Western United States forest wildfire activity is widely thought to have increased in recent decades, yet neither the extent of recent changes nor the degree to which climate may be driving regional changes in wildfire has been systematically documented. Much of the public and scientific discussion of changes in western United States wildfire has focused instead on the effects of 19th- and 20th-century land-use history. We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt.

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Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity

There is a special reason for reviewing this book at this time: it is the 50th edition of a compendium that is known and used frequently in most chemical and physical laboratories in many parts of the world. Surely, a publication that has been published for 56 years, withstanding the vagaries of science in this century, must have had something to offer. There is another reason: while the book is a standard fixture in most chemical and physical laboratories, including those in medical centers, it is not as frequently seen in the laboratories of physician's offices (those either in solo or group practice). I believe that the Handbook can be useful in those laboratories. One of the reasons, among others, is that the various basic items of information it offers may be helpful in new tests, either physical or chemical, which are continuously being published. The basic information may relate

Handbook of Chemistry and Physics

Fire is a worldwide phenomenon that appears in the geological record soon after the appearance of terrestrial plants. Fire influences global ecosystem patterns and processes, including vegetation distribution and structure, the carbon cycle, and climate. Although humans and fire have always coexisted, our capacity to manage fire remains imperfect and may become more difficult in the future as climate change alters fire regimes. This risk is difficult to assess, however, because fires are still poorly represented in global models. Here, we discuss some of the most important issues involved in developing a better understanding of the role of fire in the Earth system.

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Fire in the Earth System

Many physical, chemical, mineralogical, and biological soil properties can be affected by forest fires. The effects are chiefly a result of burn severity, which consists of peak temperatures and duration of the fire. Climate, vegetation, and topography of the burnt area control the resilience of the soil system; some fire-induced changes can even be permanent. Low to moderate severity fires, such as most of those prescribed in forest management, promote renovation of the dominant vegetation through elimination of undesired species and transient increase of pH and available nutrients. No irreversible ecosystem change occurs, but the enhancement of hydrophobicity can render the soil less able to soak up water and more prone to erosion. Severe fires, such as wildfires, generally have several negative effects on soil. They cause significant removal of organic matter, deterioration of both structure and porosity, considerable loss of nutrients through volatilisation, ash entrapment in smoke columns, leaching and erosion, and marked alteration of both quantity and specific composition of microbial and soil-dwelling invertebrate communities. However, despite common perceptions, if plants succeed in promptly recolonising the burnt area, the pre-fire level of most properties can be recovered and even enhanced. This work is a review of the up-to-date literature dealing with changes imposed by fires on properties of forest soils. Ecological implications of these changes are described.

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Effects of fire on properties of forest soils: a review

https://bio.uib.no/te/papers/Grimm_2010_The_ODD_protocol_.pdf

The ODD protocol: A review and first update

An oak-pine forest burned by intense wildfire in April, 1996, and a companion unburned area were sampled 1 month and 1 yr postfire in La Michilia Biosphere Reserve, Durango, Mexico. Up to 90% of the trees were killed or top-killed in the burned area, but larger trees tended to survive, so basal area was only reduced by 66%. Top-killing was relatively higher among fire-susceptible oaks and lower among fire-resistant pines. However, oaks were strong resprouters both in the canopy and at the base of top-killed trees. Damage codes based on crown scorch and bole charwere highly accurate when predicting that a tree would die but substantially overestimated survivors. Most tree regeneration was top-killed in the fire, but oak sprout density was 700% that of the unburned area by 1 yr postfire. Manzanita shrubs also resprouted vigorously. Herbaceous production and cover were lower after the first postfire growing season in the burned area than the unburned area. Woody fuels and forest floor depth were also reduced. Although short-term fire effects indicate that the forest ecosystem has moved closer toward a savanna condition, remnant seed trees and sprouting trees are expected to maintain forest cover. Future herbaceous production is likely to increase in response to overstory mortality. Quantification of fire effects is helpful for supporting short-term management decisions since oak-pine forests cover millions of hectares in northern Mexico. As a long-term management strategy, however, we suggest that restoring the frequent, low-intensity fire regime may be desirable for ecological and economic reasons.

Effects of an intense wildfire in a Mexican oak-pine forest.

Upper size limits of trees allowed to be cut, termed diameter caps, have resulted in polarization, litigation, and delays and alterations to thinning projects in many western forests. Using southwestern ponderosa pine forests as an example, we summarize viewpoints on caps, simulate effects of caps on thinning prescriptions, and provide examples of ecosystem-level tradeoffs of leaving extra trees during thinning projects. The importance placed on trees versus other ecosystem components primarily differentiates those who support caps and those who do not. We conclude that diameter caps may enhance some ecosystem components, such as densities of large trees, but they negatively impact many nontree components.

Diameter caps for thinning southwestern ponderosa pine forests: Viewpoints, effects, and tradeoffs

1 Corresponding author: pete.fule@nau.edu; 928-523-1463 ABSTRACT: Ponderosa pine plant community and forest structure were compared among three stands in Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona: one stand had 120 years of artificial fire exclusion (NOBURN) and the other two nearby stands had been frequently burned (BURN-E and BURN-W). These forests are valuable places to gauge anthropogenic changes associated with European settlement, due to their land history of limited livestock grazing and no logging. Precipitation varied greatly between sampling years (260 mm in 2000, 505 mm in 2001). Tree density was significantly higher at NOBURN (1424 trees ha-1) with significantly higher rotten coarse woody debris (23.2 Mg ha-1) and duff depth (4.3 cm) than at the burned sites, as expected in the absence of fire. Although species richness was not significantly different among sites (48-89 species), richness differed significantly by year. Shannon’s index of diversity increased by approximately 10% from the dry year to the wet year on all sites. Community composition and plant cover at NOBURN differed significantly from the two burned sites in both years in non-metric multidimensional scaling ordinations. Increasing duff depth was related to decreased plant cover. Two of the three dominant species were different at the fire-excluded site compared to the burned sites. We conclude that although plant community structure was related to fire history, environmental stress and within-stand variability were also important drivers. We suggest selecting reference sites in close proximity to the site to be restored and using a multi-scale, multi-year, multi-site approach to measure reference conditions in ponderosa pine.

Plant community variability in ponderosa pine forest has implications for reference conditions

Pinus ponderosa forests occupy numerous topographic and soil complexes across vast areas of the southwestern United States, yet few data exist on species distributions and vegetation–environment relationships for these environmentally diverse landscapes. We measured topography, soils, and vegetation on 66, 0.05-ha plots within a 110,000-ha P. ponderosa landscape in northern Arizona, USA, to discern vegetation–environment relationships on this landscape. We analyzed associations of environmental variables with plant communities and with single-species distributions, and we classified ecological species groups (co-occurring plant species exhibiting similar environmental affinities). Gradients in community composition paralleled gradients in soil texture, available water, organic C, total N, and geographic precipitation patterns. Soil parent material, affected by the presence or absence of volcanic activity, is a primary factor constraining vegetation patterns on this landscape. Using discriminant analysis, we built a model that correctly classified the most important of four grasses (Bouteloua gracilis, Muhlenbergia montana, Sporobolus interruptus, or Festuca arizonica) on 70–80% of plots based on five environmental variables related to soil moisture and resource levels. We also classified 52 of the 271 detected plant species into 18 ecological species groups. Species groups ranged from Phacelia and Bahia groups occupying xeric, volcanic cinder soils low in organic C and total N, to Festuca and Lathyrus groups characterizing moist, loam and silt loam soils. We applied the species groups by estimating P. ponderosa diameter increment in a regression tree using abundances of species groups. The most rapid P. ponderosa diameter growth of 5 mm/year occurred on plots with high importance of the Festuca and Lathyrus groups. Our results on this semi-arid landscape support several general ecological species group principles chiefly developed in temperate regions, and suggest that vegetation–environment research has great potential for enhancing our understanding of P. ponderosa forests occupying vast areas of the southwestern United States.

Vegetation-environment relationships and ecological species groups of an Arizona Pinus ponderosa landscape, USA

Forests adapted to frequent-fire regimes are being treated to reduce fuel hazards and restore ecosystem processes. The maintenance of treatment effects underfuture climatesis a critical issue. Wemodelled forest changeunder differentclimatescenariosfor100yearsonponderosapinelandscapesinthesouth-westernUSA,comparingmanagement regimes that included prescribed burning, tree cutting, and no-management. We applied the Forest Vegetation Simulator (1)initsstandardform,and(2)withmodificationsofreducedtreegrowthandincreasedmortalitytosimulatetheeffectsof two levels of climate change. Without climate change effects, several management regimes, including the use of frequent burning similar to the historical fire frequency (,5 year), maintained future forest structure within a target range of variability. In contrast, simulations that accounted for climate change effects indicated that burning intervals should be lengthened (,20 year) and future tree thinning should be avoided to minimise forest decline. Although it has been widely predicted that future climate conditions will support more burning (warmer, drier fuels, longer fire season), our modelling suggests that the production of fuels will decline, so there will eventually be a trade-off between increased fire, driven by climate, v. reduced fuel, also driven by climate.

W. Wallace Covington

Papers

Effects of an intense wildfire in a Mexican oak-pine forest.

Diameter caps for thinning southwestern ponderosa pine forests: Viewpoints, effects, and tradeoffs

Plant community variability in ponderosa pine forest has implications for reference conditions

Vegetation-environment relationships and ecological species groups of an Arizona Pinus ponderosa landscape, USA

Future climate affects management strategies for maintaining forest restoration treatments.