Fire Regimes in National Parks of the Pacific Northwest PDF Download

Author: Karen Elsa Kopper
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Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
There has been a significant increase in fire activity in the western United States over the past two decades, attributed to climate change, but much of the data that support this attribution are from fires in frequent, low-severity fire regimes. Recent increases in fires with mixed- and high-severity fire regimes of the Pacific Northwest have highlighted the importance of collecting baseline data and understanding fire-climate interactions in forests with less frequent fire to inform research and guide management. My dissertation focuses on these objectives in three chapters. In the first chapter, I characterized historical fire frequency and severity over 400 years in a dry, mixed conifer forest in Stehekin, Lake Chelan National Recreation Area in Washington state, and used ANOVA and GLM to identify the bottom-up controls on fire in this mountainous terrain. I found that fire frequency was high before the fire suppression era (31-year mean fire-interval), increased significantly during the non-Indigenous settlement period, and was impacted by fire suppression (51-year mean fire interval following suppression). Both fire frequency and severity are controlled by a complex interaction among topography, site, and environmental variables, which could increase resilience to climate change. In the second chapter, I classified and mapped fuel characteristics (fuelbeds) and fire potentials across a low-frequency, high-severity fire regime (Mount Rainier National Park, (the Park)) using a combination of field data, LiDAR, and climate data. Using this examination at high-resolution, I identified higher fuel loadings and fire potentials on the west side of the Park that could eventually indicate greater impacts and changes there, although the effects of climate change are more certain and will come sooner on the east side. In the last chapter, I reviewed bottom-up controls (topography and fuels) on fire frequency across the continuum of moist, high-severity fire regimes to dry, low-severity fire regimes from the west side of the Olympic Mountains to the east side of the north and central Cascades. Using this examination, I identify and describe a corresponding “fuel management continuum” to inform wildfire and forest management strategies.