Forest Economics, Natural Disturbances and the New Ecology

Holmes, Thomas P.; Huggett, Robert J.; Pye, John M.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-4370-3_2

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 71 publications

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“…Within the context of wildfires and land use planning, species change and fuel accumulation resulting from fire suppression (Dombeck et al, 2004), climate change (Westerling et al, 2006), and landscape homogenisation (Loepfe et al, 2010) are slow moving variables that influence the occurrence and severity of wildfires (a fast variable). Public planning efforts designed to protect the public from the undesirable consequences of wildfires would benefit from a better understanding of the feedback between slow and fast variables at a landscape scale (Holmes et al, 2008b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A stochastic Forest Fire Model for future land cover scenarios assessment

D’Andrea

Fiorucci

Holmes

2010

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Land cover is affected by many factors including economic development, climate and natural disturbances such as wildfires. The ability to evaluate how fire regimes may alter future vegetation, and how future vegetation may alter fire regimes, would assist forest managers in planning management actions to be carried out in the face of anticipated socio-economic and climatic change. In this paper, we present a method for calibrating a cellular automata wildfire regime simulation model with actual data on land cover and wildfire size-frequency. The method is based on the observation that many forest fire regimes, in different forest types and regions, exhibit power law frequency-area distributions. The standard Drossel-Schwabl cellular automata Forest Fire Model (DS-FFM) produces simulations which reproduce this observed pattern. However, the standard model is simplistic in that it considers land cover to be binary -each cell either contains a tree or it is empty -and the model overestimates the frequency of large fires relative to actual landscapes. Our new model, the Modified Forest Fire Model (MFFM), addresses this limitation by incorporating information on actual land use and differentiating among various types of flammable vegetation. The MFFM simulation model was tested on forest types with Mediterranean and sub-tropical fire regimes. The results showed that the MFFM was able to reproduce structural fire regime parameters for these two regions. Further, the model was used to forecast future land cover. Future research will extend this model to refine the forecasts of future land cover and fire regime scenarios under climate, land use and socio-economic change.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A stochastic Forest Fire Model for future land cover scenarios assessment

D’Andrea

Fiorucci

Holmes

2010

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Forest roadsides harbour less competitive habitats for a relict mountain plant (Pulsatilla vernalis) in lowlands

Zielińska

Kiedrzyński

Grzyl

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

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The long-term survival of relict populations depends on the accessibility of appropriate sites (microrefugia). In recent times, due to the mass extinction of rare species that has resulted from the loss of natural habitats, the question is – Are there any human-made sites that can act as refugial habitats? We examined forest roadside populations of the mountain plant Pulsatilla vernalis in the last large lowland refugium in Central Europe. We compared the habitat conditions and community structure of roadsides with P. vernalis against the forest interior. Light availability and bryophyte composition were the main factors that distinguished roadsides. Pulsatilla occurred on sites that had more light than the forest interior, but were also more or less shaded by trees, so more light came as one-side illumination from the road. Roadsides had also a lower coverage of bryophytes that formed large, dense carpets. At the same time, they were characterised by a greater richness of vascular plants and ‘small’ bryophytes, which corresponds to a higher frequency of disturbances. In a warming and more fertile Anthropocene world, competition plays the main role in the transformation of forest communities, which is why relict populations have found refugia in extensively disturbed human-made habitats.

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