Is fire severity increasing in the Sierra Nevada, California, USA?

Hanson, Chad T.; Odion, Dennis C.

doi:10.1071/wf13016

Cited by 49 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Examining trends from 1984 to 2006 for large ecoregions in the north-and southwest USA, Dillon et al [71] found no significant increase in the proportion of annual area burned at high severity for five of the six regions considered, with the southern Rockies being the exception. For the Sierra Nevada region (California), which was not covered in the previous study [71], Hanson & Odion [72,73] found no general increase in fire severity within the period 1984-2010. Considering ten national forests in California for the same period, Miller & Safford [74] found a significant increase in burn severity for yellow pine -mixed conifer forests.…”

Section: Have Fire Impacts Increased In Many Regionsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world

Doerr¹,

Santín²

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

468

269

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Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth's surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence. Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. Regarding fire severity, limited data are available. For the western USA, they indicate little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement. Direct fatalities from fire and economic losses also show no clear trends over the past three decades. Trends in indirect impacts, such as health problems from smoke or disruption to social functioning, remain insufficiently quantified to be examined. Global predictions for increased fire under a warming climate highlight the already urgent need for a more sustainable coexistence with fire. The data evaluation presented here aims to contribute to this by reducing misconceptions and facilitating a more informed understanding of the realities of global fire. This article is part of themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.

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Section: Have Fire Impacts Increased In Many Regionsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world

Doerr¹,

Santín²

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

468

269

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The area affected by high-severity fire, in which most of the canopy vegetation is killed, is also increasing [35,36] and contrasts starkly with fire regimes prior to European-American settlement [37] (but see [38]). With the increasing prominence of larger, higher severity fires on the landscape, it is important to understand how shifting fire regimes affect the floral and faunal diversity of these fire-prone systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pyrodiversity promotes avian diversity over the decade following forest fire

et al. 2016

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An emerging hypothesis in fire ecology is that pyrodiversity increases species diversity. We test whether pyrodiversity-defined as the standard deviation of fire severity-increases avian biodiversity at two spatial scales, and whether and how this relationship may change in the decade following fire. We use a dynamic Bayesian community model applied to a multi-year dataset of bird surveys at 1106 points sampled across 97 fires in montane California. Our results provide strong support for a positive relationship between pyrodiversity and bird diversity. This relationship interacts with time since fire, with pyrodiversity having a greater effect on biodiversity at 10 years post-fire than at 1 year post-fire. Immediately after fires, patches of differing burn severities hold similar bird communities, but over the ensuing decade, bird assemblages within patches of contrasting severities differentiate. When evaluated at the scale of individual fires, fires with a greater heterogeneity of burn severities hold substantially more species. High spatial heterogeneity in severity, sometimes called 'mixed-severity fire', is a natural part of wildfire regimes in western North America, but may be jeopardized by climate change and a legacy of fire suppression. Forest management that encourages mixed-severity fire may be critical for sustaining biodiversity across fire-prone landscapes.

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“…In terms of actual patterns in fire occurrence under changing climate, there is no ongoing trend in the proportion of fire that is high in severity in the dry Cascades of Oregon [40,41]; nor is there a trend in the amounts of high-severity fire in the southern Cascades of California [42], but data are only available since 1984. The upward trend in fire severity in the Sierra Nevada reported by Miller et al [43] and Miller and Safford [44] using an incomplete regional data set does not exist when all the currently available burn severity data are analyzed, using the more comprehensive U.S. government fire severity data base from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity, or "MTBS", and using forest mapping that pre-dates the time series to avoid missing montane conifer forest that experiences higher severity fire and is later remapped as chaparral [45]. While increased fire in the future could help prevent further habitat decline, under current management habitat may still be limited and ultimately insufficient in the future for black- …”

Section: Fig (5)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Projecting Impacts of Fire Management on a Biodiversity Indicator in the Sierra Nevada and Cascades, USA: The Black-Backed Woodpecker

Odion

Hanson²

2013

TOFSCIJ

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Abstract:In the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade ranges of California and Oregon, a genetically distinct population of the black-backed woodpecker has become rare due, in part, to fire suppression. This species is considered an indicator species for its primary habitat: early successional burned forests with an abundance of standing dead trees. Fuel reduction treatments such as post-fire logging, and forest thinning prior to fire (by creating insufficient snag density and enhancing fire suppression), may further reduce this habitat, but this has not been quantified. Our goal here is to address this information gap. Specifically, we first quantified the impacts of fire suppression and fuel treatments on primary habitat for the black-backed woodpecker. Our objective in this paper was to address how fire management affects the primary habitat of the black-back woodpecker and associated species in the Sierra Nevada and Cascades. We found that fire suppression was associated with a dramatic reduction in stand-initiation processes, a proxy for tree mortality, since the 1930s on public lands. We additionally found that thinning and post-fire clear cutting each exacerbated the effects of fire suppression by reducing primary habitat at an approximately 1:1 ratio with area treated. A scenario based on thinning 20 percent of mature forests over a 20 year period, and post-fire logging in 33% of potential habitat created by fire, reduced the amount of primary habitat after 27 years to 30%of the amount that would occur without these treatments, assuming that modeled effects of the fuel treatments in controlling fire may be realized. Our results indicate that conserving the distinct population of black-backed woodpeckers in the southern Cascades and Sierra Nevada and the biodiversity for which they are an indicator will require that more unthinned area be burned by wildfires and protected after fire as critical habitat. Our results also show that restoration of fire to an extent closer to historical levels would considerably increase black-backed woodpecker habitat and have minimal tradeoff with conservation of mature forest.

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Is fire severity increasing in the Sierra Nevada, California, USA?

Cited by 49 publications

References 52 publications

Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world

Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world

Pyrodiversity promotes avian diversity over the decade following forest fire

Projecting Impacts of Fire Management on a Biodiversity Indicator in the Sierra Nevada and Cascades, USA: The Black-Backed Woodpecker

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