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Type: Journal Article
Author(s): Joy Nystrom Mast; Peter Z. Fulé; Margaret M. Moore; W. Wallace Covington; Amy E. M. Waltz
Publication Date: 1999

The age structure in 1876, the last year of the natural frequent-fire regime, of an unharvested ponderosa pine forest in northern Arizona was reconstructed from living and dead dendrochronological samples. Approximately 20% of the trees were >200 yr old in 1876 with ages ranging to 540 yr. If dead trees had not been included in the reconstruction, the distribution would have been biased toward younger trees and a 40% shorter age range. The presettlement age distribution was multimodal with broad peaks of establishment, consistent with the model of regeneration in 'safe sites' where herbaceous competition and fire thinning are reduced. Although fire disturbance regimes and climatic conditions varied over the centuries before 1876, a clear relationship between these variations and tree establishment was not observed. Due to fire exclusion, reduced grass competition, and favorable climatic events, high levels of regeneration in the 20th century raised forest density from 60 trees/ha in 1876 to >3000 trees/ha in 1992. An ecological restoration experiment initiated in 1993 conserved all living presettlement trees and reduced the density of young trees to near-presettlement levels. Two important components for evaluating the restoration treatment effects are monitoring of old-tree persistence and patterns of future regeneration in the context of the presettlement reference age structure.

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Citation: Mast, Joy Nystrom; Fulé, Peter Z.; Moore, Margaret M.; Covington, W. Wallace; Waltz, Amy E. M. 1999. Restoration of presettlement age structure of an Arizona ponderosa pine forest. Ecological Applications 9(1):228-239.

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Keywords:
  • age classes
  • Arizona
  • competition
  • dendrochronology
  • distribution
  • disturbance
  • ecological restoration
  • ecosystem dynamics
  • Festuca arizonica
  • fire exclusion
  • fire frequency
  • fire hazard reduction
  • fire regime
  • forest dynamics
  • forest management
  • grasses
  • mortality
  • Muhlenbergia montana
  • natural areas management
  • natural conditions
  • old growth forests
  • old growth vegetation
  • old-growth
  • pine forests
  • Pinus ponderosa
  • ponderosa pine
  • population density
  • presettlement vegetation
  • regeneration
  • Sitanion hystrix
  • size classes
  • snags
  • stand characteristics
  • thinning
  • trees
  • wildfires
Tall Timbers Record Number: 11509Location Status: In-fileCall Number: Journals-EAbstract Status: Fair use, Okay, Reproduced by permission
Record Last Modified:
Record Maintained By: FRAMES Staff (https://www.frames.gov/contact)
FRAMES Record Number: 37081

This bibliographic record was either created or modified by Tall Timbers and is provided without charge to promote research and education in Fire Ecology. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database is the intellectual property of Tall Timbers.
This document is part of the Southwest FireCLIME Annotated Bibliography, which includes published research related to the interactions between climate change, wildfire, and subsequent ecosystem effects in the southwestern U.S. The publications contained in the Bibliography have each been summarized to distill the outcomes as they pertain to fire and climate. Go to this document's record in the Southwest FireCLIME Annotated Bibliography.