scholarly journals Contradictions and Continuities: A Historical Context to Euro-American Settlement Era Fires of the Lake States, USA.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed Meunier
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Fire Behavior ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Fire Scar ◽  
Large Fires ◽  
Lake States ◽  
Historical Accounts

Abstract BackgroundThe Lake States experienced unprecedented land use changes during Euro-American settlement (settlement) including large, destructive fires. Forest changes were radical in this region and largely attributed to anomalous settlement era fires in slash (cumulation of tops and branches) following cutover logging. In this study I place settlement era fires in a historical context by examining fire scar data in comparison to historical accounts and investigate fire-vegetation-climate relationships within a 400-year context.ResultsSettlement era fires (1851–1947) were less frequent than historical fires (1548–1850) with little evidence that slash impacted fire frequency or occurrence at site or ecoregion scales. Only one out of 25 sites had more frequent settlement era fires and that site was a pine forest that had never been harvested. Settlement era fires were similar across disparate ecoregions and forest types including in areas with very different land use history. Settlement fires tended to burn during significantly dry periods, the same conditions driving large fires for the past 400 years. The burned area in the October 8, 1871 Peshtigo Fire was comprised of mesic forests where fuels were always abundant and high-severity fires would be expected given the conditions in 1871. Furthermore, slash would not have been a major contributor to fire behavior or effects in the Peshtigo Fire.ConclusionsHistorical records, like written accounts of fires and settlement era survey records, provide a reference point for landscape changes but lack temporal depth to understand forest dynamics or provide a mechanistic understanding of changes. While settlement land use changes of Lake States forests were pervasive, fires were not the ultimate degrading factor, but rather likely one of the few natural processes still at work.

scholarly journals Fire History and Potential Fire Behavior in a Rocky Mountain Foothill Landscape

1990 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 29-29
Author(s):  
Yegang Wu ◽  
Dennis Knight
Keyword(s):  
Fire History ◽  
Fire Behavior ◽  
Grid Cell ◽  
Rocky Mountain ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Stand Age ◽  
Weibull Function ◽  
Peak Period ◽  
Fire Scar ◽  
Surface Fires

A landscape approach was used to study fire history and fire behavior in the Douglas-fir forests and foothill vegetation of the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in southcentral Montana. The 3,976 ha study area was divided into 4-ha grid cells, and traditional fire scar analysis and fuel sampling methods were used for data collection in each cell. There have been 15 surface fires during the last 109 years and 10 canopy fires during the last 360 years. The mean fire interval in the forests as a whole, was 7 years for surface fires and 31 years for canopy fires. Using the Weibull function, the recurrent time for fire in a specific grid cell was 212 and 226 years for surface and canopy fires, respectively. The distribution of the probability density function showed that there was a peak of high canopy fire frequency between 150-250 years of stand age. There was no obvious peak period for surface fires in humid ravines, which suggests that surface fires there are not associated with aging. Employing Rothermel's model, a fire behavior model (FIREMDL) was developed and linked it to a geographic information system (GRASS) to simulate flammability of each grid cell under different conditions of fuel moisture and wind velocity. The results suggest that flammability is highly variable because of differences in vegetation and topographic position.

Statistical analysis of fire frequency models for Catalonia (NE Spain), 1975 - 1998) based on fire scar maps from Landsat MSS data

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Díaz-Delgado ◽  
Francisco Lloret ◽  
Xavier Pons
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Rotation Period ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Fire Occurrence ◽  
Natural Fire ◽  
Fire Scar ◽  
Fire Intervals ◽  
Ne Spain

This paper estimates fire frequency in Catalonia (NE Spain) for the last quarter of the 20th Century (1975–1998) from historical burned area maps. Remote sensing images provided perimeters of fires ≥ 30 ha, which were used to characterize the temporal patterns of fire occurrence in Catalonia. Several fire frequency models were used to reproduce the observed pattern of wildfires occurrence in the study period. Natural fire rotation period was estimated to be 133 years. Poisson tests were carried out to check random fire occurrence either along the time period or across the analysed region. Observed fires were not randomly generated either in space or in time, despite being sampled using two different plot sizes. This sampling design was also used for Mean Fire Interval (MFI) analysis, which allowed us to significantly fit a Weibull distribution to the observed proportion of fire intervals (for both sample sizes), enabling us to estimate the hazard of burning, mortality, and survivorship functions. Finally, MFI was also applied to forest regions of Catalonia, which are defined according to forest management plans based on their homogeneous climatic conditions. Such an analysis revealed relevant differences in forest management and their consequences on fire occurrence.

scholarly journals Sensitivity of simulated historical burned area to environmental andanthropogenic controls: A comparison of seven fire models

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Teckentrup ◽  
Sandy P. Harrison ◽  
Stijn Hantson ◽  
Angelika Heil ◽  
Joe R. Melton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Global Change ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Fire Behavior ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Strong Response ◽  
Fire Models ◽  
In Fire ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Understanding how fire regimes change over time is of major importance for understanding their future impact on the Earth system, including society. Large differences in simulated burned area between fire models show that there is substantial uncertainty associated with modelling global change impacts on fire regimes. We draw here on sensitivity simulations made by seven global dynamic vegetation models participating in the Fire Model Intercomparison Project (FireMIP) to understand how differences in models translate into differences in fire regime projections. The sensitivity experiments isolate the impact of the individual drivers of fire, which are prescribed in the simulations. Specifically these drivers are atmospheric CO2, population density, land-use change, lightning and climate. The seven models capture spatial patterns in burned area. However, they show considerable differences in the burned area trends since 1900. We analyse the trajectories of differences between the sensitivity and reference simulation to improve our understanding of what drives the global trend in burned area. Where it is possible, we link the inter-model differences to model assumptions. Overall, these analyses reveal that the strongest differences leading to diverging trajectories are related to the way anthropogenic ignitions and suppression, as well as the effects of land-use on vegetation and fire, are incorporated in individual models. This points to a need to improve our understanding and model representation of the relationship between human activities and fire to improve our abilities to model fire for global change applications. Only two models show a strong response to CO2 and the response to lightning on global scale is low for all models. The sensitivity to climate shows a spatially heterogeneous response and globally only two models show a significant trend. It was not possible to attribute the climate-induced changes in burned area to model assumptions or specific climatic parameters. However, the strong influence of climate on the inter-annual variability in burned area, shown by all the models, shows that we need to pay attention to the simulation of fire weather but also meteorological influences on biomass accumulation and fuel properties in order to better capture extremes in fire behavior.

scholarly journals Fire Frequency and Related Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes in Indonesia’s Peatlands

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yenni Vetrita ◽  
Mark A. Cochrane
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Cover ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Swamp Forest ◽  
Lulc Change ◽  
Surface Areas ◽  
Moderate Resolution ◽  
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer

Indonesia’s converted peatland areas have a well-established fire problem, but limited studies have examined the frequency with which they are burning. Here, we quantify fire frequency in Indonesia’s two largest peatland regions, Sumatra and Kalimantan, during 2001–2018. We report, annual areas burned, total peatland area affected by fires, amount of recurrent burning and associations with land-use and land-cover (LULC) change. We based these analyses on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra/Aqua combined burned area and three Landsat-derived LULC maps (1990, 2007, and 2015) and explored relationships between burning and land-cover types. Cumulative areas burned amounted nearly half of the surface areas of Sumatra and Kalimantan but were concentrated in only ~25% of the land areas. Although peatlands cover only 13% of Sumatra and Kalimantan, annual percentage of area burning in these areas was almost five times greater than in non-peatlands (2.8% vs. 0.6%) from 2001 to 2018. Recurrent burning was more prominent in Kalimantan than Sumatra. Average fire-return intervals (FRI) in peatlands of both regions were short, 28 and 45 years for Kalimantan and Sumatra, respectively. On average, forest FRI were less than 50 years. In non-forest areas, Kalimantan had shorter average FRI than Sumatra (13 years vs. 40 years), with ferns/low shrub areas burning most frequently. Our findings highlight the significant influence of LULC change in altering fire regimes. If prevalent rates of burning in Indonesia’s peatlands are not greatly reduced, peat swamp forest will disappear from Sumatra and Kalimantan in the coming decades.

Fire Suppression's Effects on Forest Succession within a Central Idaho Wilderness

1988 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 76-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Pinus Ponderosa ◽  
Ponderosa Pine ◽  
Forest Succession ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Fire Behavior ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Tree Regeneration ◽  
Fire Scar ◽  
South Central ◽  
Central Idaho

Abstract In south-central Idaho, fire-scar and tree regeneration patterns in the Salmon River Breaks portion of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness suggest that primarily surface fires occurred frequently in semiarid ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa var. ponderosa)/Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) forests. Efficient fire suppression since about 1935 has markedly reduced area fire frequency and has altered fuel succession, contributing to recent crown fire behavior in north- and east-facing stands. Prescribed fires might now be difficult to contain in these communities, but burning would help return fuels to pre-1935 conditions. West. J. Appl. For. 3(3):76-80, July 1988.

Modelling spatiotemporal variability in fires in semiarid savannas: a satellite-based assessment around Africa’s largest protected area

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (7) ◽  
pp. 730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niti B. Mishra ◽  
Kumar P. Mainali ◽  
Kelley A. Crews
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Negative Binomial ◽  
Null Model ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Spatiotemporal Variability ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Vegetation Types ◽  
Variance Explained

The relative importance of various drivers of fire regimes in savanna ecosystems can be location-specific. We utilised satellite-derived time-series burned area (2001–13) to examine how spatiotemporal variations in burned area and fire frequency were determined by rainfall, vegetation morphology and land use in semiarid savanna. Mean precipitation of the rainy season (Nov–Apr) had a strong and positive relationship with burned area in the following dry season (variance explained 63%), with the relationship being strongest inside protected areas (variance explained 73%). Burned area and fire frequency were higher in vegetation types with higher herbaceous cover, indicating a causal link between herbaceous load and fire. Among land use, fire frequency was highest in protected areas and lowest in farms and ranches. Spatial models (generalised linear models with Poisson and negative binomial distribution) accounting for spatial autocorrelation showed that land-use classes and vegetation types together explained approximately half of the deviance in null model (48%). Existence of fences and boreholes resulted in finer-scale spatial differences in fire frequency. There was minimal dependence of vegetation types on land-use classes in determining fire frequency (interaction between the two predictors was minimal). These results have significant implications for understanding drivers of fire activity in savanna ecosystems.

scholarly journals Responses of Plant Biomass in the Brazilian Savanna to Frequent Fires

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Letícia Gomes ◽  
Heloisa Sinátora Miranda ◽  
Britaldo Soares-Filho ◽  
Lucas Rodrigues ◽  
Ubirajara Oliveira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ecological Model ◽  
Plant Biomass ◽  
Fire Behavior ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Quantitative Model ◽  
Fire Intensity ◽  
Economic Losses ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Environmental Damage

Fire has been a natural feature of the ecosystem for million years. Still, currently fire regimes have been increasingly altered by human activities and climate change, causing economic losses, air pollution, and environmental damage. In Brazil, savannas (locally known as the Cerrado) occupy almost 25% of the area of the country and contain 70% of the concentrated burned area. Fire frequency is related to the use of biannual fire in agricultural practices, aiming at cleaning cattle pastures, which act as ignition sources for the surrounding natural vegetation. Here, we present an ecological model to demonstrate how biennial fire affects plant biomass and carbon release from fine fuel in the Cerrado. The BEFIRE model (Behavior and Effect of Fire) is the first quantitative model to simulate the relationships between fire frequency, plant biomass, and fire-associated emissions based on the synthesis of knowledge about fire behavior and the effects on ecosystems compiled from experimental burnings in the Cerrado. Our model uses microclimate variables and vegetation structure (the amount of the aboveground biomass of trees, shrubs, herbs, and grasses) as inputs, and generates outputs related to the fire behavior (fire spread rate, fire intensity, and heat released) and the fire effects on the dynamic of plant biomass and post-fire carbon emissions. The BEFIRE model predicts that biennial fires allow for the recovery of the biomass of herbs and grasses, due to its fast growth. However, this fire interval does not allow for the recovery of the biomass of shrubs and trees. These growth limitations alter the co-existence of trees/shrubs and herbs/grasses and prevent the uptake of the total amount of emitted carbon from the combustion of fine fuel. Based on the model results, we proposed some recommendations for fire management in this threatened biome.

scholarly journals Modelling burned area in Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 3199-3214 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Lehsten ◽  
P. Harmand ◽  
I. Palumbo ◽  
A. Arneth
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Performance Model ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Wet Season ◽  
Model C

Abstract. The simulation of current and projected wildfires is essential for predicting crucial aspects of vegetation patterns, biogeochemical cycling as well as pyrogenic emissions across the African continent. This study uses a data-driven approach to parameterize two burned area models applicable to dynamic vegetation models (DVMs) and Earth system models (ESMs). We restricted our analysis to variables for which either projections based on climate scenarios are available, or that are calculated by DVMs, and we consider a spatial scale of one degree as the scale typical for DVMs and ESMs. By using the African continent here as an example, an analogue approach could in principle be adopted for other regions, for global scale dynamic burned area modelling. We used 9 years of data (2000–2008) for the variables: precipitation over the last dry season, the last wet season and averaged over the last 2 years, a fire-danger index (the Nesterov index), population density, and annual proportion of area burned derived from the MODIS MCD45A1 product. Two further variables, tree and herb cover were only available for 2001 as a remote sensing product. Since the effect of fires on vegetation depends strongly on burning conditions, the timing of wildfires is of high interest too, and we were able to relate the seasonal occurrence of wildfires to the daily Nesterov index. We parameterized two generalized linear models (GLMs), one with the full variable set (model VC) and one considering only climate variables (model C). All introduced variables resulted in an increase in model performance. Model VC correctly predicts the spatial distribution and extent of fire prone areas though the total variability is underrepresented. Model VC has a much lower performance in both aspects (correlation coefficient of predicted and observed ratio of burned area: 0.71 for model VC and 0.58 for model C). We expect the remaining variability to be attributed to additional variables which are not available at a global scale and thus not incorporated in this study as well as its coarse resolution. An application of the models using climate hindcasts and projections ranging from 1980 to 2060 resulted in a strong decrease of burned area of ca. 20–25%. Since wildfires are an integral part of land use practices in Africa, their occurrence is an indicator of areas favourable for food production. In absence of other compensating land use changes, their projected decrease can hence be interpreted as a indicator for future loss of such areas.

Analisis Perubahan Tata Guna Lahan di Kabupaten Bantul Menggunakan Metode Global Moran’s I

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus Supriyanto Rumetna ◽  
Eko Sediyono ◽  
Kristoko Dwi Hartomo
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Land Use Change ◽  
Spatial Autocorrelation ◽  
Land Use Changes ◽  
Geographical Information ◽  
Moran’S I ◽  
Complete Spatial Randomness ◽  
Moran's I ◽  
Global Moran’S I ◽  
Spatial Randomness

Abstract. Bantul Regency is a part of Yogyakarta Special Province Province which experienced land use changes. This research aims to assess the changes of shape and level of land use, to analyze the pattern of land use changes, and to find the appropriateness of RTRW land use in Bantul District in 2011-2015. Analytical methods are employed including Geoprocessing techniques and analysis of patterns of distribution of land use changes with Spatial Autocorrelation (Global Moran's I). The results of this study of land use in 2011, there are thirty one classifications, while in 2015 there are thirty four classifications. The pattern of distribution of land use change shows that land use change in 2011-2015 has a Complete Spatial Randomness pattern. Land use suitability with the direction of area function at RTRW is 24030,406 Ha (46,995406%) and incompatibility of 27103,115 Ha or equal to 53,004593% of the total area of Bantul Regency.Keywords: Geographical Information System, Land Use, Geoprocessing, Global Moran's I, Bantul Regency. Abstrak. Analisis Perubahan Tata Guna Lahan di Kabupaten Bantul Menggunakan Metode Global Moran’s I. Kabupaten Bantul merupakan bagian dari Provinsi Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta yang mengalami perubahan tata guna lahan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji perubahan bentuk dan luas penggunaan lahan, menganalisis pola sebaran perubahan tata guna lahan, serta kesesuaian tata guna lahan terhadap RTRW yang terjadi di Kabupaten Bantul pada tahun 2011-2015. Metode analisis yang digunakan antara lain teknik Geoprocessing serta analisis pola sebaran perubahan tata guna lahan dengan Spatial Autocorrelation (Global Moran’s I). Hasil dari penelitian ini adalah penggunaan tanah pada tahun 2011, terdapat tiga puluh satu klasifikasi, sedangkan pada tahun 2015 terdapat tiga puluh empat klasifikasi. Pola sebaran perubahan tata guna lahan menunjukkan bahwa perubahan tata guna lahan tahun 2011-2015 memiliki pola Complete Spatial Randomness. Kesesuaian tata guna lahan dengan arahan fungsi kawasan pada RTRW adalah seluas 24030,406 Ha atau mencapai 46,995406 % dan ketidaksesuaian seluas 27103,115 Ha atau sebesar 53,004593 % dari total luas wilayah Kabupaten Bantul. Kata Kunci: Sistem Informasi Georafis, tata guna lahan, Geoprocessing, Global Moran’s I, Kabupaten Bantul.

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