Download Mapping Fire Regimes Across Time and Space:

Fire-climate-vegetationtopography-land use
Part II:
Simulation models as research tools
Models of vegetation succession
following fire
Reinhardt et al. 2001
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
Spatial and temporal scales
Reinhardt et al. 2001
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
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
Present and projected temperature and
precipitation in 2 X CO2 (Bartlein et al. 1997)
Implications of 2 X CO2 climate for
some species ranges (Bartlein et al. 1997)
What we’ve 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.
What we’ve 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
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
Minnich (1983)
Keeley et al. (1999)