Fire Regime Dynamics of Fish Lake, Blue Mountains, Oregon
Document Type
Oral Presentation
Campus where you would like to present
SURC Ballroom B/C/D
Start Date
21-5-2015
End Date
21-5-2015
Keywords
Fire Regime, Macroscopic Charcoal Analysis, Climate Change
Abstract
Fire has been a key process in shaping the forests of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) throughout the Holocene (the past ~12,000 years). However, in recent centuries, anthropogenic climate change and land-use actions (e.g., fire suppression) have severely disrupted pre-Euro-American settlement fire regimes, leading to the risk of catastrophic wildfires in many forests. Federal agencies are interested in using prescribed fire to restore historic forest mosaics and to reduce the risk of these conflagrations; however, there is a lack of fire history data from many areas in the PNW that spans more than a couple hundred years, including the Blue Mountains of Oregon. This study is reconstructing the fire history of the Fish Lake watershed in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest of the Blue Mountains using macroscopic charcoal analysis of a lake sediment core. The purpose of this research is to determine how fire regimes have changed at the site during the past ~12,000 years with respect to past climate variability. Fish Lake is located at an elevation of 2,030 m and exists among trees with low fire return intervals, primarily lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). Preliminary results indicate that infrequent high-severity fires have historically dominated the region. Our findings also suggest these fires have become more common in the last few hundred years. It is our hope that the information from this study can be used by forest managers to determine how fire activity may change in the future due to climate change.
Recommended Citation
Goodner, Chris, "Fire Regime Dynamics of Fish Lake, Blue Mountains, Oregon" (2015). Symposium Of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE). 89.
https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/source/2015/posters/89
Poster Number
35
Department/Program
Resource Management
Additional Mentoring Department
Resource Management
Fire Regime Dynamics of Fish Lake, Blue Mountains, Oregon
SURC Ballroom B/C/D
Fire has been a key process in shaping the forests of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) throughout the Holocene (the past ~12,000 years). However, in recent centuries, anthropogenic climate change and land-use actions (e.g., fire suppression) have severely disrupted pre-Euro-American settlement fire regimes, leading to the risk of catastrophic wildfires in many forests. Federal agencies are interested in using prescribed fire to restore historic forest mosaics and to reduce the risk of these conflagrations; however, there is a lack of fire history data from many areas in the PNW that spans more than a couple hundred years, including the Blue Mountains of Oregon. This study is reconstructing the fire history of the Fish Lake watershed in the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest of the Blue Mountains using macroscopic charcoal analysis of a lake sediment core. The purpose of this research is to determine how fire regimes have changed at the site during the past ~12,000 years with respect to past climate variability. Fish Lake is located at an elevation of 2,030 m and exists among trees with low fire return intervals, primarily lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa). Preliminary results indicate that infrequent high-severity fires have historically dominated the region. Our findings also suggest these fires have become more common in the last few hundred years. It is our hope that the information from this study can be used by forest managers to determine how fire activity may change in the future due to climate change.
Faculty Mentor(s)
Megan Walsh