Fire-climate-vegetation-topography-land use

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Fire-climate-vegetation-topography-land use
Part II Simulation models as research tools
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Models of vegetation succession following fire
Reinhardt et al. 2001
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Simulation models as a research tool

• With multiple runs, we can conduct replicated,
  controlled experiments with novel treatment
  conditions
• One of the few research tools that integrate both
  space and time
• Our uncertainty is higher for the coarse temporal
  and spatial scales where models are the most
  useful
• Models are abstractions of reality

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Spatial and temporal scales
Reinhardt et al. 2001
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Simulating fire and climate

• Glacier NP
• NPP increases under future climate scenarios, but
  varies through time in response to fire and
  succession

Keane et al. 1998
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Landscape composition

• Landscape composition would be greatly affected
  by both fire occurrence and climate change
• Is there synergy between fire and climate?

Keane et al. 1998
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Present and projected temperature and
precipitation in 2 X CO2 (Bartlein et al. 1997)
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Implications of 2 X CO2 climate for some species
ranges (Bartlein et al. 1997)
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What weve learned (Part I)

• Climate is changing under human influence
• Fire regimes have changed in response to both
  climate and human action
• Fire regimes reflect both the physical and
  socio-political environment
• Climate influences lightning ignitions, as well
  as fire behavior and effects,
• The interrelationships between fire, climate,
  vegetation, land use, and topography are complex
  and scaled.

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What weve learned (Part I)

• The effects of climate change on vegetation will
  be mediated through fire and other disturbances
• Altered fire regimes will be important
  determinants of rates and directions of ecosystem
  change,
• and they have powerful feedback to global
  climate change through their influence on carbon
  and nitrogen cycles

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Fire management in a changed climate

• Protecting life and property
• Suppression
• Pre-suppression
• Fuels management
• Managing wildlife habitat
• Prescribed burning
• Ecological restoration
• Prescribed burning and other management
  activities
• Fire as a natural process
• Lightning and human ignitions

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Minnich (1983)
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Keeley et al. (1999)