Fire history and climate influences from forests in the Northern Sierra Nevada, USA

Fire history and the structure and dynamics of a mixed conifer forest landscape in the northern Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe Basin, California, USA

“…Similar declines in fire occurrence have been observed in California mixed conifer forests in the southern Cascades (Taylor, 2000;Beaty and Taylor, 2001;Norman and Taylor, 2003), Klamath Mountains (Taylor and Skinner, 2003;Fry and Stephens, 2006), northern Sierra Nevada (Stephens and Collins, 2004;Moody et al, 2006) and southern Sierra Nevada (Kilgore and Taylor, 1979;Caprio and Swetnam, 1995). The current fire free period (ca.…”

“…The fire-ENSO relationship observed in GCW exhibits a pattern similar to pine forests in the American Southwest. However, variation in pre fire suppression fire regimes in pine dominated forests in northern California are not consistently associated with ENSO variation (e.g., Norman and Taylor, 2003;Taylor and Beaty, 2005;Fry and Stephens, 2006;Moody et al, 2006). The inconsistent relationship between variation in ENSO and fire regimes is probably related to interannual variation in the north-south position of zonal precipitation that is associated with ENSO and the geographic position of northern California near the ENSO pivot zone (Dettinger et al, 1998).…”

Preliminary effects of fire and mechanical fuel treatments on the abundance of small mammals in the mixed-conifer forest of the Sierra Nevada

“…Within Sierra Nevada Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and mixed-conifer forest, fires historically burned at intervals of a few years to decades (Biswell, 1989;Agee, 1993;Swetnam, 1993;Skinner and Chang, 1996;Taylor and Skinner, 1998;Taylor, 2000;Stephens and Collins, 2004;Moody et al, 2006). These frequent fires were a dominant force that helped shape forest structure and ecosystem processes.…”

Development of Vegetation and Surface Fuels Following Fire Hazard Reduction Treatment

“…Historically, low-to moderate-severity fires here were frequent: a study of fire history in similar forests found a pre-Euro-American settlement mean composite fire return interval of 6-18 years (for fires scarring more than 10% of samples) [21]. The climate west of the Sierra Nevada crest is Mediterranean with warm, dry summers and cold, wet winters.…”