scholarly journals Mapping fire regimes across time and space: Understanding coarse and fine-scale fire patterns

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penelope Morgan ◽  
Colin C. Hardy ◽  
Thomas W. Swetnam ◽  
Matthew G. Rollins ◽  
Donald G. Long
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Spatial Databases ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Ecological Principles ◽  
Fire Patterns ◽  
Fire Exclusion

This paper was presented at the conference ‘Integrating spatial technologies and ecological principles for a new age in fire management’, Boise, Idaho, USA, June 1999 Maps of fire frequency, severity, size, and pattern are useful for strategically planning fire and natural resource management, assessing risk and ecological conditions, illustrating change in disturbance regimes through time, identifying knowledge gaps, and learning how climate, topography, vegetation, and land use influence fire regimes. We review and compare alternative data sources and approaches for mapping fire regimes at national, regional, and local spatial scales. Fire regimes, defined here as the nature of fires occurring over an extended period of time, are closely related to local site productivity and topography, but climate variability entrains fire regimes at regional to national scales. In response to fire exclusion policies, land use, and invasion of exotic plants over the last century, fire regimes have changed greatly, especially in dry forests, woodlands, and grasslands. Comparing among and within geographic regions, and across time, is a powerful way to understand the factors determining and constraining fire patterns. Assembling spatial databases of fire information using consistent protocols and standards will aid comparison between studies, and speed and strengthen analyses. Combining multiple types of data will increase the power and reliability of interpretations. Testing hypotheses about relationships between fire, climate, vegetation, land use, and topography will help to identify what determines fire regimes at multiple scales.

scholarly journals Impact of Land Use Changes and Habitat Fragmentation on the Eco-epidemiology of Tick-Borne Diseases

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria A Diuk-Wasser ◽  
Meredith C VanAcker ◽  
Maria P Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Sensu Stricto ◽  
Resource Provisioning ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Landscape Configuration ◽  
Eastern United States

Abstract The incidence of tick-borne diseases has increased in recent decades and accounts for the majority of vector-borne disease cases in temperate areas of Europe, North America, and Asia. This emergence has been attributed to multiple and interactive drivers including changes in climate, land use, abundance of key hosts, and people’s behaviors affecting the probability of human exposure to infected ticks. In this forum paper, we focus on how land use changes have shaped the eco-epidemiology of Ixodes scapularis-borne pathogens, in particular the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto in the eastern United States. We use this as a model system, addressing other tick-borne disease systems as needed to illustrate patterns or processes. We first examine how land use interacts with abiotic conditions (microclimate) and biotic factors (e.g., host community composition) to influence the enzootic hazard, measured as the density of host-seeking I. scapularis nymphs infected with B. burgdorferi s.s. We then review the evidence of how specific landscape configuration, in particular forest fragmentation, influences the enzootic hazard and disease risk across spatial scales and urbanization levels. We emphasize the need for a dynamic understanding of landscapes based on tick and pathogen host movement and habitat use in relation to human resource provisioning. We propose a coupled natural-human systems framework for tick-borne diseases that accounts for the multiple interactions, nonlinearities and feedbacks in the system and conclude with a call for standardization of methodology and terminology to help integrate studies conducted at multiple scales.

scholarly journals Holocene history of fire, vegetation and land use from the central Pyrenees (France)

2012 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Rius ◽  
Boris Vanniére ◽  
Didier Galop
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Landscape Management ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Subsequent Reduction ◽  
Human Land Use ◽  
History Of ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Central Pyrenees

Located on a mountain pass in the west-central Pyrenees, the Col d'Ech peat bog provides a Holocene fire and vegetation record based upon nine 14C (AMS) dates. We aim to compare climate-driven versus human-driven fire regimes in terms of frequency, fire episodes distribution, and impact on vegetation. Our results show the mid-Holocene (8500–5500 cal yr BP) to be characterized by high fire frequency linked with drier and warmer conditions. However, fire occurrences appear to have been rather stochastic as underlined by a scattered chronological distribution. Wetter and colder conditions at the mid-to-late Holocene transition (4000–3000 cal yr BP) led to a decrease in fire frequency, probably driven by both climate and a subsequent reduction in human land use. On the contrary, from 3000 cal yr BP, fire frequency seems to be driven by agro-pastoral activities with a very regular distribution of events. During this period fire was used as a prominent agent of landscape management.

scholarly journals A Disrupted Historical Fire Regime in Central British Columbia

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley Brookes ◽  
Lori D. Daniels ◽  
Kelsey Copes-Gerbitz ◽  
Jennifer N. Baron ◽  
Allan L. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Prescribed Burning ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Dry Forest ◽  
Moderate Severity ◽  
High Severity ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Fire Exclusion

In the 2017 and 2018, 2.55 million hectares burned across British Columbia, Canada, including unanticipated large and high-severity fires in many dry forests. To transform forest and fire management to achieve resilience to future megafires requires improved understanding historical fire frequency, severity, and spatial patterns. Our dendroecological reconstructions of 35 plots in a 161-hectare study area in a dry Douglas-fir forest revealed historical fires that burned at a wide range of frequencies and severities at both the plot- and study-area scales. The 23 fires between 1619 and 1943 burned at intervals of 10–30 years, primarily at low- to moderate-severity that scarred trees but generated few cohorts. In contrast, current fire-free intervals of 70–180 years exceed historical maximum intervals. Of the six widespread fires from 1790 to 1905, the 1863 fire affected 86% of plots and was moderate in severity with patches of higher severity that generated cohorts at fine scales only. These results indicate the severity of fires varied at fine spatial scales, and offer little support for the common assertion that periodic, high-severity, stand-initiating events were a component of the mixed-severity fire regime in these forest types. Many studies consider fires in the late 1800s relatively severe because they generated new cohorts of trees, and thus, emphasize the importance of high-severity fires in a mixed-severity fire regime. In our study area, the most widespread and severe fire was not a stand-initiating fire. Rather, the post-1863 cohorts persisted due disruption of the fire regime in the twentieth century when land-use shifted from Indigenous fire stewardship and early European settler fires to fire exclusion and suppression. In absence of low- to moderate-severity fires, contemporary forests are dense with closed canopies that are vulnerable to high-severity fire. Future management should reduce forest densities and to restore stand- and landscape-level heterogeneity and increase forest resilience. The timing and size of repeat treatments such as thinning of subcanopy trees and prescribed burning, including Indigenous fire stewardship, can be guided by our refined understanding of the mixed-severity fire regime that was historically dominated by low- to moderate-severity fires in this dry forest ecosystem.

Occurrence of wildfire in the northern Great Lakes Region: Effects of land cover and land ownership assessed at multiple scales

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Cardille ◽  
Stephen J. Ventura
Keyword(s):  
Land Cover ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Forest Type ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Usda Forest Service ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Spatially Explicit Data ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Relationship Of

Risk of wildfire has become a major concern for forest managers, particularly where humans live in close proximity to forests. To date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of contemporary wildfire patterns or the influence of landscape-level factors in the northern, largely forested parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, USA. Using electronic archives from the USDA Forest Service and from the Departments of Natural Resources of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, we created and analysed a new, spatially explicit data set: the Lake States Fire Database. Most of the 18 514 fires during 1985—1995 were smaller than 4 ha, although there were 746 fires larger than 41 ha. Most fires were caused by debris burning and incendiary activity. There was considerable interannual variability in fire counts; over 80% of fires occurred in March, April, or May. We analysed the relationship of land cover and ownership to fires at two different fire size thresholds across four gridded spatial scales. Fires were more likely on non-forest than within forests; this was also true if considering only fires larger than 41 ha. An area of National or State Forest was less likely to have experienced a fire during the study period than was a forest of equal size outside National or State Forest boundaries. Large fires were less likely in State Forests, although they were neither more nor less likely to have occurred on National Forests. Fire frequency also varied significantly by forest type. All results were extremely consistent across analysis resolutions, indicating robust relationships.

Plant community responses to wildfire may be contingent upon historical disturbance regimes

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Miller ◽  
Hugh Safford
Keyword(s):  
Plant Community ◽  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Plant Species Richness ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Ecosystem Structure ◽  
Community Responses ◽  
Ecological Disturbance ◽  
Disturbance Regimes

Ecological disturbance is a major driver of ecosystem structure and evolutionary selection, and theory predicts that disturbance frequency and / or intensity should determine its effects on communities. However, adaptations of species pools to different historical disturbance regimes are rarely considered in the search for generalizable community responses to disturbance. To explore how disturbance severity affects plant diversity patterns, we review studies of understory plant community responses to wildfire in conifer forests of western North America across a gradient of departure from historical fire regimes. We find that post-fire plant species richness may generally be maximized at disturbance severities that match the predominant historical disturbance regime in a given ecosystem. Studies that examined multiple spatial scales indicate that plant community responses to fire are likely to be scale-dependent, suggesting that post-disturbance monitoring should consider community responses at multiple scales. Our review highlights that considering adaptations to historical disturbance regimes may improve the ability to predict disturbance effects on communities. We discuss future research needs; quantitative studies that compare community responses to fire at multiple scales across different historical fire regimes would be particularly useful. Ultimately, considering disturbance as a multivariate problem is likely to lead to greater inference than traditional bivariate approaches.

scholarly journals Fire Frequency and Related Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes in Indonesia’s Peatlands

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yenni Vetrita ◽  
Mark A. Cochrane
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Swamp Forest ◽  
Lulc Change ◽  
Surface Areas ◽  
Moderate Resolution ◽  
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer

Indonesia’s converted peatland areas have a well-established fire problem, but limited studies have examined the frequency with which they are burning. Here, we quantify fire frequency in Indonesia’s two largest peatland regions, Sumatra and Kalimantan, during 2001–2018. We report, annual areas burned, total peatland area affected by fires, amount of recurrent burning and associations with land-use and land-cover (LULC) change. We based these analyses on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra/Aqua combined burned area and three Landsat-derived LULC maps (1990, 2007, and 2015) and explored relationships between burning and land-cover types. Cumulative areas burned amounted nearly half of the surface areas of Sumatra and Kalimantan but were concentrated in only ~25% of the land areas. Although peatlands cover only 13% of Sumatra and Kalimantan, annual percentage of area burning in these areas was almost five times greater than in non-peatlands (2.8% vs. 0.6%) from 2001 to 2018. Recurrent burning was more prominent in Kalimantan than Sumatra. Average fire-return intervals (FRI) in peatlands of both regions were short, 28 and 45 years for Kalimantan and Sumatra, respectively. On average, forest FRI were less than 50 years. In non-forest areas, Kalimantan had shorter average FRI than Sumatra (13 years vs. 40 years), with ferns/low shrub areas burning most frequently. Our findings highlight the significant influence of LULC change in altering fire regimes. If prevalent rates of burning in Indonesia’s peatlands are not greatly reduced, peat swamp forest will disappear from Sumatra and Kalimantan in the coming decades.

Modelling spatiotemporal variability in fires in semiarid savannas: a satellite-based assessment around Africa’s largest protected area

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (7) ◽  
pp. 730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niti B. Mishra ◽  
Kumar P. Mainali ◽  
Kelley A. Crews
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Negative Binomial ◽  
Null Model ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Spatiotemporal Variability ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Vegetation Types ◽  
Variance Explained

The relative importance of various drivers of fire regimes in savanna ecosystems can be location-specific. We utilised satellite-derived time-series burned area (2001–13) to examine how spatiotemporal variations in burned area and fire frequency were determined by rainfall, vegetation morphology and land use in semiarid savanna. Mean precipitation of the rainy season (Nov–Apr) had a strong and positive relationship with burned area in the following dry season (variance explained 63%), with the relationship being strongest inside protected areas (variance explained 73%). Burned area and fire frequency were higher in vegetation types with higher herbaceous cover, indicating a causal link between herbaceous load and fire. Among land use, fire frequency was highest in protected areas and lowest in farms and ranches. Spatial models (generalised linear models with Poisson and negative binomial distribution) accounting for spatial autocorrelation showed that land-use classes and vegetation types together explained approximately half of the deviance in null model (48%). Existence of fences and boreholes resulted in finer-scale spatial differences in fire frequency. There was minimal dependence of vegetation types on land-use classes in determining fire frequency (interaction between the two predictors was minimal). These results have significant implications for understanding drivers of fire activity in savanna ecosystems.

Fire and its management in central Australia

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 109 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. P. Edwards ◽  
G. E. Allan ◽  
C. Brock ◽  
A. Duguid ◽  
K. Gabrys ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Management Objectives ◽  
Pastoral Production ◽  
Fire Exclusion ◽  
Central Australia ◽  
Large Scale Land

Over the last 130 years, patterns of land use in central Australia have altered dramatically, and so too have fire regimes and fire management objectives. Although Aboriginal people still have tenure over large parts of the landscape, their lifestyles have changed. Most Aboriginal people now live in towns and settlements and, although fire management is still culturally important, the opportunities for getting out on country to burn are constrained. Large parts of the landscape are now used for pastoral production. Under this land use the management objective is often one of fire exclusion. The other large-scale land use is for conservation. Here, fire management has a greater focus on conserving biodiversity using various burning strategies. In this paper we explore contemporary fire regimes in central Australia. Widespread fire events are found to be associated with two or more consecutive years of above-average rainfall. Although most of the fires linked with these high rainfall periods occur during the warmer months, in recent times these fires have exhibited increased activity during the cooler months. There has been a concomitant increase in the number and size of these fires and in the number of fires associated with roads. We also explored current fire management issues on Aboriginal, pastoral and conservation lands. Current fire management goals are not being wholly met on any of these land tenures in central Australia and social conflict sometimes emerges as a result. There are overlaps in management aims, issues and the under-achievement of desired outcomes across the land tenures which lead us to five key recommendations for improving fire management outcomes in central Australia. We finish with some comments on associated opportunities for livelihood enhancement based on the management of fire.

scholarly journals A century of transformation: Fire regime transitions from 1919 to 2019 in southeastern British Columbia, Canada

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer N Baron ◽  
Sarah E. Gergel ◽  
Paul F. Hessburg ◽  
Lori D. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Annual Number ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Climatic Period ◽  
Fire Exclusion

The past 100 years marks a transition between pre-colonial and modern era fire regimes, which provides crucial context for understanding future wildfire behavior. Using the greatest depth of digitized fire events in Canada, we identify distinct phases of wildfire regimes from 1919 to 2019 by evaluating changes in mapped fire perimeters (>20-ha) across the East Kootenay forest region (including the southern Rocky Mountain Trench), British Columbia (BC). We detect transitions in annual number of fires, burned area, and fire size; explore the roles of lightning- and human-caused fires in driving these transitions; and quantify departures from historical fire frequency at the regional level. We found that, relative to historical fire frequency, fire exclusion created a significant fire deficit across 89% of the flammable landscape. Fire was active from 1919 to 1940 with frequent and large fire events, but the regime was already altered by a century of colonization. Fire activity decreased after 1940, coinciding with effective fire suppression influenced by a mild climatic period. After 2003, the combined effects of fire exclusion and accelerated climate change fueled a shift in fire regimes of various forest types, with increases in area burned and mean fire size driven by lightning.

Fine-scale variation of historical fire regimes in sagebrush-steppe and juniper woodland: an example from California, USA

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F. Miller ◽  
Emily K. Heyerdahl
Keyword(s):  
Pinus Ponderosa ◽  
Ponderosa Pine ◽  
Soil Depth ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Big Sagebrush ◽  
Western Juniper ◽  
Fine Fuels ◽  
Fire Intervals

Coarse-scale estimates of fire intervals across the mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata spp. vaseyana (Rydb.) Beetle) alliance range from decades to centuries. However, soil depth and texture can affect the abundance and continuity of fine fuels and vary at fine spatial scales, suggesting fire regimes may vary at similar scales. We explored variation in fire frequency across 4000 ha in four plant associations with differing soils in which mountain big sagebrush and western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis subsp. occidentalis Hook.) were diagnostic or a transitory component. We reconstructed fire frequency from fire-scarred ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa P. & C. Lawson) in one association. The other three associations lacked fire-scarred trees so we inferred fire frequency from establishment or death dates of western juniper and a model of the rate of post-fire succession we developed from current vegetation along a chronosequence of time-since-fire. Historical fire frequency varied at fine spatial scales in response to soil-driven variation in fuel abundance and continuity and spanned the range of frequencies currently debated. Fire intervals ranged from decades in areas of deep, productive soils where fine fuels were likely abundant and continuous, to centuries in areas of shallow, coarse soils where fine fuel was likely limited.

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