Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Ecosphere
Publisher
Ecological Society of America
Publication Date
9-29-2015
Volume
7
Issue
2
Disciplines
Biology | Life Sciences
Abstract
We use the historical presence of high-severity fire patches in mixed-conifer forests of the western United States to make several points that we hope will encourage development of a more ecologically informed view of severe wildland fire effects. First, many plant and animal species use, and have sometimes evolved to depend on, severely burned forest conditions for their persistence. Second, evidence from fire history studies also suggests that a complex mosaic of severely burned conifer patches was common historically in the West. Third, to maintain ecological integrity in forests born of mixed-severity fire, land managers will have to accept some severe fire and maintain the integrity of its aftermath. Lastly, public education messages surrounding fire could be modified so that people better understand and support management designed to maintain ecologically appropriate sizes and distributions of severe fire and the complex early-seral forest conditions it creates.
Keywords
early succession, ecological integrity, ecological system, fire management, fire regime, forest resilience, forest restoration, severe fire, wildfire
DOI
10.1002/ecs2.1255
Rights
© 2016 Hutto et al.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Hutto, Richard L.; Keane, Robert E.; Sherriff, Rosemary L.; Rota, Christopher T.; Eby, Lisa A.; and Saab, Victoria A., "Toward a more ecologically informed view of severe forest fires" (2015). Biological Sciences Faculty Publications. 420.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/biosci_pubs/420