Resource Catalog
Project
- Steven P. NormanUS Forest Service, Southern Research Station
- Leonel A. ArguelloNational Park Service
- Stephen Underwood
- J. Morgan Varner IIITall Timbers Research Station and Land Conservancy
- Bill PierceNational Park Service
Fire and fuels management in California's coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests is limited by our poor understanding of reference conditions. In other forest types, knowledge of historic fire regimes, forest structure, composition and fuels has empowered managers by providing them with evidence of change caused by past management. For some land allocations, reference conditions provide a range of structural, compositional or disturbance objectives to manage toward. Evidence of long-term change is especially important in forest ecosystems where trees can live for over a millennium, as is the case with coast redwood. Despite the importance of reference conditions for modern forest management, the science surrounding reference conditions in coast redwood is controversial and managers have as many questions as answers about the processes needed to sustain their forests. Markedly different methods have been used to interpret fire history and strong local and regional environmental gradients preclude simple generalizations across the forest type. The frequent fires reported from the southern and dryer part of the redwood zone may not be representative of the wetter northern portion of the coast redwood range, where the most spectacular forests occur. Moreover, due to the paucity of lightning ignitions in the northern coast redwood zone, historical fire regimes may have been largely an artifact of anthropogenic ignitions. If so, this coast redwood vegetation type may not require fire to persist in an acceptable state. This possible ignition-dependence of fires in portions of the coast redwood range raises management and public concerns about the ecological relevance of historical fire regimes. Recent wildfires in old and second growth coast redwood have demonstrated that a more sound understanding of historical reference conditions is urgent. This proposal will support reconstructions of fire history in a portion of the coast redwood range where managers need it the most. It will integrate this research and other existing data to develop a GIS-based reference conditions model that provides information at a scale needed for local decision making.
Cataloging Information
- fire management
- historic fire regimes
- redwoods
- Sequoia sempervirens
- 06-2-1-59