Files and links (1)
Rights Statements InC/1.0 , Open Access
Journal article
Fire history of Douglas-fir forests in the Morse Creek drainage of Olympic National Park, Washington
Northwest science., Vol.74(4), pp.263-279
2000
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/1014
Abstract
In the Morse Creek drainage of the northeastern Olympic Mountains in Washington state, USA, montane forests dominated by Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) owe their prominence to a complex fire regime that incorporates high severity stand-replacing fires and low/moderate severity ground fires. The fire history of these forests was quantified using dendrochronological methods to determine the role played by wildfire to favour dominance of Douglas fir rather than late-successional western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla). Three matrix forest types reflect the influence of past wildfires. The youngest matrix type was <150 yr old, next was a matrix type 150-300 yr old, and the oldest was >300 yr old. Germination dates and fire release markers were identified on increment cores from 318 Douglas firs, and used to date past fire events. A 600-yr fire history was developed for this 2500-ha area. Periods characterized by many small-scale, low and moderate severity fires were interrupted by 2 high severity, stand-replacing burning periods in 1687-1720 and 1897-1904. Mean fire return intervals (FRI) were calculated for various land units. The most informative size was 200 ha, the approximate mean size of lateral tributaries to Morse Creek. FRI was 21 yr at this spatial scale. For the entire 2500 ha drainage, mean FRI was estimated at 3 yr. Similar to Douglas-fir forests in central Oregon and northern California, small patchy fires were much more common in the eastern Olympics than previously thought. Instead of fire exclusion, a policy that uses management fires to burn many small patches of forest each year would approach the kind of fire regime typical of these forests.
Metrics
331 File views/ downloads
406 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Fire history of Douglas-fir forests in the Morse Creek drainage of Olympic National Park, Washington
- Creators
- S.A. Wetzel (Author)R.W. Fonda (Author)
- Publication Details
- Northwest science., Vol.74(4), pp.263-279
- Academic Unit
- Northwest Science
- Publisher
- WSU Press
- Identifiers
- 99900502720701842
- Copyright
- In copyright ; openAccess ; http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ ; http://purl.org/eprint/accessRights/OpenAccess
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Journal article