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Areas of Agreement and Disagreement Regarding Ponderosa Pine and Mixed Conifer Forest Fire Regimes: A Dialogue with Stevens et al.
- Source :
- PLoS ONE; 5/19/2016, Vol. 11 Issue 5, p1-6, 6p
- Publication Year :
- 2016
-
Abstract
- In a recent PLOS ONE paper, we conducted an evidence-based analysis of current versus historical fire regimes and concluded that traditionally defined reference conditions of low-severity fire regimes for ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and mixed-conifer forests were incomplete, missing considerable variability in forest structure and fire regimes. Stevens et al. (this issue) agree that high-severity fire was a component of these forests, but disagree that one of the several sources of evidence, stand age from a large number of forest inventory and analysis (FIA) plots across the western USA, support our findings that severe fire played more than a minor role ecologically in these forests. Here we highlight areas of agreement and disagreement about past fire, and analyze the methods Stevens et al. used to assess the FIA stand-age data. We found a major problem with a calculation they used to conclude that the FIA data were not useful for evaluating fire regimes. Their calculation, as well as a narrowing of the definition of high-severity fire from the one we used, leads to a large underestimate of conditions consistent with historical high-severity fire. The FIA stand age data do have limitations but they are consistent with other landscape-inference data sources in supporting a broader paradigm about historical variability of fire in ponderosa and mixed-conifer forests than had been traditionally recognized, as described in our previous PLOS paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- PONDEROSA pine
CONIFEROUS forests
FOREST fires
ENVIRONMENTAL sciences
FOREST ecology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 19326203
- Volume :
- 11
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- PLoS ONE
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 115446421
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0154579