Fire Regimes of Lower-elevation Forests in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A. PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Fire Regimes of Lower-elevation Forests in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A. PDF full book. Access full book title Fire Regimes of Lower-elevation Forests in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, U.S.A. by Lisa Battaile LaForest. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Lisa Battaile LaForest
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ecological disturbances
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Get Book Here
Book Description
Disturbance is a natural part of any forest ecosystem. When disturbance regimes are altered, the forest stands will reflect those changes. Southern Appalachian xeric pine-oak woodlands are one forest type that has experienced such change, primarily in the form of fire suppression. The western side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park contains stands of large trees that escaped earlier intensive logging, show evidence of past fire, and provide an ideal setting for reconstructing stand histories. For three lower-elevation (ca. 500 m ASL) study sites, I used cross dated yellow pine tree-ring chronologies and records from cross-sections taken from living and dead pines to reveal historical patterns and relationships of wildfire, climate, and human activity. Cores and vegetation data collected at three 20 x 50 m plots per site provided age structure, stand structure, and stand composition. All three chronologies displayed a high degree of sensitivity to yearly environmental fluctuations and extended back through the 1700s. Yellow pine growth was strongly and positively correlated with winter temperatures, which were primarily influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation. The tested climate variables displayed relationships that appeared to shift over time, or across an ambiguous boundary on which the park resides. Climate oscillations in both the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean modulated wildfire frequency and events. Wildfire events occurred frequently prior to park establishment in 1934 and were primarily anthropogenic in origin. Most fires burned during dormancy or early in the growing season, but widespread and more recent fires tended to occur later. Fire frequency peaked in the 1800s with an average return interval of two years. Absence of wildfire during suppression was associated with establishment of fire-sensitive species, such as red maple and eastern white pine. Yellow pine regeneration was weak and dominated by Virginia pine. Results from this study can be used by park personnel to plan and manage fires to restore ecosystem processes to a pre-suppression state. The chronologies provided three centuries of data that can be used to reconstruct climate variables and to enhance our understanding of climate dynamics.
Author: Lisa Battaile LaForest
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ecological disturbances
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Get Book Here
Book Description
Disturbance is a natural part of any forest ecosystem. When disturbance regimes are altered, the forest stands will reflect those changes. Southern Appalachian xeric pine-oak woodlands are one forest type that has experienced such change, primarily in the form of fire suppression. The western side of Great Smoky Mountains National Park contains stands of large trees that escaped earlier intensive logging, show evidence of past fire, and provide an ideal setting for reconstructing stand histories. For three lower-elevation (ca. 500 m ASL) study sites, I used cross dated yellow pine tree-ring chronologies and records from cross-sections taken from living and dead pines to reveal historical patterns and relationships of wildfire, climate, and human activity. Cores and vegetation data collected at three 20 x 50 m plots per site provided age structure, stand structure, and stand composition. All three chronologies displayed a high degree of sensitivity to yearly environmental fluctuations and extended back through the 1700s. Yellow pine growth was strongly and positively correlated with winter temperatures, which were primarily influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation. The tested climate variables displayed relationships that appeared to shift over time, or across an ambiguous boundary on which the park resides. Climate oscillations in both the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean modulated wildfire frequency and events. Wildfire events occurred frequently prior to park establishment in 1934 and were primarily anthropogenic in origin. Most fires burned during dormancy or early in the growing season, but widespread and more recent fires tended to occur later. Fire frequency peaked in the 1800s with an average return interval of two years. Absence of wildfire during suppression was associated with establishment of fire-sensitive species, such as red maple and eastern white pine. Yellow pine regeneration was weak and dominated by Virginia pine. Results from this study can be used by park personnel to plan and manage fires to restore ecosystem processes to a pre-suppression state. The chronologies provided three centuries of data that can be used to reconstruct climate variables and to enhance our understanding of climate dynamics.
Author: Cathryn H. Greenberg
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319215272
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 406
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book discusses the historic range of variation (HRV) in the types, frequencies, severities and scales of natural disturbances, and explores how they create heterogeneous structure within upland hardwood forests of the Central Hardwood Region (CHR). The book was written in response to a 2012 forest planning rule which requires that national forests to be managed to sustain ‘ecological integrity’ and within the ‘natural range of variation’ of natural disturbances and vegetation structure. Synthesizing information on HRV of natural disturbance types, and their impacts on forest structure, has been identified as a top need.
Author: Mark E. Harmon
Publisher: Forgotten Books
ISBN: 9780266778295
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 106
Get Book Here
Book Description
Excerpt from The Distribution and Dynamics of Forest Fuels in the Low Elevation Forests of Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Research/Resources Management Report No. 32 G. Larson, unpublished data). Total rainfall during a dry year (1976) was 38 cm lower than a typical wet year which had 198 cm. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author: William Flatley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
Ecologists continue to debate the role of fire in forests of the southern Appalachian Mountains. How does climate influence fire in these humid, temperate forests? Did fire regimes change during the transition from Native American settlement to Euro-American settlement? Are fire regime changes resulting in broad vegetation changes in the forests of eastern North America? I used several approaches to address these questions. First, I used digitized fire perimeter maps from Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Shenandoah National Park for 1930-2009 to characterize spatial and temporal patterns of wildfire by aspect, elevation, and landform. Results demonstrate that fuel moisture is a primary control, with fire occurring most frequently during dry years, in dry regions, and at dry topographic positions. Climate also modifies topographic control, with weaker topographic patterns under drier conditions. Second, I used dendroecological methods to reconstruct historical fire frequency in yellow pine (Pinus, subgenus Diploxylon Koehne) stands at three field sites in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The fire history reconstructions extend from 1700 to 2009, with composite fire return intervals ranging from 2-4 years prior to the fire protection period. The two longest reconstructions record frequent fire during periods of Native American land use. Except for the recent fire protection period, temporal changes in land use did not have a significant impact on fire frequency and there was little discernible influence of climate on past fire occurrence. Third, I sampled vegetation composition in four different stand types along a topographic moisture gradient, including mesic cove, sub-mesic white pine (Pinus strobus L.) hardwood, sub-xeric oak (Quercus L.), and xeric pine forests in an unlogged watershed with a reconstructed fire history. Stand age structures demonstrate changes in establishment following fire exclusion in xeric pine stands, sub-xeric oak stands, and sub-mesic white pine-hardwood stands. Fire-tolerant yellow pines and oaks are being replaced by shade-tolerant, fire sensitive species such as red maple (Acer rubrum L.) and hemlock (Tsuga canadensis L. Carr.). Classification analysis and ordination of species composition in different age classes suggest a trend of successional convergence in the absence of fire with a shift from four to two forest communities. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/148082
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forests and forestry
Languages : en
Pages : 660
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Karen Elsa Kopper
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
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.
Author: Kristina Frances Connor
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forests and forestry
Languages : en
Pages : 652
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Mark E. Harmon
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Forest ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 86
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Esther D. Schneider
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Scott M. Bretthauer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Get Book Here
Book Description
