首页|Reestablishing natural fire regimes to restore forest structure in California's red fir forests: The importance of regional context

Reestablishing natural fire regimes to restore forest structure in California's red fir forests: The importance of regional context

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  • NSTL
  • Elsevier
The reestablishment of natural fire regimes can have numerous benefits for forest ecosystems, including the restoration of stand structure through a reduction in tree densities and increased representation of large diameter trees. However, fire effects may depend on how departed the ecosystem is from its historical fire frequency. Red fir (Abies magnifica) forests occupy a broad geographic area across which historical fire return intervals and stand structures vary. Using historical stand inventory data from the Vegetation Type Mapping (VTM) project, we evaluated red fir forests in the Sierra Nevada in California and the Cascade-Klamath region of northwestern California and southern Oregon to determine how reintroduced fire effects vary regionally and if these differences are related to historical fire return intervals or structural conditions. We sampled a total of 29 overlapping fires and found that reestablishing fire in red fir forests consistently restored historical forest structure across a wide geographic range by reducing the density of small trees and maintaining large trees. However, the effect of fire was most evident in the Sierra Nevada where the percent difference in total tree density between unburned and burned plots was significantly greater (77% difference) than in the Cascade-Klamath (53% difference), and burned plots in the Sierra Nevada had significantly lower densities of both small (<30 cm dbh) and medium sized trees (30-60 cm dbh). These stronger fire effects may be related to greater departure from reference fire return intervals in the Sierra Nevada, as well as the region's warmer and drier conditions increasing the availability of fuel to burn and susceptibility of trees to fire-related mortality. We found that departure from reference fire return intervals followed a similar pattern to departure from historical tree density in both study regions. Unburned plots were 61% departed from reference fire return intervals in the Cascade-Klamath and 69% departed in the Sierra Nevada. In these same plots, departure from VTM total tree density estimates were 37% in the Cascade-Klamath and 44% in the Sierra Nevada. We suggest that incorporating historical references for structural conditions together with regional or local estimates of historical fire return intervals contributes to an improved understanding of how reference conditions varied at local and regional scales, and their importance in the restoration of fire-dependent forests.

Fire return interval departureFire effectsNatural fire regimesForest restorationVegetation Type Mapping (VTM)Historical ecology

Merriam, Kyle E.、Meyer, Marc D.、Coppoletta, Michelle、Butz, Ramona J.、Estes, Becky L.、Farris, Calvin A.、North, Malcolm P.

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US Forest Serv, Sierra Cascade Prov Ecol Program, USDA, 159 Lawrence St, Quincy, CA 95971 USA

US Forest Serv, Southern Sierra Prov Ecol Program, USDA, 351 Pacu Lane, Bishop, CA 93541 USA

US Forest Serv, Northern Prov Ecol Program, USDA, 1330 Bayshore Way, Eureka, CA 95501 USA

US Forest Serv, Cent Sierra Prov Ecol Program, USDA, 100 Forni Rd, Placerville, CA 95667 USA

Natl Pk Serv Reg 8 9 10 & 12, POB 1713, Klamath Falls, OR 97601 USA

US Forest Serv, Pacific Southwest Res Stn, USDA, 2500 Highway 203, Mammoth Lakes, CA 9354 USA

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2022

10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119797

Forest Ecology and Management

Forest Ecology and Management

EISCI
ISSN：0378-1127
年,卷(期)：2022.503
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  • 89