Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:42:05.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fire Management in Coastal Sage-scrub, Southern California, USA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

George P. Malanson
George P. Malanson
Affiliation:
Department of Geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078, USA; until recently at Centre Louis Emberger, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, B.P. 5051, 34033 Montpellier Cedex, France.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Wildland fire management directly affects the forces of natural selection to which plant taxa become adapted. Changes in a fire regime will often result in changes in the relative abundance of particular species, and may cause the extinction of some of them. Life-history characteristics are important indicators of adaptation to recurrent disturbance, such as may be produced by fire. The incorporation of these characteristics in a computer simulation allows of the projection of species abundance under different fire regimes.

Through prescribed burning and fire suppression, fire interval and fire intensity can be controlled to some extent. The fire intensity for given sets of fuel, site, and meteoro-logical conditions, representing given fire-intervals, is calculated with the use of a fire behaviour computer simulation. These results are incorporated in computer simulation of the demographic competition of the five dominant shrub species of coastal sage-scrub in the Santa Monica Mountains of southern California: Artemisia californica, Encelia californica, Eriogonum cinereum, Salvia leucophylla, and S. mellifera. The model incorporates resprouting proportions, seedling establishment, and growth, and assumes survivorship rates in simulating scramble competition for space. Foliar cover-values of the five species are projected for nine different fire regimes. Short fire-intervals of the order of 10–20 years, such as might occur under a regime of prescribed burning, may eliminate or greatly reduce some species, whereas longer intervals allow the maintenance of a more diverse community especially of shrubs. Fixed and variable interval-lengths do not produce appreciably different results.

This study suggests that prescribed burning at 10–20 years' intervals should not be used indiscriminately to reduce wildland fire hazard in southern California. The fire intervals that will reduce the hazard, may eliminate some dominant native shrub species. A ‘natural’ fire regime which would maintain the natural vegetation while constituting only a minimum hazard to homesites may, unfortunately, be mutually exclusive goals in the coastal sage-scrub of southern California.

Type
Main Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Summer 1985 , pp. 141 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Albini, F.A. (1976 a). Computer Based Models of Wildland Fire Behavior: A User's Manual. USDA Forest Service, Ogden, Utah, USA: iv + 68 pp., illustr.Google Scholar
Albini, F.A. (1976 b). Estimating wildfire behavior and effects. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report INT-30: iv + 92 pp., illustr.Google Scholar
Aston, A.R. & Gill, A.M. (1976). Coupled soil moisture, heat, and water vapour transfers under simulated fire conditions. Australian Journal of Soil Research, 14, pp. 56–66.Google Scholar
Barney, R.J. (1979). Wildland fire research needs in the West: Forest Service manager's views. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report INT-63: iv + 16 pp., illustr.Google Scholar
Bonnicksen, T.M. (1980). Computer simulation of the cumulation effects of brushland fire-management policies. Environmental Management, 4, pp. 35–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonnicksen, T.M. (1981). Brushland fire-management policies: a cross impact simulation of southern California. Environmental Management, 5, pp. 521–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrne, R., Michaelson, J. & Soutar, A. (1977). Fossil charcoal as a measure of wildfire frequency in southern California: a preliminary analysis. Pp. 361–7 in Symposium on the Environmental Consequences of Fire and Fuel Management in Mediterranean Ecosystems (Eds Mooney, H.A. & Conrad, C.E.). USDA Forest Service General Technical Report WO-3: vi + 498 pp.Google Scholar
Deevey, E.S. (1947). Life tables for natural populations of animals. Quarterly Review of Biology, 22, pp. 283–314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Egler, F.E. (1954). Vegetation science concepts, I: Initial floristic composition—a factor in old-field vegetation development. Vegetatio, 4, pp. 412–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, J.F. (1979). Simulation modeling and resource management. Environmental Management, 3, pp. 2–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessell, S.R. (1976). Gradient modeling: a new approach to fire modeling and wilderness resource management. Environmental Management, 1, pp. 39–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessell, S.R. (1978). Perspectives in fire research. Environmental Management, 2, pp. 291–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessell, S.R. & Cattelino, P.J. (1978). Evaluation of a fire behavior information integration system for southern California chaparral wildlands. Environmental Management, 2, pp. 135–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loeher, L. (1983). Fire as a Natural Hazard: Santa Monica Mountains, California. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geography, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA: xvii + 306 pp., illustr. [Available through University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.]Google Scholar
Malanson, G.P. (1983). A Model of Post-fire Succession in Californian Coastal Sage-scrub. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geography, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA: xiv + 157 pp., illustr. [Available through University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.]Google Scholar
Malanson, G.P. (1984). Linked Leslie matrices for the simulation of succession. Ecological Modelling, 21, pp. 13–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malanson, G.P. & O'Leary, J.F. (1982). Post-fire regeneration strategies of Californian coastal sage-shrubs. Oecologia, 53, pp. 355–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minnich, R.A. (1983). Fire mosaics in southern California and northern Baja California. Science, 219, pp. 1287–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noble, I.R. & Slatyer, R.O. (1977). Post-fire succession of plants in Mediterranean ecosystems. Pp. 27–36 in Symposium on the Environmental Consequences of Fire and Fuel Management of Mediterranean Ecosystems (Eds Mooney, H.A. & Conrad, C.E.). USDA Forest Service General Technical Report WO-3: vi + 498 pp.Google Scholar
Omi, P.N. (1979). Planning future fuelbreak strategies using mathematical modeling techniques. Environmental Management, 3, pp. 73–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pinder, J.E., Wiener, J.G. & Smith, W.H. (1978). The Weibull distribution: a new method for summarizing survivorship data. Ecology, 59, pp. 175–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pyne, S.J. (1982). Fire in America. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA: xvi + 654 pp.Google Scholar
Radtke, K.W.H., Arndt, A.M. & Wakimoto, R.H. (1982). Fire history of the Santa Monica Mountains. Pp. 438–43 in Dynamics and Management of Mediterranean-type Ecosystems (Eds Conrad, C.E. & Oechel, W.C.). USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-58: x + 637 pp.Google Scholar
Sando, R.W. (1978). Natural fire regimes and fire management – foundations for direction. Western Wildlands, 4 (4), pp. 34–42.Google Scholar
USDA (1980). Proceedings of the Fire History Workshop. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report RM-81: iv + 142 pp.Google Scholar
Wells, P. (1962). Vegetation in relation to geological substratum and fire in the San Luis Obispo Quadrangle, California. Ecological Monographs, 32, pp. 79–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westman, W.E. (1981). Factors influencing the distributions of species of Californian coastal sage-scrub. Ecology, 62, pp. 439–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westman, W.E. (1982 a). Diversity relations and succession in Californian coastal sage-scrub. Ecology, 62, pp. 170–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westman, W.E. (1982 b). Coastal sage-scrub succession. Pp. 91–9 in Dynamics and Management of Mediterranean-type Ecosystems (Eds Conrad, C.E. & Oechel, W.C.). USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-58: x + 637 pp.Google Scholar
Westman, W.E. (1983). Xeric Mediterranean-type shrubland associations of Alta and Baja California and the community/continuum debate. Vegetatio, 52, pp. 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westman, W.E., O'Leary, J.F. & Malanson, G.P. (1981). The effects of fire intensity, aspect, and substrate, on post-fire growth of Californian coastal sage-scrub. Pp. 151–79 in Components of Productivity of Mediterranean Regions (Eds Margaris, N.S. & Mooney, H.A.). W. Junk, The Hague, Netherlands: viii + 279 pp., illustr.Google Scholar
Zedler, P.H. (1977). Life-history attributes of plants and the fire cycle: A case-study in chaparral dominated by Cupressus forbesii. Pp. 451–8 in Symposium on the Environmental Consequences of Fire and Fuel Management in Mediterranean Ecosystems (Eds Mooney, H.A. & Conrad, C.E.). USDA Forest Service General Technical Report WO-3: vi + 498 pp.Google Scholar