Authors: Craig R Nitschke John L Innes
Publish Date: 2012/06/22
Volume: 116, Issue: 3-4, Pages: 579-591
Abstract
Climate change is predicted to result in a warmer and drier climate in many parts of the world including southcentral British Columbia With a shift in climate a change in fire regimes is likely to occur In this study a statistically significant increase in mean fire size was predicted to occur along with an increase maximum fire size and decrease in the mean fire interval A change in these fire regime characteristics suggests a climatechange driven shift in fire regimes may occur by the 2020s The shift in fire regime suggests the proportion of the landscape burning every 50 years or less will increase from 34 to 93 by the 2080s Change in fire regimes will have direct implications for ecosystem management as the combination of large flammable fuel types and fireprone climatic conditions will increase the risk of larger more frequent fires and increase the costs and dangers involved in managing fireprone forests in the Cordilleran region of southcentral British Columbia The climate changedriven shift in fire regime questions the use of historic fire regime characteristics for determining landscapelevel conservation targets within the study areaWe would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments and critiques which have improved this paper We would also like to thank Dr John Nelson Dr Clive Welham and Dr JP Kimmins for their comments on an early version of this paper We would also like to thank the Sustainable Forest Management Network for funding this research and Tolko Industries Ltd for allowing us to use one of their management units as a case study
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