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Introduction to the effects of wildland fire on aquatic ecosystems in the Western USA
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Rieman, Bruce E. Gresswell, Robert E. Young, Michael K. Luce, Charles H. |
| Copyright Year | 2003 |
| Abstract | The management of wildfire has long been controversial. The role of fire and fire-related management in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems has become an important focus in recent years, but the general debate is not new. In his recent book, Stephen Pyne (2001) describes the political and scientific debate surrounding the creation of the U.S. Forest Service and the emergence of fire suppression as a central tenet of wildland management. Essentially, views in the first decade of the 20th century focused on fire as good or evil: a tool that might benefit other resources or interests (e.g. Indian burning) and mitigate larger more destructive fires, or a threat to the recruitment and productivity of newly designated forest reserves. The ‘‘great fires’’ in the Western USA in 1910 and the associated loss of human life and property largely forged the public and political will to suppress fire on a massive scale. In some forest types the fallacy of a management policy based on fire suppression at any cost has become obvious during recent decades. Fire suppression, coupled with selective silvicultural practices, livestock grazing, and other human disruptions, including climate change and an ever expanding urban– wildland interface, has led to the possibility of larger, more destructive fires, reminiscent of those in 1910. Large fires in the last two decades have again generated a public and political desire to respond. The National Fire Plan (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2000) and linked initiatives outline a comprehensive strategy intended to protect communities, reduce fuel loads and the threat of large fires, and restore damaged ecosystems. The USA Congress has responded with significant funding and the President of the USA has proposed to constrain the environmental regulatory and review process that slowed the implementation of new management initiatives (see the President’s Healthy Forest Initiative available online: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/healthyforests/ Healthy_Forests_v2.pdf). Despite these actions, the debate continues. As Pyne (2001) points out, there is no simple dichotomy of fire suppression versus the use of fire, or one of fuels treatments versus acceptance of the fires that may follow without them. These oversimplified perspectives are complicated by social and ecological tradeoffs that we are just beginning to understand based on our nearly century-old experiment in fire suppression. Among them are that fire and the effects of fire are important ecosystem processes, which fire management will also influence. Also, fires are not driven by fuels alone, but also by climate, and climate is changing. And large fires are natural; we cannot eliminate them—as recent events throughout the Western USA have illustrated—and it might be ill-advised even if we could. Thus, management to ensure that natural systems are resilient to or even benefit from large fires could be important. The management of fire is particularly relevant to the aquatic ecosystems of the Western USA. More than a century of human development has produced a legacy of habitat degradation, fragmentation, and loss, and an expansion of nonnative species across the lakes, rivers, and streams of the region. The result has been the accelerated extinction of species and stocks and increased listings of them under the Endangered Species Act and of impaired waters under the Clean Water Act. Because past land management is perceived as a primary cause of the disruption of aquatic ecosystems, new proposals for aggressive management of forest vegetation and fuels to mitigate the Forest Ecology and Management 178 (2003) 1–3 |
| Starting Page | 1 |
| Ending Page | 3 |
| Page Count | 3 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1016/S0378-1127(03)00050-1 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.fsl.orst.edu/ltep/Biscuit/Biscuit_files/Refs/Rieman%20FEM2003.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-1127%2803%2900050-1 |
| Volume Number | 178 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
