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Full-Text Articles in Forest Sciences
Wildland Fire Deficit And Surplus In The Western United States, 1984-2012, Sean A. Parks, Carol Miller, Marc-Andrè Parisien, Lisa M. Holsinger, Solomon Z. Dobrowski, John Abatzoglou
Wildland Fire Deficit And Surplus In The Western United States, 1984-2012, Sean A. Parks, Carol Miller, Marc-Andrè Parisien, Lisa M. Holsinger, Solomon Z. Dobrowski, John Abatzoglou
Forest Management Faculty Publications
Wildland fire is an important disturbance agent in the western US and globally. However, the natural role of fire has been disrupted in many regions due to the influence of human activities, which have the potential to either exclude or promote fire, resulting in a "fire deficit" or "fire surplus," respectively. In this study, we developed a model of expected area burned for the western US as a function of climate from 1984 to 2012. We then quantified departures from expected area burned to identify geographic regions with fire deficit or surplus. We developed our model of area burned as …
Latent Resilience In Ponderosa Pine Forest: Effects Of Resumed Frequent Fire, Andrew J. Larson, R. Travis Belote, C. Alina Cansler, Sean A. Parks, Matthew S. Dietz
Latent Resilience In Ponderosa Pine Forest: Effects Of Resumed Frequent Fire, Andrew J. Larson, R. Travis Belote, C. Alina Cansler, Sean A. Parks, Matthew S. Dietz
Forest Management Faculty Publications
Ecological systems often exhibit resilient states that are maintained through negative feedbacks. In ponderosa pine forests, fire historically represented the negative feedback mechanism that maintained ecosystem resilience; fire exclusion reduced that resilience, predisposing the transition to an alternative ecosystem state upon reintroduction of fire. We evaluated the effects of reintroduced frequent wildfire in unlogged, fire-excluded, ponderosa pine forest in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana, USA. Initial reintroduction of fire in 2003 reduced tree density and consumed surface fuels, but also stimulated establishment of a dense cohort of lodgepole pine, maintaining a trajectory toward an alternative state. Resumption of a frequent …