Fire history of Glacier National Park ; Hudson Bay drainage : final report /

Monitoring of the natural resources available in parks is necessary to allow the National Park Service to develop long term management strategies for preservation of those resources for future generations. To this end, personnel at Glacier National Park (GLAC) determined that it was necessary to identify populations of plant species that might serve as indicators of environmental change. Preliminary data on locations of populations of sensitive plants was obtained by the park from work done by Lesica (1984). However, basic life history data on these species bad not been collected and made available to park personnel in such a manner as to interface with existing park data bases. The acquisition of such data was seen as a necessary step in developing a baseline data base that park personnel could use to base future assessments of biological change within the park. The objective of the research described in this final report was to obtain basic life history data from the literature for 52 species of plant populations in GLAC judged to be rare or endangered, and hence potentially sensitive to changes-in the biological and environmental conditions in the park. To accomplish this objective, we used the list of rare plant species given by Lesica (1984; Table 1 of this report) with recent additions by the Montana Natural Heritage Program (1990) as the basis of a literature search to determine the basic life history attributes of each species. We used these data and the locations of populations of each species to document the spatial distribution of the different ecological groups represented by the rare flora of the park. This suggested that park personnel should focus on continued attempts to assess potential ecological changes in response to changes in the global climate induced by human activity. We suggest that the park take an active role in establishing permanent vegetation plots for monitoring changes in these sensitive plant populations. One such study (Lesica and McCune 1989) is already in progress.

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Fire History of the Lamar River Drainage, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

The UW National Parks Service Research Station Annual Reports ◽

10.13001/uwnpsrc.1989.2821 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 13 ◽

pp. 169-173

Author(s):

Stephen Barrett ◽

Stephen Arno

Keyword(s):

Yellowstone National Park ◽

National Park ◽

Fire History ◽

Fire Regime ◽

Lodgepole Pine ◽

Fire Regimes ◽

Pine Forests ◽

River Drainage ◽

Tree Ring Data ◽

History Of

This study's goal is to document the fire history of the Lamar River drainage, southeast of Soda Butte Creek in the Absaroka Mountains of northeastern Yellowstone National Park (YNP). Elsewhere in YNP investigators have documented very long-interval fire regimes for lodgepole pine forests occurring on rhyolitic derived soils (Romme 1982, Romme and Despain 1989) and short-interval fire regimes for the Douglas-fir/grassland types (Houston 1973). No fire regime information was available for lodgepole pine forests on andesitic derived soils, such as in the Lamar drainage. This study will provide managers with a more complete understanding of YNP natural fire history, and the data will supplement the park's Geographic Information System (GIS) data base. Moreover, most of the study area was severely burned in 1988 and historical tree ring data soon will be lost to attrition of potential sample trees.

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Vegetation dynamics and Fire History in Färnebofjärden National Park, Central Sweden

The Holocene ◽

10.1177/0959683620961513 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 28-37

Author(s):

Gina E Hannon ◽

Karen Halsall ◽

Chiara Molinari ◽

Erin Stoll ◽

Diana Lilley ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Iron Age ◽

National Park ◽

Fire History ◽

Plant Macrofossils ◽

Natural Fire ◽

Disturbance Factor ◽

Long Time ◽

History Of ◽

Flooding Events

Palaeoecological studies can identify past trends in vegetation communities and processes over long time scales. Pollen, plant macrofossils and charcoal analyses are used to reconstruct vegetation over the last 6400 years and provide information about former human impact and disturbance regimes in Färnebofjärden National Park, Central Sweden. Three specific conservation planning topics were addressed: (1) the changing ratio of conifers to broadleaved trees; (2) the origin and history of the river meadows and the biodiverse Populus tremula meadows; (3) the role of fire in the maintenance of biological values. Early diverse mixed broadleaved forest assemblages with pine were followed by significant declines of the more thermophilic forest elements prior to the expansion of spruce in the Iron Age. The rise to dominance of spruce was a ‘natural’ process that has been exaggerated by anthropogenic disturbance to artificially high levels today. The initial river meadow communities were facilitated by fire and frequent flooding events, but subsequent dynamics have more definitely been supported by human activities. Rural abandonment during the last 100 years has led to woody successions. Fire has been a continual disturbance factor with an influence on conservation issues such as Picea abies dominance and the maintenance of diverse, non-forest communities. Present occurrence of fire is unusually low, but natural fire frequencies are increasing in the region.

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