Previous wildfires and management treatments moderate subsequent fire severity
Burn severity distributions for areas treated then burned (i.e., “treatment-fire”) and untreated burned controls. Density plots showing the frequency distribution of the Relativized Burn Ratio (RBR), a measurement of burn severity, for untreated areas (controls; yellow) and silvicultural or fuel tre...
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| Vydané v: | Forest ecology and management Ročník 504; s. 119764 |
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| Hlavní autori: | , , , , , , , , |
| Médium: | Journal Article |
| Jazyk: | English |
| Vydavateľské údaje: |
Elsevier B.V
15.01.2022
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| Predmet: | |
| ISSN: | 0378-1127, 1872-7042 |
| On-line prístup: | Získať plný text |
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| Shrnutí: | Burn severity distributions for areas treated then burned (i.e., “treatment-fire”) and untreated burned controls. Density plots showing the frequency distribution of the Relativized Burn Ratio (RBR), a measurement of burn severity, for untreated areas (controls; yellow) and silvicultural or fuel treatment (cases; purple) in areas that were treated before a wildfire. Vertical dashed lines show the thresholds: <2% basal area loss (dark purple), unburned-low and moderate severity (magenta), low-moderate and high severity mixes (orange), and >98% basal area mortality (i.e., stand replacing severity; yellow). Data are from wildfires that occurred between 2001 and 2019 and treatments occurring from 1982 to 2017, within the northeastern Washington State, USA study area.
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•Fire weather and species composition influenced burn severity.•Reburns reduced burn severity of subsequent fires.•Most fuel and silvicultural treatments burned with lower severity than untreated controls.•Prescribed fire was the most effective treatment at reducing burn severity.•Post-fire harvest and planting weakly influenced subsequent burn severity.
We investigated the relative importance of daily fire weather, landscape position, climate, recent forest and fuels management, and fire history to explaining patterns of remotely-sensed burn severity – as measured by the Relativized Burn Ratio – in 150 fires occurring from 2001 to 2019, which burned conifer forests of northeastern Washington State, USA. Daily fire weather, annual precipitation anomalies, and species’ fire resistance traits were important predictors of wildfire burn severity. In areas burned within the past two to three decades, prior fire decreased the severity of subsequent burns, particularly for the first 16 postfire years. In areas managed before a wildfire, thinning and prescribed burning treatments lowered burn severity relative to untreated controls. Prescribed burning was the most effective treatment at lowering subsequent burn severity, and prescribed burned areas were usually unburned or burned at low severity in subsequent wildfires. Patches that were harvested and planted <10 years before a wildfire burned with slightly higher severity. In areas managed within 5 years after an initial fire, postfire harvest and planting reduced prevalence of stand-replacing fire in reburns. However, overall, postfire management actions after a first wildfire only weakly influenced the severity of subsequent fires. The importance of fire-fire interactions to moderating burn severity establishes the importance of stabilizing feedbacks in active fire regimes, and our results demonstrate how silvicultural treatments can be combined with prescribed fire and wildfires to maintain resilient landscapes. |
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| Bibliografia: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 0378-1127 1872-7042 |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119764 |