Fires and Climate in Forested Landscapes of the U.S. Rocky Mountains

Baker, William L.

doi:10.1007/0-387-21710-x_5

Cited by 23 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 115 publications

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“…Persistent high-pressure blocking systems affect regional temperature and precipitation patterns throughout the Rockies and may respond to global climate anomalies (Baker 2003). Regional synchrony of large, highseverity fires across subalpine forests corroborates the idea that high-elevation forest fires respond to broad scale synoptic climate (Nash and Johnson 1996, Kipfmueller and Baker 2000, Baker 2003. In moist high-elevation forests, successive seasons of drought can initiate large, stand-replacing fires (Balling et al 1992, Kipfmueller and.…”

Section: High-severity Fire Regimesmentioning

confidence: 53%

“…Drought, which had started years earlier, extended beyond its immediate region during the summer of 1988. From 1977 to 1989, a strong Pacific North America pattern developed, creating a blocking ridge over the northwestern United States that reduced winter snowpack across Montana and Wyoming (Baker 2003). Low winter snowpack in 1988, followed by an unusually dry, hot, and windy summer, contributed to extreme burning conditions in the park (Balling et al 1992).…”

Section: High-severity Fire Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Interaction of Fire, Fuels, and Climate across Rocky Mountain Forests

Schoennagel¹,

Veblen²,

Romme³

2004

BioScience

677

636

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Section: High-severity Fire Regimesmentioning

confidence: 53%

Section: High-severity Fire Regimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Interaction of Fire, Fuels, and Climate across Rocky Mountain Forests

Schoennagel¹,

Veblen²,

Romme³

2004

BioScience

677

636

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“…Section 2.1). These forests share many similarities with the closedcanopy subalpine and boreal coniferous forests of North America (Ellenberg, 1996;Bugmann, 2001), where it has been suggested that the fire regime is mainly climate-driven, and that fuel availability basically had no limiting influence (Agee, 1993;Johnson et al, 2001;Baker, 2003;Sibold et al, 2006). However, the main reason for the differences in contributions of the predictor relates probably more to the level of "directness" in the relationship between the selected proxies and the fire drivers they stand for.…”

Section: Methodological Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Weather and human impacts on forest fires: 100 years of fire history in two climatic regions of Switzerland

Zumbrunnen

Pezzatti

Menéndez

et al. 2011

Forest Ecology and Management

104

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“…The Sierra Nevada has a Mediterranean climate with welldefined dry and wet seasons; drought years are coincident with more area burned, with fö hn winds promoting extreme fire behavior in the late summer and autumn (Minnich 2006). Regional-fire years in the Northern Rockies are associated with broad scale synoptic climate (Baker 2003. Infrequent high-pressure blocking systems promote extremely dry regional climate patterns Despain 1989, Bessie andJohnson 1995) and may respond to global climate anomalies (Baker 2003).…”

Section: Study Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regional-fire years in the Northern Rockies are associated with broad scale synoptic climate (Baker 2003. Infrequent high-pressure blocking systems promote extremely dry regional climate patterns Despain 1989, Bessie andJohnson 1995) and may respond to global climate anomalies (Baker 2003). Climate regimes in the three regions interact through teleconnections (Baker 2003, Macias Fauria et al 2011; for example, years with more area burned in the Southwest tend to be quieter years in the Northern Rockies, and fire synchrony has been documented in fire scars from the Sierra Nevada and the Southwest (Swetnam and Baisan 2003).…”

Section: Study Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wilderness shapes contemporary fire size distributions across landscapes of the western United States

Haire¹,

McGarigal²,

Miller

2013

Ecosphere

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Abstract. In many U.S. federally designated wilderness areas, wildfires are likely to burn of their own accord due to favorable management policies and remote location. Previous research suggested that limitations on fire size can result from the evolution of natural fire regimes, specifically in places where fuels were recently reduced by previous burning. To explore the broader-scale importance of fire management on wilderness landscapes, we selected three study regions representing diverse ecosystems in the western U.S. and modeled the change in fire size distributions across a gradient defined by wilderness/ non-wilderness boundaries. For randomly selected locations across the gradient, we derived a scaling parameter (a) using fire size-frequency data for public lands ; the parameter reflected the magnitude of change in the right tail of the fire size distribution where the largest fires reside. We then used quantile regression to model changes in a across the wilderness gradient, interpreting the results in terms of constraints on the relative role of large fires in structuring the fire size distribution. In the Southwest study region, the influence of large fires on size distributions decreased across the gradient toward wilderness at some places, suggesting that increased occurrence of natural burning, favored by wilderness management, led to limitations on fire sizes within recent timeframes. In contrast, we were unable to support the expectation that wilderness fire management limits the role of large fires in the Sierra Nevada and Northern Rockies study regions. Rather, the predominance of large fires increased toward wilderness interiors. Among spatial climate and topographic roughness variables included in our study, only winter and fire season precipitation limited fire size in the Northern Rockies, whereas several constraints on large fire occurrence operated in other regions. In southwestern ecosystems, evidence is needed to document stability in fire size distributions through time. In ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada and Northern Rockies, a longer temporal extent of observations may better match scales of disturbance and recovery. Our findings reflect the role of wilderness in addressing a fire deficit which has resulted from strong human influences on forests and fires over the past 150 years.

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Fires and Climate in Forested Landscapes of the U.S. Rocky Mountains

Cited by 23 publications

References 115 publications

The Interaction of Fire, Fuels, and Climate across Rocky Mountain Forests

The Interaction of Fire, Fuels, and Climate across Rocky Mountain Forests

Weather and human impacts on forest fires: 100 years of fire history in two climatic regions of Switzerland

Wilderness shapes contemporary fire size distributions across landscapes of the western United States

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