Mortality patterns are diverse for chaparral shrubs under periods > 100 years without fire. Ceanothus often suffer the highest mortality under extended fire-free conditions and this is best interpreted as density dependent thinning rather than senescence. Intraspecific effects dominate early in the postfire environment, from one to tow decades, but interspecific effects are more important in later years. Species that dominate older stands of chaparral suffer little mortality of genets, however, ramet mortality is variable. Some, e.g., Arctostaphylos suffer most mortality within the first postfire year. These taxa may survive well over a hundred years with relatively little mortality. Other long-lived shrubs, Quercus, Prunus, and Rhamnus taxa are vigorous resprouters, not only after fire but throughout the life of the stand. These shrubs may suffer high ramet mortality, but continous regeneration of new stems from basal sprouting results in little genet mortality. Different patterns of exploiting the environment for population expansion, coupled with the very different scales over which mortality is important, suggest that equilibrium in species compositon is probably enhanced by variable burning regimes. [Abstract only. Program and abstracts. 76th Annual ESA Meeting, San Antonio, TX, August, 1991.]© by the Ecological Society of America. Abstract reproduced by permission