Mixed Severity Fires

Nature’s Phoenix

2nd Edition - June 13, 2024
Authors: Dominick A. DellaSala, Chad Hanson
Language: English
Paperback ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 4 4 3 - 1 3 7 9 0 - 7
eBook ISBN:
9 7 8 - 0 - 4 4 3 - 1 3 7 9 1 - 4

Mixed Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix, Second Edition focuses on wildfire as a keystone ecological process that has shaped plant and animal communities for over 400 million year… Read more

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Mixed Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix, Second Edition focuses on wildfire as a keystone ecological process that has shaped plant and animal communities for over 400 million years. The book describes the renewal process that follows wildfires in forests and chaparral ecosystems as nature’s phoenix by drawing from examples of wildfire effects. In addition, the book describes management and policies that have contributed to wildfire problems, including climate change and land-use practices incompatible with nature’s phoenix and what must happen to get to coexistence with wildfires that are not going away no matter how much we try to suppress or alter fire behavior.

Cover image
Title page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Section I. Biodiversity of Mixed- and High-Severity Fires
Chapter 1. Setting the Stage for Mixed- and High-Severity Fire
1.1. Earlier Hypotheses and Current Research
1.2. Ecosystem Resilience and Mixed- and High-Severity Fire
1.3. Mixed- and High-Severity Fires Increases Are Equivocal
1.4. Conclusions
Chapter 2. Ecosystem Benefits of Megafires
2.1. Just What are Megafires?
2.2. Megafires as Global Change Agents
2.3. Megafires, Large Severe Fire Patches, and Complex Early Seral Forests
2.4. Historical Evidence of Megafires
2.5. Megafires and Landscape Heterogeneity
2.6. Are Megafires Increasing?
2.7. Language Matters
2.8. Conclusions
Appendix 2.1. Some Fires of Historical Significance From Records Compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center (http://www.nifc.gov/fireInfo/fireInfo_stats_histSigFires.html) From 1825 to 2013
Chapter 3. Using Bird Ecology to Learn About the Benefits of Severe Fire
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Insights From Bird Studies
3.3. Postfire Management Implications
3.4. Fire Risk Reduction Should Be Focused on Human Population Centers
3.5. Fire Suppression Should be Focused on Human Communities
3.6. High-Severity Fires Beget Mixed-Severity Results
3.7. Mitigate Fire Severity Through Thinning Only Where Ecologically Appropriate
3.8. Postfire “Salvage” Logging in the Name of Restoration or Rehabilitation is Always Ecologically Inappropriate and Misdirected
3.9. We can do More Harm Than Good Trying to “Mimic” Nature
3.10. Concluding Remarks
Chapter 4. Mammals and Mixed- and High-Severity Fire
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Bats
4.3. Small Mammals
4.4. Carnivores
4.5. Ungulates
4.6. Management and Conservation Relevance
4.7. Conclusions
Appendix 4.1 The Number of Studies by Taxa Showing Directional Response (Negative, Neutral, or Positive) to Severe Wildfire Over Three Time Periods Following fire. Studies Cited Include Unburned Areas compared to Severely Burned Areas With no Postfire Logging, and Excluded prescribed Burns. For Small Mammals, Only Species With Enough Detections to Determine Directional Response Were Reported
Section II. Global Perspectives on Mixed- and High-Severity Fires
Chapter 5. Bark Beetles and High-Severity Fires in Rocky Mountain Subalpine Forests
5.1. Fire, Beetles, and their Interactions
5.2. How Do Outbreaks Affect Subsequent High-Severity Fires?
5.3. How Do High-Severity Fires Affect Subsequent Outbreaks?
5.4. How Are Interacting Fires and Bark Beetles Affecting Forest Resilience in the Context of Climate Change?
5.5. Conclusions
Chapter 6. High-Severity Fire in Chaparral: Cognitive Dissonance in the Shrublands
6.1. Chaparral and the Fire Suppression Paradigm
6.2. The Facts About Chaparral Fires: They Burn Intensely and Severely
6.3. Fire Misconceptions are Pervasive
6.4. Reducing Cognitive Dissonance
6.5. Paradigm Change Revisited
6.6. Conclusion: Making the Paradigm Shift
Chapter 7. Regional Case Studies: Southeast Australia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Europe, and Boreal Canada
Case Study: The Ecology of Mixed-severity Fire in Mountain Ash Forests
Case Study: The Importance of Mixed- and High-severity Fires in Sub-Saharan Africa
Case Study: Response of Invertebrates to Mixed- and High-severity Fires in Central Europe
The Role of Large Fires in the Canadian Boreal Ecosystem
Chapter 8. What’s Driving the Recent Increases in Wildfires?
8.1. Understanding the Past, Present, and Future of Wildfires
8.2. Looking Back Over the Paleo-Record (Back Casting)
8.3. Western USA Fire History Case Studies
8.4. Historical Range of Variation
8.5. Linking Wildfire to Anthropogenic Climate Change
8.6. Conclusions
Section III. Managing Mixed- and High-Severity Fires
Chapter 9. Postfire Logging Disrupts Nature's Phoenix
9.1. Postfire Logging and the Knee-Jerk Response to Fire
9.2. Cumulative Effects of Postfire Logging and Related Activities
9.3. Case Study Postfire Logging Lessons
9.4. Conclusions
Appendix 9.1 Effects of Postfire Management Across Regions Where Most Studies Have Been Conducted
Chapter 10. Forest Managers Play the Backcountry Logging Fiddle as Towns Burn down
10.1. The Day Climate Change Came Knocking at my Door
10.2. The Fiddle Players
10.3. Countering Fire Hyperbole and Doublespeak
10.4. Fire, Fire, Homes on Fire, Again!
10.5. What is “Active Management” and Will it Work?
10.6. Has Active Management Become a Religion of Sorts? (Concluding Thoughts)
Chapter 11. Misinformation About Historical and Contemporary Forests Leads to Policy Failures: A Critical Assessment of the “Overgrown Forests” Narrative
11.1. The Popular Narrative of “Overgrown Forests”
11.2. Are Contemporary Western US Dry Forests “Overgrown?”
11.3. Do Denser, Mature, and Old Forests Burn More Severely?
11.4. Does “Thinning” Reduce Overall Severity in Wildfires?
11.5. Is High-Severity Fire Converting Dense Dry Forests to Nonforest?
11.6. Implications of Prologging Misinformation
11.7. Conclusions
Chapter 12. Out of the Ashes, Nature's Phoenix Rises
12.1. Pyrodiversity Begets Biodiversity Reaffirmed
12.2. A Nature-based Correction Is Needed in Attitudes and Approaches
12.3. Respond to the Root Causes and Not Just the Effects
12.4. Does Active Management Work?
12.5. Public Attitudes Are Shifting but Nature's Phoenix Remains Undervalued
12.6. The Disconnect Between Independent Research and Wildfire Attitudes
12.7. Lessons Learned and Closing Remarks
Index

Dominick A. DellaSala

Dominick DellaSala, Ph. D, is Chief Scientist of Wild Heritage, a project of the Earth Island Institute, and former President of the Society for Conservation Biology, North America. He is an internationally renowned scholar of over 200 publications on forest ecology, endangered species, conservation biology, and climate change. Dominick has given keynote talks ranging from academic conferences to the United Nations Earth Summit. He has been featured in hundreds of news stories and documentaries, testified in the US congress numerous times, and received conservation leadership and book writing awards. He is on the editorial board of Elsevier’s Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, co-chief editor of Elsevier’s Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, The World’s Biomes, and Encyclopedia of Conservation; Co-editor the Ecological Importance of Mixed Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix (Elsevier), editor and author of the award winning Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation; and subject editor of several scientific journals. He is driven by a passion to save life on Earth for his daughters, grandkids, and future generations.

Affiliations and expertise

Chief Scientist, Wild Heritage, a project of the Earth Island Institute

Chad Hanson

Dr. Chad Hanson is a research ecologist and the director of the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, located in Big Bear City, California. He has a Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California at Davis, with a research focus on fire ecology in conifer forest ecosystems, and he is the author of the 2021 book, “Smokescreen: Debunking Wildfire Myths to Save Our Forests and Our Climate”, as well as the co-editor and co-author of the 2015 book, “The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix” (Elsevier, Inc.). Research by Chad covers topics such as: natural post-fire forest regrowth and carbon sequestration; carbon flux in wildland fires; current forest fire patterns and trends; fire history; habitat selection of rare wildlife species associated with habitat created by high-intensity fire; and adverse impacts to wildlife caused by logging.

Affiliations and expertise

Research Ecologist and Director, John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, Big Bear City, California, USA

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