Long-term restoration synergies between wildfire and forest management on fire frequent landscapes.
Our objective was to examine whether accelerated management can maintain or promote desired ecological conditions under potential future fire regimes that are amplified by either climate, fire management policies, or a combination of the two. We used the agent-based forest landscape succession and disturbance model Envision in a series of experiments to simulate future fire scenarios consistent with predictions of recent climate change studies, along with multiple intensities of management. The study area was a fire frequent landscape encompassing two national forests in central Oregon. We incorporated agent behavior with respect to specific land management practices for federal and private industrial forests. Landscape response was measured in terms of forest resiliency, patch size of high-severity fire, aboveground carbon, potential future high severity fire, and fire-on-fire feedbacks.
Ager, A. A., A. Barros, H. K. Preisler, M. A. Day, T. Spies, J. Bailey, and J. Bolte. 2017. Effects of accelerated wildfire on future fire regimes and implications for the United States federal fire policy. Ecology and Society 22:12. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/57187 Ager, A. A., A. M. G. Barros, M. A. Day, and A. G. Merschel. In review. Long-term restoration synergies between simulated wildfire and forest management on a western US landscape. Ecological Applications. Ager, A. A., A. Barros, M. A. Day, H. K. Preisler, T. Spies, and J. Bolte. 2018. Analyzing fine-scale spatiotemporal drivers of wildfire in a forest landscape model. Ecological Modelling 384:89-102. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/57896 Barros, A. M. G., A. A. Ager, M. A. Day, M. Krawchuk, and T. A. Spies. 2018. Wildfires managed for restoration enhance ecological resilience. Ecosphere 9: e02161. doi: 10.1002/ecs2.2161 https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.2161. Barros, A., A. A. Ager, M. A. Day, H. Preisler, T. Spies, E. White, R. Pabst, K. Olsen, E. Platt, J. Bailey, and J. Bolte. 2017. Spatiotemporal dynamics of simulated wildfire, forest management and forest succession in central Oregon, U.S.A. Ecology and Society 22:20. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/54925 Spies, T., E. White, A. A. Ager et al. 2017. Using an agent-based model to examine forest management outcomes in a fire-prone landscape in Oregon, USA. Ecology and Society 22: 25. https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/54928. |