Fire Regimes Approaching Historic Norms Reduce Wildfire-Facilitated
Fire regimes approaching historic norms reduce wildfire-facilitated conversion from forest to non-forest 1, 1 2 3 RYAN B. WALKER, JONATHAN D. COOP, SEAN A. PARKS, AND LAURA TRADER 1School of Environment and Sustainability, Western State Colorado University, Gunnison, Colorado 81231 USA 2Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute, Rocky Mountain Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, Missoula, Montana 59801 USA 3Fire Ecology Program, Bandelier National Monument, National Park Service, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544 USA Citation: Walker, R. B., J. D. Coop, S. A. Parks, and L. Trader. 2018. Fire regimes approaching historic norms reduce wildfire-facilitated conversion from forest to non-forest. Ecosphere 9(4):e02182. 10.1002/ecs2.2182 Abstract. Extensive high-severity wildfires have driven major losses of ponderosa pine and mixed-coni- fer forests in the southwestern United States, in some settings catalyzing enduring conversions to non- forested vegetation types. Management interventions to reduce the probability of stand-replacing wildfire have included mechanical fuel treatments, prescribed fire, and wildfire managed for resource benefit. In 2011, the Las Conchas fire in northern New Mexico burned forested areas not exposed to fire for >100 yr, but also reburned numerous prescribed fire units and/or areas previously burned by wildfire. At some sites, the combination of recent prescribed fire and wildfire approximated known pre-settlement fire fre- quency, with two or three exposures to fire between 1977 and 2007. We analyzed gridded remotely sensed burn severity data (differenced normalized burn ratio), pre- and post-fire field vegetation samples, and pre- and post-fire measures of surface fuels to assess relationships and interactions between prescribed fire, prior wildfire, fuels, subsequent burn severity, and patterns of post-fire forest retention vs.
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