5 research outputs found
ACCOMMODATING MIXED-SEVERITY FIRE TO RESTORE AND MAINTAIN ECOSYSTEM INTEGRITY WITH A FOCUS ON THE SIERRA NEVADA OF CALIFORNIA, USA
Existing fire policy encourages the maintenance of ecosystem integrity in fire management, yet this is difficult to implement on lands managed for competing economic, human safety, and air quality concerns. We discuss a fire management approach in the mid-elevations of the Sierra Nevada, California, USA, that may exemplify similar challenges in other fire-adapted regions of the western USA. We also discuss how managing for pyrodiversity through mixed-severity fires can promote ecosystem integrity in Sierran mixed conifer and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Laws) forests. To illustrate, we show how coarse-filter (landscape-level) and complementary fine-filter (species-level) approaches can enhance forest management and conservation biology objectives as related to wildfire management. At the coarse-filter level, pyrodiverse mixed-severity fires provide landscape heterogeneity. Species and ecosystem characteristics associated with pyrodiversity can be maintained or enhanced by accommodating moderately severe fires, which hasten restoration by recreating a complex vegetation mosaic otherwise at risk from suppression. At the fine-filter level, managers can select focal species and species of conservation concern based on the degree to which those species depend on fire and accommodate their specific conservation needs. The black-backed woodpecker (Picoides arcticus [Swainson, 1832]) is an ideal focal species for monitoring the ecological integrity of forests restored through mixed-severity fire, and the California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis [Xantus de Vesey, 1860]) is a species of conservation concern that uses post-fire habitat mosaics and is particularly vulnerable to logging. We suggest a comprehensive approach that integrates wildland fire for ecosystem integrity and species viability with strategic deployment of fire suppression and ecologically based restoration of pyrodiverse landscapes. Our approach would accomplish fire management goals while simultaneously maintaining biodiversity
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Peering through the smokescreen of success with ecological fire use: A pilot study of three USFS Regions’ 2018–2019 wildfire seasons
This paper explores current levels of Wildland Fire Use (WFU) as a tool for managing wildfires for resource and ecological benefits. In 2009 new policy guidance for the federal Wildland Fire Policy represented a major advance towards a paradigm shift of ecological fire management by allowing wildfires to be managed for both protection and restoration objectives simultaneously. However, at the same time WFU was eliminated as a distinct category of wildfire incident, and since then, a number of abstract, deliberately vague terms have become common surrogates for WFU. We analyzed suppression documents from wildfires managed by the US Forest Service in three USFS Regions during 2018–2019. Results show that in some USFS Regions there may be more WFU for resource/ecological benefits occurring than is officially acknowledged, obscured by the various euphemisms for WFU that are limiting public recognition of ecological fire management success
Recommended from our members
Peering through the smokescreen of success with ecological fire use: A pilot study of three USFS Regions’ 2018–2019 wildfire seasons
This paper explores current levels of Wildland Fire Use (WFU) as a tool for managing wildfires for resource and ecological benefits. In 2009 new policy guidance for the federal Wildland Fire Policy represented a major advance towards a paradigm shift of ecological fire management by allowing wildfires to be managed for both protection and restoration objectives simultaneously. However, at the same time WFU was eliminated as a distinct category of wildfire incident, and since then, a number of abstract, deliberately vague terms have become common surrogates for WFU. We analyzed suppression documents from wildfires managed by the US Forest Service in three USFS Regions during 2018–2019. Results show that in some USFS Regions there may be more WFU for resource/ecological benefits occurring than is officially acknowledged, obscured by the various euphemisms for WFU that are limiting public recognition of ecological fire management success