System-level feedbacks of active fire regimes in large landscapes

Background Climate is a main driver of fire regimes, but recurrent fires provide stabilizing feedbacks at several spatial scales that can limit fire spread and severity—potentially contributing to a form of self-regulation. Evaluating the strength of these feedbacks in wildland systems is difficult...

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Published in:Fire ecology Vol. 19; no. 1; p. 45
Main Authors: Povak, Nicholas A., Hessburg, Paul F., Salter, R. Brion, Gray, Robert W., Prichard, Susan J.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.12.2023
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects:
Adaptation
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Climate change
Combustion
Ecology
Extreme weather
Fences
Fires
Forest & brush fires
Forestry
Fuels
Landscape
Life Sciences
Mosaics
Original Research
Recovery time
Simulation
Vegetation
Vegetation patterns
Weather
Regional landscape resilience
The REBURN model
Fire severity
Stabilizing feedbacks
Wildfire spatial controls
Patch size distributions
ISSN:1933-9747, 1933-9747
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Background Climate is a main driver of fire regimes, but recurrent fires provide stabilizing feedbacks at several spatial scales that can limit fire spread and severity—potentially contributing to a form of self-regulation. Evaluating the strength of these feedbacks in wildland systems is difficult given the spatial and temporal scales of observation required. Here, we used the REBURN model to directly examine the relative strengths of top-down and bottom-up drivers of fire over a 3000-year simulation period, within a 275,000-ha conifer-dominated landscape in north central Washington State, USA. Results We found strong support for top-down and bottom-up spatial and temporal controls on fire patterns. Fire weather was a main driver of large fire occurrence, but area burned was moderated by ignition frequencies and by areas of limited fuels and fuel contagion (i.e., fire fences). Landscapes comprised of >40% area in fire fences rarely experienced large fire years. When large fires did occur during the simulation period, a recovery time of 100–300 years or more was generally required to recover pre-fire vegetation patterns. Conclusions Simulations showed that interactions between fire weather, fuel contagion, topography, and ignitions manifest variability in fire size and severity patch size distributions. Burned and recovering vegetation mosaics provided functional stabilizing feedbacks, a kind of meta stability, which limited future fire size and severity, even under extreme weather conditions. REBURN can be applied to new geographic and physiographic landscapes to simulate these interactions and to represent natural and culturally influenced fire regimes in historical, current, or future climatic settings.
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ISSN:1933-9747
1933-9747
DOI:10.1186/s42408-023-00197-0