Fire history and fire–climate relationships along a fire regime gradient in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed, NM, USA

Margolis, Ellis Q.; Balmat, Jeff

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2009.08.019

Cited by 78 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…However, preceding wet years contribute to the growth of new fine fuels. The same is suggested by Margolis and Balmat (2009). Overall, the good fit and prediction capability of the developed model adds credence both to the annually burned area estimates and the independently reconstructed PDSI in the Southwest US.…”

Section: Inconsistent Climate and Fire Historiessupporting

confidence: 66%

Major decline in fires in coniferous forests – reconstructing the phenomenon and seeking for the cause

Wallenius¹

2011

Silva Fenn.

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Steep decline in forest fires about a century ago occurred in coniferous forests over large areas in North America and Fennoscandia. This poorly understood phenomenon has been explained by different factors in different regions. The objective of this study is to evaluate the validity of the four most commonly suggested causes of the decrease in forest fires: fire fighting, over-grazing, climate change and human influence. I compiled the available dendrochronological data and estimated the annually burned proportions of Pinus-dominated forests in four subcontinental regions during the past 500 years. These data were compared to the development of fire suppression, grazing pressure, climate and human livelihoods. The annually burned proportions declined over 90% in all studied regions. In three out of the four regions fires decreased decades before fire suppression began. Available drought data are annually well correlated with fires but could not explain the decrease of the level in annually burned areas. A rapid increase in the number of livestock occurred at the same time with the decrease in fires in the Western US but not in Fennoscandia. Hence, fire suppression in Central Fennoscandia and over-grazing in the Western US may have locally contributed to the reduction of burned areas. More general explanation is offered by human influence hypothesis: the majority of the past forest fires were probably caused by humans and the decrease in the annually burned areas was because of a decrease in human caused fires. This is in accordance with the old written records and forest fire statistics. The decrease in annually burned areas, both in Fennoscandia and the United States coincides with an economic and cultural transition from traditional livelihoods that are associated with high fire use to modern agriculture and forestry.

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Section: Inconsistent Climate and Fire Historiessupporting

confidence: 66%

Major decline in fires in coniferous forests – reconstructing the phenomenon and seeking for the cause

Wallenius¹

2011

Silva Fenn.

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“…For example, in the Southwest the mean frequency of historical surface fire in pine forests was within 1-5 years of the mean fire frequency in mixed conifer forests (Swetnam and Baisan, 1996), with gradient studies showing these forest types to be linked by synchronous fire events Margolis and Balmat, 2009). Differences in composition and structure are generally strikingly more pronounced in contemporary than in historical forests (e.g., Youngblood, 2001;Minnich et al, 1995;Brown et al, 2008).…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

Do thinning and/or burning treatments in western USA ponderosa or Jeffrey pine-dominated forests help restore natural fire behavior?

Fulé

Crouse

Roccaforte

et al. 2012

Forest Ecology and Management

225

141

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“…Summer precipitation from the year of the fire was not included because most rainfall occurs middle to late summer (Hereford et al 2006) whereas most fires occur in the early to middle summer (Brooks and Esque 2002), before the onset of significant rainfall. We included precipitation from 2 years before the fire in our analysis because this has been correlated with fire frequency in previous studies (Rogers and Vint 1987;Margolis and Balmat 2009).…”

Section: Precipitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationships between annual plant productivity, nitrogen deposition and fire size in low-elevation California desert scrub

Rao

Matchett

Brooks

et al. 2015

Int. J. Wildland Fire

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Abstract. Although precipitation is correlated with fire size in desert ecosystems and is typically used as an indirect surrogate for fine fuel load, a direct link between fine fuel biomass and fire size has not been established. In addition, nitrogen (N) deposition can affect fire risk through its fertilisation effect on fine fuel production. In this study, we examine the relationships between fire size and precipitation, N deposition and biomass with emphasis on identifying biomass and N deposition thresholds associated with fire spreading across the landscape. We used a 28-year fire record of 582 burns from low-elevation desert scrub to evaluate the relationship of precipitation, N deposition and biomass with the distribution of fire sizes using quantile regression. We found that models using annual biomass have similar predictive ability to those using precipitation and N deposition at the lower to intermediate portions of the fire size distribution. No distinct biomass threshold was found, although within the 99th percentile of the distribution fire size increased with greater than 125 g m À2 of winter fine fuel production. The study did not produce an N deposition threshold, but did validate the value of 125 g m À2 of fine fuel for spread of fires.

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Fire history and fire–climate relationships along a fire regime gradient in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed, NM, USA

Cited by 78 publications

References 42 publications

Major decline in fires in coniferous forests – reconstructing the phenomenon and seeking for the cause

Major decline in fires in coniferous forests – reconstructing the phenomenon and seeking for the cause

Do thinning and/or burning treatments in western USA ponderosa or Jeffrey pine-dominated forests help restore natural fire behavior?

Relationships between annual plant productivity, nitrogen deposition and fire size in low-elevation California desert scrub

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