Using stochastic simulation to evaluate competing risks of wildfires and fuels management on an isolated forest carnivore

Scheller, Robert M.; Spencer, Wayne D.; Rustigian‐Romsos, Heather; Syphard, Alexandra D.; Ward, Brendan C.; Strittholt, James R.

doi:10.1007/s10980-011-9663-6

Cited by 73 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…One early method was to network discontinuous but spatially layered fuel treatments termed ''strategically placed landscape area treatments" or SPLATs (Finney, 2001;Finney et al, 2007;Bahro et al, 2007;Schmidt et al, 2008) -an approach Loehle (2004) likened to the arrangement of bulkheads on a ship. Later modeling employed defensible fuel profile zones (DFPZ's, Moghaddas et al, 2010), prioritizing treated areas according to stocking density (Ager et al, 2010;Collins et al, 2011b), and protecting special value areas, such as threatened habitats for high priority species (Ager et al, , 2012Gaines et al, 2010aGaines et al, , 2010bKennedy et al, 2008;Lehmkuhl et al, 2007;Scheller et al, 2011;Syphard et al, 2011;Roloff et al, 2012), or urban/exurban development concentrations (Ager et al, 2010). Various studies have compared approaches (e.g.…”

Section: Lessons From Fuel Treatment Simulation Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historical patterns provide valuable insight, and in some cases offer the best route to achieving desirable ecological goals. In other cases, however, the highly altered regional landscape of today may require unprecedented mitigations to conserve native species, adapt to climatic and non-native species changes, or restore fire regimes (Millar et al, 2007;Stephens et al, 2010;Scheller et al, 2011). (4) Buy time for climate adaptation and sensitive species.…”

Section: Overarching Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California

Hessburg

Spies

Perry

et al. 2016

Forest Ecology and Management

177

190

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a b s t r a c tIncreasingly, objectives for forests with moderate-or mixed-severity fire regimes are to restore successionally diverse landscapes that are resistant and resilient to current and future stressors. Maintaining native species and characteristic processes requires this successional diversity, but methods to achieve it are poorly explained in the literature. In the Inland Pacific US, large, old, early seral trees were a key historical feature of many young and old forest successional patches, especially where fires frequently occurred. Large, old trees are naturally fire-tolerant, but today are often threatened by dense understory cohorts that create fuel ladders that alter likely post-fire successional pathways. Reducing these understories can contribute to resistance by creating conditions where canopy trees will survive disturbances and climatic stressors; these survivors are important seed sources, soil protectors, and critical habitat elements. Historical timber harvesting has skewed tree size and age class distributions, created hard edges, and altered native patch sizes. Manipulating these altered forests to promote development of larger patches of older, larger, and more widely-spaced trees with diverse understories will increase landscape resistance to severe fires, and enhance wildlife habitat for underrepresented conditions.Closed-canopy, multi-layered patches that develop in hot, dry summer environments are vulnerable to droughts, and they increase landscape vulnerability to insect outbreaks and severe wildfires. These same patches provide habitat for species such as the northern spotted owl, which has benefited from increased habitat area. Regional and local planning will be critical for gauging risks, evaluating trade-offs, and restoring dynamics that can support these and other species. The goal will be to manage for heterogeneous landscapes that include variably-sized patches of (1) young, middle-aged, and old, closedcanopy forests growing in upper montane, northerly aspect, and valley bottom settings, (2) a similar diversity of open-canopy, fire-tolerant patches growing on ridgetops, southerly aspects, and lower montane settings, and (3) significant montane chaparral and grassland areas. Tools to achieve this goal http://dx

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Section: Lessons From Fuel Treatment Simulation Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Overarching Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California

Hessburg

Spies

Perry

et al. 2016

Forest Ecology and Management

177

190

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Also, like the spotted owl, the Back-backed Woodpecker, Pacific Fisher and Northern Goshawk occur in forests where the historic fire regime was not low-severity. Modeling for the fisher, similar to modeling for the spotted owl, has not used the actual rates of high-severity fire and forest regrowth to assess possible impacts of fire, and has assumed that fire represents a loss of fisher habitat (Scheller et al 2011), contrary to more recent empirical findings (Hanson 2013). Not including the actual probability of fire leads to considerably inflated projections of the effects of thinning vs. not thinning in reducing high-severity fire (Rhodes andBaker 2008, Campbell et al 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Fire and Commercial Thinning on Future Habitat of the Northern Spotted Owl

Odion¹,

Hanson²,

DellaSala³

et al. 2014

TOORTHJ

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Abstract:The Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) is an emblematic, threatened raptor associated with dense, late-successional forests in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Concerns over high-severity fire and reduced timber harvesting have led to programs to commercially thin forests, and this may occur within habitat designated as "critical" for spotted owls. However, thinning is only allowed under the U.S. Government spotted owl guidelines if the long-term benefits clearly outweigh adverse impacts. This possibility remains uncertain. Adverse impacts from commercial thinning may be caused by removal of key habitat elements and creation of forests that are more open than those likely to be occupied by spotted owls. Benefits of thinning may accrue through reduction in high-severity fire, yet whether the firereduction benefits accrue faster than the adverse impacts of reduced late-successional habitat from thinning remains an untested hypothesis. We found that rotations of severe fire (the time required for high-severity fire to burn an area equal to the area of interest once) in spotted owl habitat since 1996, the earliest date we could use, were 362 and 913 years for the two regions of interest: the Klamath and dry Cascades. Using empirical data, we calculated the future amount of spotted owl habitat that may be maintained with these rates of high-severity fire and ongoing forest regrowth rates with and without commercial thinning. Over 40 years, habitat loss would be far greater than with no thinning because, under a "best case" scenario, thinning reduced 3.4 and 6.0 times more dense, late-successional forest than it prevented from burning in high-severity fire in the Klamath and dry Cascades, respectively. Even if rates of fire increase substantially, the requirement that the long-term benefits of commercial thinning clearly outweigh adverse impacts is not attainable with commercial thinning in spotted owl habitat. It is also becoming increasingly recognized that exclusion of high-severity fire may not benefit spotted owls in areas where owls evolved with reoccurring fires in the landscape.

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“…The preferred late-seral habitat for fisher and spotted owl may experience short-term reductions in quality from the removal of woody biomass, including snags and downed woody debris, but the long-term benefit to the species is reducing the risk of stand-replacing fire, which could reduce nesting habitat quality for these species for a longer period of time (Lee and Irwin 2005;Scheller et al 2011). Reductions in canopy cover from lateseason prescribed fires and mechanical thinning plus fire can reduce the quality of fisher roosting habitat, but foraging habitat remains unaffected (Truex and Zielinski 2013).…”

Section: Effects On Wildlifementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of fuel treatments on California mixed-conifer forests

Winford¹,

Stevens²,

Safford³

2015

Cal Ag

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Land managers implement forest fuel reduction treatments, including prescribed fire, mastication, and hand-and mechanical thinning, to modify wildfire behavior. Fuel treatments decrease tree density, increase mean canopy base height and remove surface fuels, and have been shown to reduce fire severity in yellow pine and mixed-conifer forests, even under relatively severe weather conditions. However, less is known about the impacts of fuel treatments on other facets of forest ecology. Synthesizing evidence from the scientific literature regarding their effects on forest structure, carbon, vegetation, soils, wildlife and forest pests, we found a developing consensus that fuel treatments, particularly those that include a prescribed fire component, may have neutral to positive effects on a number of ecological processes in frequent-fire coniferous forests and may increase forest resilience to future disturbance and stress.

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Using stochastic simulation to evaluate competing risks of wildfires and fuels management on an isolated forest carnivore

Cited by 73 publications

References 37 publications

Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California

Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California

Effects of Fire and Commercial Thinning on Future Habitat of the Northern Spotted Owl

Effects of fuel treatments on California mixed-conifer forests

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