Fire history and fire regimes of the Willamette Valley and fringe habitats
Local fire history and fire regime information are necessary in fire management plan development and implementation. Understanding the relationship of fire, climate and vegetation is useful in resolving restoration, wildfire risk reduction, and wildfire for resource benefit issues. This is especially true in the Willamette Valley and Valley fringe lands, where population growth and land-use change are expected to double in the next few decades. Oak woodlands, savannas and prairies, and dry Douglas-fir and grand fir forests occur within the largely wildland urban interface within the valley and fringe. An analysis of past and present fire regimes is underway in fringe forests in a study funded by BLM under National Fire Plan. This effort project focuses on fire-scars and tree establishment dates from forest stands that are 200 years or younger. This proposed project builds on this effort by developing a transect of 2000-yr-long fire records based on lake-sediment records from the Willamette Valley, where traditional dendrochronogical methods are not possible. Information on decadal and century time scales provided in this study will be combined with the tree-ring data to develop a regional fire-history database. This interdisciplinary approach will allow us to better understand the role of land-use activities and climate change in creating the current fire conditions. Our first objective is to reconstruct regional variation in historical fire regimes from the foothills of the Coast Range across the Willamette Valley to the foothils of western margin of the Cascade Range. We will achieve this objective by reconstructing fire history from radiocarbon-dated charcoal records in five sites on a N-S transect from Portland to Springfield. These data will supplement fire scars and tree establishment dates sampled in »50 recent clear cuts from Cottage Grove to Estacada. Our second objective is to reconstruct the historical vegetation changes, including major shifts in vegetation composition as well as stand structure and composition that resulted from these fire regimes. To do this, we will reconstruct a history of vegetation changes spanning the last 2000 years, based on radiocarbon-dated pollen records, to provide a regional picture. These data will complement the ongoing effort to reconstruct community structure and tree establishment in several intensively sampled recent clear cuts. Our third objective is to communicate our findings to land managers and researchers through oral presentations, written reports and peer-reviewed publications.
Local fire history and fire regime information are necessary in fire management plan development and implementation. Understanding the relationship of fire, climate and vegetation is useful in resolving restoration, wildfire risk reduction, and wildfire for resource benefit issues. This is especially true in the Willamette Valley and Valley fringe lands, where population growth and land-use change are expected to double in the next few decades. Oak woodlands, savannas and prairies, and dry Douglas-fir and grand fir forests occur within the largely wildland urban interface within the valley and fringe. An analysis of past and present fire regimes is underway in fringe forests in a study funded by BLM under National Fire Plan. This effort project focuses on fire-scars and tree establishment dates from forest stands that are 200 years or younger. This proposed project builds on this effort by developing a transect of 2000-yr-long fire records based on lake-sediment records from the Willamette Valley, where traditional dendrochronogical methods are not possible. Information on decadal and century time scales provided in this study will be combined with the tree-ring data to develop a regional fire-history database. This interdisciplinary approach will allow us to better understand the role of land-use activities and climate change in creating the current fire conditions. Our first objective is to reconstruct regional variation in historical fire regimes from the foothills of the Coast Range across the Willamette Valley to the foothils of western margin of the Cascade Range. We will achieve this objective by reconstructing fire history from radiocarbon-dated charcoal records in five sites on a N-S transect from Portland to Springfield. These data will supplement fire scars and tree establishment dates sampled in »50 recent clear cuts from Cottage Grove to Estacada. Our second objective is to reconstruct the historical vegetation changes, including major shifts in vegetation composition as well as stand structure and composition that resulted from these fire regimes. To do this, we will reconstruct a history of vegetation changes spanning the last 2000 years, based on radiocarbon-dated pollen records, to provide a regional picture. These data will complement the ongoing effort to reconstruct community structure and tree establishment in several intensively sampled recent clear cuts. Our third objective is to communicate our findings to land managers and researchers through oral presentations, written reports and peer-reviewed publications.
