questions. First, I used digitized fire perimeter maps from Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Shenandoah National Park for 1930-2009 to characterize spatial and temporal patterns of wildfire by aspect, elevation, and landform. Results demonstrate that fuel moisture is a primary control, with fire occurring most frequently during dry years, in dry regions, and at dry topographic positions. Climate also modifies topographic control, with weaker topographic patterns under drier conditions. Second, I used dendroecological methods to reconstruct historical fire frequency in yellow pine (Pinus, subgenus Diploxylon Koehne) stands at three field sites in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The fire history reconstructions extend from 1700 to 2009, with composite fire return intervals ranging from 2-4 years prior to the fire protection period. The two longest reconstructions record frequent fire during periods of Native American land use. Except for the recent fire protection period, temporal changes in land use did not have a significant impact on fire frequency and there was little discernible influence of climate on past fire occurrence. Third, I sampled vegetation composition in four different stand types along a topographic moisture gradient, including mesic cove, sub-mesic white pine (Pinus strobus L.) hardwood, sub-xeric oak (Quercus L.), and xeric pine forests in an unlogged watershed with a reconstructed fire history. Stand age structures demonstrate changes in establishment following fire exclusion in xeric pine stands, sub-xeric oak stands, and sub-mesic white pine-hardwood stands. Fire-tolerant yellow pines and oaks are being replaced by shade-tolerant, fire sensitive species such as red maple (Acer rubrum L.) and hemlock (Tsuga canadensis L. Carr.). Classification analysis and ordination of species composition in different age classes suggest a trend of successional convergence in the absence of fire with a shift from four to two forest communities. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/148082

Download or read book Ecological Foundations for Fire Management in North American Forest and Shrubland Ecosystems written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This synthesis provides an ecological foundation for management of the diverse ecosystems and fire regimes of North America, based on scientific principles of fire interactions with vegetation, fuels, and biophysical processes. Although a large amount of scientific data on fire exists, most of those data have been collected at small spatial and temporal scales. Thus, it is challenging to develop consistent science-based plans for large spatial and temporal scales where most fire management and planning occur. Understanding the regional geographic context of fire regimes is critical for developing appropriate and sustainable management strategies and policy. The degree to which human intervention has modified fire frequency, intensity, and severity varies greatly among different ecosystems, and must be considered when planning to alter fuel loads or implement restorative treatments. Detailed discussion of six ecosystems--ponderosa pine forest (western North America), chaparral (California), boreal forest (Alaska and Canada), Great Basin sagebrush (intermountain West), pine and pine-hardwood forests (Southern Appalachian Mountains), and longleaf pine (Southeastern United States)-- illustrates the complexity of fire regimes and that fire management requires a clear regional focus that recognizes where conflicts might exist between fire hazard reduction and resource needs. In some systems, such as ponderosa pine, treatments are usually compatible with both fuel reduction and resource needs, whereas in others, such as chaparral, the potential exists for conflicts that need to be closely evaluated. Managing fire regimes in a changing climate and social environment requires a strong scientific basis for developing fire management and policy.

Download or read book Spatio temporal Variability of Wildfires and Their Climate Drivers from Continental to Global Scale written by Maria Zubkova and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fire is a natural component of most ecosystems, and it has effects on vegetation, soil, water, atmospheric composition, and human well-being. Despite increasing interest in interdisciplinary approaches to analyzing global fire activity and the growing body of wildfire research, there are still many gaps and uncertainties in our knowledge. Some come from the lack of understanding of the complex relationships between fire and climate, which is additionally entangled by the strong influence of human activity. This dissertation evaluates the role of environmental context in determining the spatial patterns of fire activity on a large scale. First, the fire-climate relationship was analyzed in terms of the most studied and understood fire metric - the amount of burned area - which was shown to have changed significantly in the last two decades. Most of the recent changes were attributed to the decrease in fire activity in Africa, where the amount of burned area declined by 18.5% between 2002 and 2016. Although humans have a long history of modifying fire activity in Africa, climate factors directly related to biomass productivity and aridity explained about 70% of the changes in burned area in natural land covers, providing evidence that increased terrestrial moisture during 2002-2016 facilitated declines in fire activity in Africa. These results illustrate the strong influence of climate on fire activity and in particular proxy for fuel productivity and fuel dryness. Based on these findings, a framework was proposed for defining and classifying fire regimes (a range of characteristics that describe the fire events in the space-time window). This framework was based on the assumption that fuel productivity and desiccation are the two fundamental processes that limit fire activity, and their combination sets important boundary conditions for key fire regime metrics on a large scale. By testing this approach in Africa and Australia, it was evident that while the amount of rainfall is an important driver of fire through controlling fuel productivity, a variation of rainfall within and between years drives fuel dryness and fire activity especially in Australia, a continent with a strong precipitation gradient. Additionally, among continents, fire metrics vary substantially even within the same biome. These results informed an additional global analysis, where 26 distinct fire regions were identified, not including areas where fire activity is highly modified by human activity. This approach did not only discriminate between regions with significantly different fire activity across a number of biomes but also identified how fire attributes vary under different conditions and what factors constrain modern fire regimes. These findings should help to improve our understanding of fire complexity and its interaction and feedbacks with climate which is essential to assess the potential effect of global climate change on fire regimes.

Download or read book Spatial and Temporal Variation of Fire Regimes in a Mixed Conifer Forest Landscape written by R. M. and A. H. Taylor Beaty and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Spatial and Temporal Variability of Fire Regimes Across the Biodiverse Klamath Siskiyou Ecoregion North California and Southern Oregon USA written by Shelley J. Morton and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wildland Fires and Air Pollution written by Andrzej Bytnerowicz and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2009 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wildland fires are one of the most devastating and terrifying forces of nature. While their effects are mostly destructive they also help with regeneration of forests and other ecosystems. Low-intensity fires clear accumulating biomass reducing risk of catastrophic crown fires and can be used as an effective management tool. This book presents current understanding of wildland fires and air quality as well as their effects on human health, forests and other ecosystems. in the first section of the book the basics of wildland fires and resulting emissions are presented from the perspective of changing global climate, air quality impairment and effects on environmental and human health and security. in the second section, effects of wildland fires on air quality, visibility and human health in various regions of the Earth are discussed. The third section of the book deals with complex issues of the ecological impacts of fires and air pollution in forests and chaparral in North America. The fourth section discusses various management issues facing land and fire managers which are related to wildfires, use of prescribed fires, and air quality. This section also presents various modeling systems used for describing fire dangers and behavior as well as smoke and air pollution predictions applied in the risk assessment analysis. The book concludes with a series of expert recommendations for wildland fire and atmospheric research.

Download or read book Spatial and Temporal Variation in Historical Fire Regimes of the Blue Mountains Oregon and Washington written by Emily K. Heyerdahl and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Emulating Natural Forest Landscape Disturbances written by Ajith H. Perera and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is a natural forest disturbance? How well do we understand natural forest disturbances and how might we emulate them in forest management? What role does emulation play in forest management? Representing a range of geographic perspectives from across Canada and the United States, this book looks at the escalating public debate on the viability of natural disturbance emulation for sustaining forest landscapes from the perspective of policymakers, forestry professionals, academics, and conservationists. This book provides a scientific foundation for justifying the use of and a solid framework for examining the ambiguities inherent in emulating natural forest landscape disturbance. It acknowledges the divergent expectations that practitioners face and offers a balanced view of the promises and challenges associated with applying this emerging forest management paradigm. The first section examines foundational concepts, addressing questions of what emulation involves and what ecological reasoning substantiates it. These include a broad overview, a detailed review of emerging forest management paradigms and their global context, and an examination of the ecological premise for emulating natural disturbance. This section also explores the current understanding of natural disturbance regimes, including the two most prevalent in North America: fire and insects. The second section uses case studies from a wide geographical range to address the characterization of natural disturbances and the development of applied templates for their emulation through forest management. The emphasis on fire regimes in this section reflects the greater focus that has traditionally been placed on understanding and managing fire, compared with other forms of disturbance, and utilizes several viewpoints to address the lessons learned from historical disturbance patterns. Reflecting on current thinking in the field, immediate challenges, and potential directions, the final section moves deeper into the issues of practical applications by exploring the expectations for and feasibility of emulating natural disturbance through forest management.

Download or read book Using BFOLDS to Characterize Fire Regimes written by Wenbin Cui and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forest fires are the result of complex interactions of weather and vegetation and are highly probabilistic. Characterizing forest fire regimes, the synoptic properties of spatio-temporal variability of individual fires, is important for many forest and fire management purposes. BFOLDS 1.0 (Boreal Forest Landscape Dynamics Simulator) simulates forest fires and forest succession for large areas over long periods. Resulting fire regime simulations are emergent properties of many stochastic and spatially explicit model processes as well as user assumptions and input data. Here the authors demonstrate the use of BFOLDS in characterizing a forest fire regime, using a large boreal ecoregion as an example and readily available forest cover and spatial weather data as primary input.--Document.

Download or read book Assessing the Effects of Fire Disturbance on Ecosystems written by Daniel Lee Schmoldt and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1999 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A team of fire scientists & resource managers convened to assess the effects of fire disturbance on ecosystems. Objectives of this workshop were to develop scientific recommendations for future fire research & management activities. These included a series of numerically ranked scientific & managerial questions & responses focusing on (1) links among fire effects, fuels, & climate; (2) fire as a large-scale disturbance; (3) fire-effects modeling structures; & (4) managerial concerns, applications, & decision support. The priority issues & approaches described here provide a template for fire science & fire management programs in the next decade & beyond.

Download or read book Fire Ecology and Management Past Present and Future of US Forested Ecosystems written by Cathryn H. Greenberg and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume presents original scientific research and knowledge synthesis covering the past, present, and potential future fire ecology of major US forest types, with implications for forest management in a changing climate. The editors and authors highlight broad patterns among ecoregions and forest types, as well as detailed information for individual ecoregions, for fire frequencies and severities, fire effects on tree mortality and regeneration, and levels of fire-dependency by plant and animal communities. The foreword addresses emerging ecological and fire management challenges for forests, in relation to sustainable development goals as highlighted in recent government reports. An introductory chapter highlights patterns of variation in frequencies, severities, scales, and spatial patterns of fire across ecoregions and among forested ecosystems across the US in relation to climate, fuels, topography and soils, ignition sources (lightning or anthropogenic), and vegetation. Separate chapters by respected experts delve into the fire ecology of major forest types within US ecoregions, with a focus on the level of plant and animal fire-dependency, and the role of fire in maintaining forest composition and structure. The regional chapters also include discussion of historic natural (lightning-ignited) and anthropogenic (Native American; settlers) fire regimes, current fire regimes as influenced by recent decades of fire suppression and land use history, and fire management in relation to ecosystem integrity and restoration, wildfire threat, and climate change. The summary chapter combines the major points of each chapter, in a synthesis of US-wide fire ecology and forest management into the future. This book provides current, organized, readily accessible information for the conservation community, land managers, scientists, students and educators, and others interested in how fire behavior and effects on structure and composition differ among ecoregions and forest types, and what that means for forest management today and in the future.

Download or read book Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change written by Lindsey Gillson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecosystems today are dynamic and complex, leaving conservationists faced with the paradox of conserving moving targets. New approaches to conservation are now required that aim to conserve ecological function and process, rather than attempt to protect static snapshots of biodiversity. To do this effectively, long-term information on ecosystem variability and resilience is needed. While there is a wealth of such information in palaeoecology, archaeology, and historical ecology, it remains an underused resource by conservation ecologists. In bringing together the disciplines of neo- and palaeoecology and integrating them with conservation biology, this novel text illustrates how an understanding of long-term change in ecosystems can in turn inform and influence their conservation and management in the Anthropocene. By looking at the history of traditional management, climate change, disturbance, and land-use, the book describes how a long-term perspective on landscape change can inform current and pressing conservation questions such as whether elephants should be culled, how best to manage fire, and whether ecosystems can or should be "re-wilded" Biodiversity Conservation and Environmental Change is suitable for senior undergraduate and post-graduate students in conservation ecology, palaeoecology, biodiversity conservation, landscape ecology, environmental change and natural resource management. It will also be of relevance and use to a global market of conservation practitioners, researchers, educators and policy-makers.

Download or read book Temporal and Spatial Variability of Historic Fire Frequency in the Southern Willamette Valley Foothills of Oregon written by Danielle Robbins and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A crossdated fire history was reconstructed for a 1562 km2 area in the southern Willamette foothills of Oregon, using fire scars and tree origin years from twelve sites. The purpose of this study was to determine fire frequency for each site and to quantify temporal and spatial variability of fire frequency. Fire frequency distributions were related to climate history and the patterns of human settlement, and compared with other regional fire histories. Dendrochronological methods were used to assign calendar years to fire scars and pith dates. General Land Office maps and surveyor notes were used to determine site and study area level changes in vegetation and Euro-American land use patterns. Climatic influence on fire over time was determined using superposed epoch analysis. Forty-three fire dates were reconstructed for the 290 year period from 1700 to 1990. The minimum and maximum fire intervals were two years and 191 years; the study area mean fire return interval was 49 years. Over two-thirds of all site level fire intervals were less than 40 years, and less than one-fifth were longer than 80 years. Fire frequency differed between the east and west sides of the Willamette Valley. West side sites experienced more frequent fires on average than the east side sites: 57% of all west side site fire intervals were less than 20 years, while 68% of all east side site fire intervals were less than 40 years. Both human and vegetative factors were potentially influencing the fire regimes of each side of the valley. West side sites were within, or adjacent to, woodland forest cover types and were closer to earlier and more intensive Euro-American settlement. Fire frequency throughout the study area did not change substantially over time. Fire occurred every decade or so, with occasional longer fire intervals, until after 1905, at which time fire occurred roughly every 15 to 20 years until 1979. Unlike other regional fire history studies, this study found no statistically significant differences in the number of fires by time periods of varying land use and climate. When the rule set for defining fire events was modified, fire frequency could be shown to be weakly significantly associated with these time periods. This indicates that methodology can appreciably influence the results of fire history reconstruction. Moreover, the sample size of trees dating from the 1 700s was small, so the estimate of fire frequency for the 1 700s is uncertain. Fire frequency was not related to drought over the whole study period (1700- 1990), but fire was more likely to occur three years following a drought year over the period from 1700 to 1849, whereas after 1850, fire was significantly associated with drought years. Fire occurrence was as expected (but not significantly so) during the period 1700 to 1800, slightly higher than expected (but not significantly) for the period 1800 to 1850, higher than expected (but not significantly) after 1850, and lower than expected (but not significantly) after 1925. Several hypotheses could explain these findings: (1) the relationship between wildfire and drought is different during cooler, wetter periods than warm, dry periods; (2) Native Americans influenced fire during the 1700-1849 period, obscuring the relationship between fire and drought; (3) European settlement of the Willamette Valley in the mid to late 1 800s increased the occurrence of fire and enhanced the effects of a warming climate, and (4) fire suppression after 1920 resulted in a decrease in fire occurrence. More sampling of older stumps in the Willamette Valley foothills would likely lend credibility to the record of fire frequency before 1800 and would increase the sample depth for use in the Superposed Epoch Analysis of the fire-drought relationship. Sampling along transects extending from the foothills into the Cascades and Coast Ranges would foster a better understanding of the spatial scope to which Native American burning influenced forests adjacent to the valley floor.

Download or read book Proceedings of the Symposium on the Ecology and Management of Dead Wood in Western Forests written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 966 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: