Mature forests provide important wildlife habitat and support critical ecosystem functions globally. Within the dry conifer forests of the western United States, past management and fire exclusion ...have contributed to forest conditions that are susceptible to increasingly severe wildfire and drought. We evaluated declines in conifer forest cover in the southern Sierra Nevada of California during a decade of record disturbance by using spatially comprehensive forest structure estimates, wildfire perimeter data, and the eDaRT forest disturbance tracking algorithm. Primarily due to the combination of wildfires, drought, and drought‐associated beetle epidemics, 30% of the region's conifer forest extent transitioned to nonforest vegetation during 2011–2020. In total, 50% of mature forest habitat and 85% of high density mature forests either transitioned to lower density forest or nonforest vegetation types. California spotted owl protected activity centers (PAC) experienced greater canopy cover decline (49% of 2011 cover) than non‐PAC areas (42% decline). Areas with high initial canopy cover and without tall trees were most vulnerable to canopy cover declines, likely explaining the disproportionate declines of mature forest habitat and within PACs. Drought and beetle attack caused greater cumulative declines than areas where drought and wildfire mortality overlapped, and both types of natural disturbance far outpaced declines attributable to mechanical activities. Drought mortality that disproportionately affects large conifers is particularly problematic to mature forest specialist species reliant on large trees. However, patches of degraded forests within wildfire perimeters were larger with greater core area than those outside burned areas, and remnant forest habitats were more fragmented within burned perimeters than those affected by drought and beetle mortality alone. The percentage of mature forest that survived and potentially benefited from lower severity wildfire increased over time as the total extent of mature forest declined. These areas provide some opportunity for improved resilience to future disturbances, but strategic management interventions are likely also necessary to mitigate worsening mega‐disturbances. Remaining dry mature forest habitat in California may be susceptible to complete loss in the coming decades without a rapid transition from a conservation paradigm that attempts to maintain static conditions to one that manages for sustainable disturbance dynamics.
Fire is one of the most important natural disturbance processes in the western United States and ecosystems differ markedly with respect to their ecological and evolutionary relationships with fire. ...Reference fire regimes in forested ecosystems can be categorized along a gradient ranging from "fuel-limited" to "climate-limited" where the former types are often characterized by frequent, lower-severity wildfires and the latter by infrequent, more severe wildfires. Using spatial data on fire severity from 1984-2011 and metrics related to fire frequency, we tested how divergence from historic (pre-Euroamerican settlement) fire frequencies due to a century of fire suppression influences rates of high-severity fire in five forest types in California. With some variation among bioregions, our results suggest that fires in forest types characterized by fuel-limited fire regimes (e.g., yellow pine and mixed conifer forest) tend to burn with greater proportions of high-severity fire as either time since last fire or the mean modern fire return interval (FRI) increases. Two intermediate fire regime types (mixed evergreen and bigcone Douglas-fir) showed a similar relationship between fire frequency and fire severity. However, red fir and redwood forests, which are characterized by more climate-limited fire regimes, did not show significant positive relationships between FRI and fire severity. This analysis provides strong evidence that for fuel-limited fire regimes, lack of fire leads to increasing rates of high-severity burning. Our study also substantiates the general validity of "fuel-limited" vs. "climate-limited" explanations of differing patterns of fire effects and response in forest types of the western US.
Purpose
Wildfire spatial patterns drive ecological processes including vegetation succession and wildlife community dynamics. Such patterns may be changing due to fire suppression policies and ...climate change, making characterization of trends in post-fire mosaics important for understanding and managing fire-prone ecosystems.
Methods
For wildfires in California’s yellow pine and mixed-conifer forests, spatial pattern trends of two components of the post-fire severity matrix were assessed for 1984–2015: (1) unchanged or very low-severity and (2) high-severity, which represent remnant forest and stand-replacing fire, respectively. Trends were evaluated for metrics of total and proportional burned area, shape complexity, aggregation, and core area. Additionally, comparisons were made between management units where fire suppression is commonly practiced and those with a history of managing wildfire for ecological/resource benefits.
Results
Unchanged or very low-severity area per fire decreased proportionally through time, and became increasingly fragmented. High-severity area and core area increased on average across most of California, with the high-severity component also becoming simpler in shape in the Sierra Nevada. Compared to suppression units, managed wildfire units lack an increase in high-severity area, have less aggregated post-fire mosaics, and more high-severity spatial complexity.
Conclusions
Documented changes in severity patterns have cascading ecological effects including increased vegetation type conversion risk, habitat availability shifts, and remnant forest fragmentation. These changes likely benefit early-seral-associated species at the expense of mature closed-canopy forest-associated species. Managed wildfire appears to moderate some effects of fire suppression, and may help buy time for ecosystems and managers to respond to a changing climate.
Aim
Wildfires increasingly create large high‐severity patches with interior areas far from less disturbed habitats. We evaluated how these trends impact bird communities by investigating the effect ...of internal distance from lower‐severity areas, high‐severity patch size, and years since fire on avian alpha and beta diversity.
Location
Sierra Nevada, California, USA.
Methods
Bird occurrence data were collected during 2009–2017 within high‐severity patches of 27 wildfires representing 1–30 years since disturbance. A two‐step multispecies occupancy method was used to account for imperfect detection of 94 species and estimate effects of patch characteristics on community richness and dissimilarity.
Results
Community richness decreased with distance from patch edge and with patch size. Richness increased with years since fire, but this pattern was dependent on distance from edge with higher peak richness (23 species) near edges than interiors (18 species). Community dissimilarity was not associated with distance, indicating that large high‐severity patch interiors contain subsets of, rather than complements to, edge communities. Dissimilarity peaked later with increasing patch size. Guild richness of tree and primary cavity nesters was negatively associated with distance and patch size. Richness of ground and shrub nesters was insensitive to distance, while shrub nester richness increased somewhat with patch size. Due to declines among other species, ground and shrub nesters made up a greater percentage of the avian community within the interiors of large high‐severity patches.
Main conclusions
As fire activity increases due to accumulating forest fuels and accelerating climate change, high‐severity patches and their resulting early‐seral habitats are becoming more extensive with less edge and more interior area. Such changes are likely to decrease avian diversity locally and shift community composition away from forest‐associated species. Management actions that promote the full range of fire effects but limit high‐severity patch size may best conserve bird diversity within fire‐adapted ecosystems.
Aim
Wildfire burned area, fire size, fire severity and the ecological and socio‐economic impacts of fire have been increasing rapidly in California in recent decades. We summarize the record‐breaking ...2020 wildfire season in California statistically, evaluate the drivers of high‐severity burning in the 2020 fires and consider implications for fire and resource management.
Location
California, USA.
Time period
2020, with consideration of long‐term trends in many variables.
Major taxa studied
Humans, vegetation and wildlife.
Methods
We statistically summarize the record‐breaking 2020 fire year in California and outline the salient ecological and socio‐economic impacts. Then we fit two statistical models to determine how a suite of weather‐ and fuel‐related variables influenced high‐severity burning in different vegetation types and in different fire events during the 2020 fire season.
Results
In 2020, 1.74 million ha burned in California, 2.2 times more than the previous historical record but only average when compared with pre‐Euroamerican conditions. Economic losses exceeded $19 billion, and 33 people were killed directly by fire. Vegetation type and recent fire history had important effects on burning. Variability in high‐severity burning among vegetation types was driven principally by vapour pressure deficit and wind speed; variability among fire events was related principally to time since the last fire (a surrogate for fuel loading).
Main conclusions
The 2020 fires were part of an accelerating decades‐long trend of increasing burned area, fire size, fire severity and socio‐ecological costs in California. In fire‐prone forests, the management emphasis on reducing burned area should be replaced by a focus on reducing the severity of burning and restoring key ecosystem functions after fire. There have been positive developments in California vis‐à‐vis collaborative action and increased pace and scale of fuel management and pre‐ and postfire restoration, but the warming climate and other factors are rapidly constraining our options.
Quantifying pyrodiversity and its drivers Steel, Zachary L; Collins, Brandon M; Sapsis, David B ...
Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences,
04/2021, Letnik:
288, Številka:
1948
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Pyrodiversity or variation in spatio-temporal fire patterns is increasingly recognized as an important determinant of ecological pattern and process, yet no consensus surrounds how best to quantify ...the phenomenon and its drivers remain largely untested. We present a generalizable functional diversity approach for measuring pyrodiversity, which incorporates multiple fire regime traits and can be applied across scales. Further, we tested the socioecological drivers of pyrodiversity among forests of the western United States. Largely mediated by burn activity, pyrodiversity was positively associated with actual evapotranspiration, climate water deficit, wilderness designation, elevation and topographic roughness but negatively with human population density. These results indicate pyrodiversity is highest in productive areas with pronounced annual dry periods and minimal fire suppression. This work can facilitate future pyrodiversity studies including whether and how it begets biodiversity among taxa, regions and fire regimes.
Wildfire can both promote and erode resilience to future disturbances in fire‐adapted ecosystems. Through a combination of past fire exclusion and climate change, fire patterns and successional ...trajectories are shifting with potentially negative consequences for forest resilience. In particular, high‐severity short‐interval reburns can lead to permanent transitions from forested to persistent non‐forested ecosystems.
To test conditions under which wildfires promote resilience or initiate vegetation transitions we leveraged high‐resolution LiDAR data, field data and a natural experiment where two uncharacteristically severe wildfires burned the same area in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Specifically, we evaluate what factors influence resistance to high‐severity reburn and whether early forest recovery is evident following vegetation transition.
Our findings indicate that topography and vegetative structure influenced resistance to high‐severity effects of a second wildfire and that environmental heterogeneity played an important role. Forests that survived the initial burn were most resistant to subsequent high‐severity fire when they were characterized by relatively dense but heterogeneous upper strata and a sparse understorey, located in variable and mesic terrain and burned under milder fire weather conditions. Early seral vegetation was most likely to resist repeat high‐severity fire and potentially continue post‐fire forest recovery when it was located in variable and mesic terrain and was characterized by relatively sparse understorey vegetation and a heterogeneous subcanopy. Some early seral areas that reburned at lower severity showed signs of conifer forest recovery. Vegetation structure and composition of areas that repeatedly burned at high severity are consistent with a transition to persistent shrubland or hardwood forests.
Synthesis. Short‐interval reburns close to historical fire intervals but of unusually high burn severity can create challenges for maintaining resilient forests, as sequential fires can expand upon and stabilize non‐forest vegetation. However, forest communities that survive such disturbances appear partially restored with increased structural heterogeneity and greater resistance to future high‐severity fire. If climate and fire regime trends continue, we are likely to see broadscale shifts towards vegetation types and species able to recover quickly from high‐severity fire at the expense of forests and species resistant to frequent low‐severity fire.
Short‐interval reburns close to historical fire intervals but of unusually high burn severity can create challenges for maintaining resilient forests, as sequential fires can expand upon and stabilize non‐forest vegetation. However, forest communities that survive such disturbances appear partially restored with increased structural heterogeneity and greater resistance to future high‐severity fire. If climate and fire regime trends continue, we are likely to see broadscale shifts towards vegetation types and species able to recover quickly from high‐severity fire at the expense of forests and species resistant to frequent low‐severity fire.
Context
In western US forests, the increasing frequency of large high-severity fires presents challenges for society. Quantifying how fuel conditions influence high-severity area is important for ...managing risks of large high-severity fires and understanding how they are changing with climate change. Fuel availability and heterogeneity influence high-severity fire probability, but heterogeneity is insensitive to some aspects of forest connectivity that are important to potential high-severity fire transmission and thus high-severity area.
Objectives
To quantify the effects of fuel availability, heterogeneity, and connectivity on the proportion of forest area burned at high-severity (high-severity burn area). To use the extreme 2020 fire season to consider how climate change could affect high-severity burn area relationships.
Methods
We used datasets derived from remote sensing to quantify effects of forest fuel availability, heterogeneity, and connectivity on extreme (95th percentile) high-severity burn areas in western US coniferous watersheds from 2001 to 2020. We developed a connectivity metric to quantify potential high-severity fire transmission.
Results
High-severity burn area increased with increasing fuel availability and connectivity and decreased with increasing heterogeneity. In 2020, multiple large high-severity burn areas occurred in forests with high fuel availability, which only had small high-severity burn areas prior to 2020.
Conclusions
In forests with an annual fire season, management to limit forest connectivity and fuel accumulation and increase heterogeneity could mitigate the potential for large high-severity fires. In forests where climate usually limits fire, large high-severity fires may occur more frequently if climate change increases the frequency of years with inadequate climatic barriers to wildfire.
Wildfires in many western North American forests are becoming more frequent, larger, and severe, with changed seasonal patterns. In response, coniferous forest ecosystems will transition toward ...dominance by fire‐adapted hardwoods, shrubs, meadows, and grasslands, which may benefit some faunal communities, but not others. We describe factors that limit and promote faunal resilience to shifting wildfire regimes for terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. We highlight the potential value of interspersed nonforest patches to terrestrial wildlife. Similarly, we review watershed thresholds and factors that control the resilience of aquatic ecosystems to wildfire, mediated by thermal changes and chemical, debris, and sediment loadings. We present a 2‐dimensional life history framework to describe temporal and spatial life history traits that species use to resist wildfire effects or to recover after wildfire disturbance at a metapopulation scale. The role of fire refuge is explored for metapopulations of species. In aquatic systems, recovery of assemblages postfire may be faster for smaller fires where unburned tributary basins or instream structures provide refuge from debris and sediment flows. We envision that more‐frequent, lower‐severity fires will favor opportunistic species and that less‐frequent high‐severity fires will favor better competitors. Along the spatial dimension, we hypothesize that fire regimes that are predictable and generate burned patches in close proximity to refuge will favor species that move to refuges and later recolonize, whereas fire regimes that tend to generate less‐severely burned patches may favor species that shelter in place. Looking beyond the trees to forest fauna, we consider mitigation options to enhance resilience and buy time for species facing a no‐analog future.
Wildfires in many western North American forests are becoming more frequent, larger, and more severe due to changes in climate and past fire suppression. We propose a new life history framework for wildlife response to frequency, intensity, and patch size of wildfire disturbances. Finally, we consider forest management strategies that might enhance the resilience of wildlife under transient future conditions.
A roadmap for pyrodiversity science Steel, Zachary L.; Miller, Jesse E. D.; Ponisio, Lauren C. ...
Journal of biogeography,
February 2024, 2024-02-00, 20240201, Letnik:
51, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Background
Contemporary and projected shifts in global fire regimes highlight the importance of understanding how fire affects ecosystem function and biodiversity across taxa and geographies. ...Pyrodiversity, or heterogeneity in fire history, is often an important driver of biodiversity, though it has been largely overlooked until relatively recently. In this paper, we synthesise previous research to develop a theoretical framework on pyrodiversity–biodiversity relationships and propose future research and conservation management directions.
Theoretical Framework
Pyrodiversity may affect biodiversity by diversifying available ecological niches, stabilising community networks and/or supporting diverse species pools available for post‐fire colonisation. Further, pyrodiversity's effects on biodiversity vary across different spatial, temporal and organismal scales depending on the mobility and other life history traits of the organisms in question and may be mediated by regional eco‐evolutionary factors such as historical fire regimes. Developing a generalisable understanding of pyrodiversity effects on biodiversity has been challenging, in part because pyrodiversity can be quantified in various ways.
Applying the Pyrodiversity Concept
Exclusion of Indigenous fire stewardship, fire suppression, increased unplanned ignitions and climate change have led to dramatic shifts in fire regimes globally. Such shifts include departures from historic levels of pyrodiversity and add to existing challenges to biodiversity conservation in fire‐prone landscapes. Managers navigating these challenges can be aided by targeted research into observed contemporary pyrodiversity–biodiversity relationships as well as knowledge of historical reference conditions informed by both Indigenous and local ecological knowledge and western science.
Future Research Directions
Several promising avenues exist for the advancement of pyrodiversity science to further both theoretical and practical goals. These lines of investigation include but are not limited to (1) testing the increasing variety of pyrodiversity metrics and analytical approaches; (2) assessing the spatial and temporal scale‐dependence of pyrodiversity's influence; (3) reconstructing historical pyrodiversity patterns and developing methods for predicting and/or promoting future pyrodiversity; and (4) expanding the focus of pyrodiversity science beyond biodiversity to better understand its influence on ecosystem function and processes more broadly.