Socioecological transitions trigger fire regime shifts and modulate fire-climate interactions in the Sierra Nevada, USA, 1600-2015 CE

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Volumn 113, Issue 48, 2016, Pages 13684-13689

  Taylor, Alan H ^a   Trouet, Valerie ^b   Skinner, Carl N ^c   Stephens, Scott ^d  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

^c PACIFIC SOUTHWEST RESEARCH STATION   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Anthropogenic landscapes; Climate variability; Fire ecology; Land use; Regime shifts

Indexed keywords

AMERICAN INDIAN; ARTICLE; CLIMATE; ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE; FIRE ECOLOGY; GOVERNMENT; HUMAN; NEVADA; PRIORITY JOURNAL; RISK ASSESSMENT; SOCIAL INTERACTION; TEMPERATURE;

EID: 84999218042     PISSN: 00278424     EISSN: 10916490     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1609775113     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Westerling AL (2016) Increasing western US forest wildfire activity: Sensitivity to changes in the timing of spring. Phil Trans R Soc B 371(1696):20150178.
2. Hurteau MD, et al. (2014) Climate change, fire management, and ecological services in the southwestern US. For Ecol Manage 327:280-289.
3. NSTC (2015) Wildland Fire Science and Technology Task Force Final Report (Executive Office, Washington, DC).
4. Pyne SJ (2016) California a Fire Survey (Univ Arizona Press, Tucson).
5. Belmecheri S, Babst F, Wahl ER, Stahle DW, Trouet V (2016) Multi-century evaluation of Sierra Nevada snowpack. Nat Clim Chang 6(1):2-3.
6. Collins BM (2014) Fire weather and large fire potential in the northern Sierra Nevada. Agric Meteorol 189:30-35.
7. Syphard AD, et al. (2007) Human influence on California fire regimes. Ecol Appl 17(5):1388-1402.
8. Lenihan JM, Bachelet D, Neilson RP, Drapek R (2008) Response of vegetation distribution, ecosystem productivity, and fire to climate change scenarios for California. Clim Change 87(1):215-230.
9. North MP, et al. (2015) Reform forest fire management. Science 349(6254):1280-1281.
10. Knorr W, Arneth A, Jiang L (2016) Demographic controls of future global fire risk. Nat Clim Change 6:781-785.
11. Pausas JG, Fernandez-Muñoz S (2012) Fire regime changes in the Western Mediterranean Basin: From fuel-limited to drought-driven fire regime. Clim Change 110(1):215-226.
12. Bowman DM, et al. (2011) The human dimension of fire regimes on Earth. J Biogeogr 38(12):2223-2236.
13. Peterson GD (2002) Contagious disturbance, ecological memory, and the emergence of landscape pattern. Ecosystems 5(4):329-338.
14. Miller C, Urban DL (2000) Connectivity of forest fuels and surface fire regimes. Landsc Ecol 15(2):145-154.
15. Collins BM, et al. (2009) Interactions among wildland fires in a long-established Sierra Nevada natural fire area. Ecosystems (N Y) 12(1):114-128.
16. Cook SF (1976) The Population of the California Indians, 1769-1970 (Univ California Press, Berkeley).
17. Anderson MK (2005) Tending The Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources (Univ California Press, Berkeley).
18. Clay K, Jones R (2008) Migrating to riches? Evidence from the California Gold Rush. J Econ Hist 68(4):997-1031.
19. California Data Center Department of Finance (2016) Demographic Reports. Available at www.dof.ca.gov/reports/demographic-reports. Accessed September 1, 2016.
20. Swetnam TW, Betancourt JL (1998) Mesoscale disturbance and ecological response to decadal variability climate in the American Southwest. J Clim 11(12):3128-3147.
21. Norman SP, Taylor AH (2003) Tropical and north Pacific teleconnections influence fire regimes in pine-dominated forests of north-eastern California, USA. J Biogeogr 30(7):1081-1092.
22. Veblen TT, Kitzberger T, Donnegan J (2000) Climatic and human influences on fire regimes in ponderosa pine forests in the Colorado Front Range. Ecol Appl 10(4):1178-1195.
23. Abatzoglou JT, Kolden CA (2013) Relationships between climate and macroscale area burned in the western United States. Int J Wildland Fire 22(7):1003-1020.
24. Marlon JR, et al. (2012) Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109(9):E535-E543.
25. Trouet V, Taylor AH, Wahl ER, Skinner CN, Stephens SL (2010) Fire-climate interactions in the American West since 1400 CE. Geophys Res Lett 37(4):L04702.
26. Swetnam TW (1993) Fire history and climate change in giant sequoia groves. Science 262(5135):885-889.
27. Kelly AE, Goulden ML (2008) Rapid shifts in plant distribution with recent climate change. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105(33):11823-11826.
28. Hull KL (2009) Pestilence and Persistence: Yosemite Indian Demography and Culture in Colonial California (Univ California Press, Berkeley).
29. Davis JT (1961) Trade Routes and Economic Exchange Among the Indians of California. University of California Archeological Survey Report 54 (Univ California Press, Berkeley).
30. Trafzer CE, Hyer JR (1999) Exterminate Them: A Written Account of the Murder, Rape, and Slavery of Native Americans During the Gold Rush (Michigan State Univ Press, East Lansing).
31. Codding BF, Jones TL (2013) Environmental productivity predicts migration, demographic, and linguistic patterns in prehistoric California. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110(36):14569-14573.
32. Lewis HT (1973) Patterns of Indian burning in California: Ecology and Ethnohistory (Ballena, Menlo Park, CA).
33. Lightfoot KG, Parrish O (2009) California Indians and Their Environment: An Introduction (Univ of Calif Press, Berkeley).
34. Parker AJ (2002) Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests: Evaluating the Ecological Impact of Burning by Native Americans. Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape, ed Vale TR (Island, Washington, DC), pp 233-267.
35. Scholl AE, Taylor AH (2010) Fire regimes, forest change, and self-organization in an old-growth mixed-conifer forest, Yosemite National Park, USA. Ecol Appl 20(2): 362-380.
36. Lewis HT (1993) Patterns of Indian burning in California: Ecology and Ethnohistory. Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians, eds Blackburn TC, Anderson K (Ballena, Menlo Park, CA), pp 55-116.
37. Miller RF (1930) Sheep Production in California. California Agricultural Extension Circular 49 (Univ Calif Press, Berkeley).
38. McKelvey KS, Johnston JD (1992) Historical perspectives on forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Transverse Ranges of southern California: Forest conditions at the turn of the century. The California Spotted Owl: A Technical Assessment of its Current Status, eds Verner J, et al. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report PSW-GTR-133, pp 25-246.
39. Savage M, Swetnam TW (1990) Early 19th-century fire decline following sheep pasturing in a Navajo ponderosa pine forest. Ecol 71(6):2374-2378.
40. Stephens SL, Skinner CN, Gill SJ (2003) Dendrochronology-based fire history of Jeffrey pine-mixed conifer forests in the Sierra San Pedro Martir, Mexico. Can J Res 33(6):1090-1101.
41. Saladyga T, Hessl A, Nachin B, Pederson N (2013) Privatization, drought, and fire exclusion in the Tuul River watershed, Mongolia. Ecosystems (N Y) 16(6):1139-1151.
42. Pyne SJ (1982) Fire in America. A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Princeton Univ Press, Princeton, NJ).
43. Miller JD, Safford HD, Crimmins M, Thode AE (2009) Quantitative evidence for increasing forest fire severity in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Mountains, California and Nevada, USA. Ecosystems (N Y) 12(1):16-32.
44. Steel ZL, Safford HD, Viers JH (2015) The fire frequency-severity relationship and the legacy of fire suppression in California forests. Ecosphere 6(1):art8.
45. North MP, Collins BM, Stephens SL (2012) Using fire to increase the scale, benefits, and future maintenance of fuels treatments. J For 110:392-401.
46. Harris L, Taylor AH (2015) Topography, fuels, and fire exclusion drive fire severity of the Rim Fire in an old-growth mixed-conifer forest, Yosemite National Park, USA. Ecosystems (N Y) 18(7):1192-1208.
47. Lauvaux CA, Skinner CN, Taylor AH (2016) High severity fire and mixed conifer forest-chaparral dynamics in the southern Cascade Range, USA. For Ecol Manage 363:74-85.
48. Coppoletta M, Merriam KE, Collins BM (2016) Post-fire vegetation and fuel development influences fire severity patterns in reburns. Ecol Appl 26(3):686-699.
49. Ruddiman WF (2003) The anthropogenic greenhouse era began thousands of years ago. Clim Change 61(3):261-293.
50. Ruddiman WF (2007) The early anthropogenic hypothesis: Challenges and responses. Rev Geophys 45(4):RG4001.
51. Nevle RJ, Bird DK, Ruddiman WF, Dull RA (2011) Neotropical human-landscape interactions, fire, and atmospheric CO2 during European conquest. Holocene 21(5):853-864.
52. Liebmann MJ, et al. (2016) Native American depopulation, reforestation, and fire regimes in the Southwest United States, 1492-1900 CE. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 113(6):E696-E704.
53. Bryant BP, Westerling AL (2014) Scenarios for future wildfire risk in California: Links between changing demography, land use, climate, and wildfire. Environmetrics 25(6):454-471.
54. Stokes MA, Smiley TL (1968) An Introduction to Tree-Ring Dating (Univ Chicago Press, Chicago).
55. Taylor AH, Trouet V, Skinner CN (2008) Climatic influences on fire regimes in montane forests of the southern Cascades, California, USA. Int J Wildland Fire 17(1):60-71.
56. Caprio AC, Swetnam TW (1995) Historic fire regimes along an elevational gradient on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada, California. Fire and Wilderness and Park Management: Past Lessons and Future Opportunities, eds Brown JK, Mutch RW, Spoon CW, Wakimoto RH. USDA Forest Service General Technical Report INT-320, pp 173-179.
57. McKelvey KS, Busse KK (1996) Twentieth-century fire patterns on forest service lands. Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project, Final Report to Congress, Vol. II, (Univ Calif Center for Water Wildland Resources, Davis, CA), pp 1119-1138.
58. Rodionov SN (2004) A sequential algorithm for testing climate regime shifts. Geophys Res Lett 31(9):L09204.
59. Briffa KR, et al. (2001) Low frequency temperature variations from a northern tree ring density network. J Geophys Res Atmos 106(D3):2929-2941.
60. Cook ER, Krusic PJ (2004) North American Summer PDSI Reconstructions. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series 45.
61. Trouet V, Taylor AH (2010) Multi-century variability in the Pacific North American circulation pattern reconstructed from tree rings. ClimDyn 35(6):953-963.
62. Cook ER (2000) Niño 3 Index Reconstruction. International Tree-Ring Data Bank. IGBP PAGES/World Data Center-A for Paleoclimatology Data Contribution Series #2000-052. NOAA/NGDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder, CO.
63. MacDonald GM, Case RA (2005) Variations in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation over the past millennium. Geophys Res Lett 32(8):L08703.
64. Sokal RR, Rohlf FJ (1995) Biometry the Principles and Practice of Statistics in Biological Research (WH Freeman, New York).
65. Haurwitz MW, Briar GW (1981) A critique of the superposed epoch analysis methods: Its application to solar-weather relations. Mon Weather Rev 109(10):2074-2079.
66. Box GE, Jenkins GM, Reinsel GC, Ljung GM (2015) Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control (Wiley, New York).