Evidence for widespread changes in the structure, composition, and fire regimes of western North American forests.

Implementation of wildfire- and climate-adaptation strategies in seasonally dry forests of western North America is impeded by numerous constraints and uncertainties. After more than a century of resource and land use change, some question the need for proactive management, particularly given novel social, ecological, and climatic conditions. To address this question, we first provide a framework for assessing changes in landscape conditions and fire regimes. Using this framework, we then evaluate evidence of change in contemporary conditions relative to those maintained by active fire regimes, i.e., those uninterrupted by a century or more of human-induced fire exclusion. The cumulative results of more than a century of research document a persistent and substantial fire deficit and widespread alterations to ecological structures and functions. These changes are not necessarily apparent at all spatial scales or in all dimensions of fire regimes and forest and nonforest conditions. Nonetheless, loss of the once abundant influence of low- and moderate-severity fires suggests that even the least fire-prone ecosystems may be affected by alteration of the surrounding landscape and, consequently, ecosystem functions. Vegetation spatial patterns in fire-excluded forested landscapes no longer reflect the heterogeneity maintained by interacting fires of active fire regimes. Live and dead vegetation (surface and canopy fuels) is generally more abundant and continuous than before European colonization. As a result, current conditions are more vulnerable to the direct and indirect effects of seasonal and episodic increases in drought and fire, especially under a rapidly warming climate. Long-term fire exclusion and contemporaneous social-ecological influences continue to extensively modify seasonally dry forested landscapes. Management that realigns or adapts fire-excluded conditions to seasonal and episodic increases in drought and fire can moderate ecosystem transitions as forests and human communities adapt to changing climatic and disturbance regimes. As adaptation strategies are developed, evaluated, and implemented, objective scientific evaluation of ongoing research and monitoring can aid differentiation of warranted and unwarranted uncertainties.

Biotic and abiotic regulation of lightning fire initiation in the mixedwood boreal forest.

Lightning fire is the dominant natural disturbance of the western mixedwood boreal forest of North America. We quantified the independent effects of weather and forest composition on lightning fire initiation (a detected and recorded fire start) patterns in Alberta, Canada, to demonstrate how these biotic and abiotic components contribute to ecosystem dynamics in the mixedwood boreal forest. We used logistic regression to describe variation in annual initiation occurrence among 10,000-ha landscape units (voxels) covering a 9 million-ha study region over 11 years. At a voxel scale, forest composition explained more variation in annual initiation than did weather indices. Initiations occurred more frequently in landscapes with more conifer fuels (Picea spp.), and less in aspen-dominated (Populus spp.) ones. Initiations were less frequent in landscapes that had recently burned. Variation in initiation was also influenced by joint weather-lightning indices, but to a lesser degree. For each voxel, these indices quantified the number of days in the fire season when moisture levels were low and lightning was detected. Regional indices of fire weather severity explained substantial interannual variation of initiation, and the effect of forest composition was stronger in years with more severe fire weather. Our study is a conclusive demonstration of biotic and abiotic regulation of lightning fire initiation in the mixedwood boreal forest. The independent effects of forest composition emphasize that vegetation feedbacks strongly regulate disturbance dynamics in the region.