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Panarchy of fire: The role of prescribed burning in creating adaptive and resilient forest and wildland ecosystems

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sarein J. Basi-Primeau University of Victoria

Figure 1. Smith, D. (2009). A fire rages in the crown of a Lodgepole Pine stand. Parks Canada.

Final Paper for Environmental Studies 384 - Systems Theory: An Introduction to Natural and Social Systems Submitted April 5th, 2012 Instructor: Duncan Taylor

The purpose of this paper is to use the Panarchy model as a basis to explain the potential prescribed burning has for increasing the adaptability and resilience of fire-dependent forest and wildland ecosystems. It has taken decades for forestry to understand frequent-fire forests and the role fire plays within these ecosystems, but we now know that there are many long-term ecosystem health benefits associated with fire. These include increased productivity, hydrology, nutrient cycling, and control of invasive plant species. Since prescribed fire removes understory debris, it also decreases the risk of catastrophic wildfires in areas undergoing frequent burning (Binkley et al. 2007). Historically, fire was used by many First Peoples to maintain and sustain ecosystems such as forests and Garry oak meadows. New settlers to these areas suppressed both prescribed or anthropogenic fire regimes and heavily controlled natural fires or wildfires. Fire suppression became widespread in the 20th century in modern forest conservation in industrialized cultures (Connell, 2008), but had the opposite effect conservationists had envisioned however, as they failed to understand the relationship between fire and ecosystem health. Currently, many forest systems in North America are experiencing an increasing need for prescribed burning in order to prevent these ecosystems from disappearing due to the encroachment from other ecosystems. For example, prescribed burning has played an important part in restoring and protecting western longleaf pine savannahs in southeastern United States, as these forest ecosystems are facing encroachment by hardwood trees such as oaks (Ford et al. 2010). The inclusion of fire in management practices has required a paradigm shift in cultural views and the movement towards ecologically sustainable forestry

has helped increase the acceptance of fire in management practices. This paper further advocates for fire as a useful tool in forestry management by first explaining how prescribed burning relates to the Panarchy model, then addressing the ecological roles fire plays in ecosystems with a focus on the Panarchy backloop processes of release and reorganization.

Panarchy, as advocated by Lance Gunderson, C.S Holling, and colleagues, is a theory that describes how systems transform, collapse and adapt across space and time, through four prominent stages of exploitation, conservation, release, and reorganization. This model can be applied to range of systems, from social to ecological (Connell, 2008; Holling, 2004). The Panarchy cycle is valuable in illustrating the concept of fire in an ecosystem as it represents the disturbance that causes release and facilitates reorganization; the two phases in the backloop of Panarchy (Figure 2). For decades, modern management strived to keep forest ecosystems, particularly old-growth forests, at the conservation phase and prevented the release and reorganization phases from occurring by suppressing fire. Forests accumulated so much biomass and organic matter during the exploitation and conservation phases, or the forward loop, that they reached thresholds that were unsustainable. This wealth of biomass causes forest ecosystems to gradually become less resilient and therefore more vulnerable (Binkley et al. 2007; Holling, 2004) and susceptible to high degrees of damage when a severe forest fire occurred, instead of supporting the release and reorganization phases they had previously underwent with frequent fires (Binkley et al. 2007). All

four phases, or both the front loop and backloop, are essential for ecosystems to complete a full cycle, allowing them to sustain ecosystem functions and adapt to more resilient systems in the face of disturbances (Holling, 2004).

The release phase of Panarchy is crucial to forest ecosystems. Fire enters at the peak of the conservation phase and acts as a facilitator of change within the ecosystem to initiate the release phase (Connell, 2008). Biomass, such as carbon, energy and important nutrients that has been trapped in the forest system is released making it available again for uptake by the ecosystem or other open systems. The understory including litter or organic matter that has built up along the forest floor is burned and cleared away. This disturbance not only releases the accumulated biomass in the ecosystem, but also eliminates the risk that a more severe fire will take place; one that will ignite due to the excessive build up of litter, and burn the trees to an undesirable or unrecoverable amount (Binkley et al. 2007). Not to mention the increased likelihood of the fire spreading to nearby communities and other forest stands. The burning of understory vegetation also kills invasive species such as weeds, reducing their influence and increasing native plant populations. The diversity of these native plant populations also increases as the fire reduces the density of the tree canopy. This reduction lowers the total growth of trees in a forest but increases the growth of residual trees, or those that are retained, which in turn increases the biomass and productivity of the understory (Binkley et al. 2007). Fire is also an important agent in killing pests and forest pathogens or diseases that can threaten the health of ecosystems (Connell, 2008).

Following the release phase, fire in a forest ecosystem facilitates restructuring of the system to a new functioning state during the final phase of reorganization. When a forest ecosystem begins to reorganize after the release phase, it is focused on germination and redistribution of plants to a pattern that better promotes growth and productivity (Connell, 2008). Frequent fires reorganize the spacing of trees by allowing larger trees to persist, limiting the success of small trees, and fostering a spatial pattern of open meadows and tree stands. With fires that reoccur every few years or decades, most of the small trees are killed which creates less competition for light and soil moisture for those that do survive. This leads to higher rates of individual growth, thicker bark, and higher canopy heights, all factors that make the trees more resistant to subsequent fires. The restructuring of trees canopies aids in increasing hydrology of forest ecosystems by reducing the amount of tree leaf area of the forest and facilitating the progression of water from the canopy to the soil, making it available to both the trees and understory vegetation. In forests experiencing fire suppression, canopies are often denser and precipitation is intercepted in the canopy. Often times it never reaches the soil as it accumulates on the tree leaves and is evaporated back into the atmosphere. Forests with high leaf area have decreased chances of water availability and have higher rates of water use per tree, as there are lower amounts of soil water available for understory plants. This restructuring makes fire one of the most important processes responsible for creating landscape mosaics in forest ecosystems. Mosaics contain mixed-age species as well as varying successional levels and it is this differing organization that supports greater diversity of both habitats and species (Binkley et al. 2007). Inorder

for systems such as an ecosystem to be able to adapt to disturbances, such as wildfires, it must be allowed to take part in the release and restructuring phases of the backloop of panarchy and adapt to a system that is more resilient in the longterm.

As outlined by this paper, incorporating prescribed burning into forest management has great potential for increasing the adaptability and resilience of forest ecosystems by supporting two vital phases in forest cycles of release and reorganization, as illustrated by the Panarchy model. During the release phase, fire releases biomass and facilitates the cycling of life sustaining nutrients, energy and carbon. Following this, fire restructures forest ecosystems and increases functions such as productivity, biomass and hydrology. These phases are necessary in completing forest cycles and supporting the long-term sustainability of ecosystems and their associated species. In North America, these include ecosystems or biomes such as Boreal forests (Weber & Stock, 1998), Garry oak meadows and Western longleaf pine savannas (Ford et al. 2010). The increased adoption of prescribed fire in forest management reflects a socio-ecological shift, one that is important to the sustainability of forests ecosystems (Berkes et al. 2003). The cultural construction of fire is changing. It is no longer being seen as only a destroyer, but also as a creator. Hopefully this optimism will continue to grow as people understand the great power fire possesses to sustain our forests.

Figure 2. Berkes, et al. 2003. The adaptive renewal cycle. This figure illustrates the four phases of the Panarchy model with a focus on the attributes of forest ecosystems with prescribed fire taking place in the release phase of the lower right quadrant.

References
Berkes, F., Colding, J. & Folke, C. (2003). Navigating Socio-Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change. Nature, Cambridge University Press.

Binkley, D., Sisk, T., Chambers, C., Springer, J. & Block, W. (2007). The role of oldgrowth forests in frequent-fire landscapes. Ecology and Society 12(2): 18. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/ iss2/art18/

Connell, D. E. (2008). Aspiring Ashes: A Human Ecological, Natural Science, and Practical Synthesis of Prescribed Fire. University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences; Vienna, Austria, Lincoln University; Lincoln, New Zealand. Masters Thesis, pp. 1-141.

Ford, C. R., Minor, E. S. & Fox, G. A. (2010). Long-term effects of fire and fire-return interval on population structure and growth of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris). Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 40: 14101420. Doi:10.1139/X10-080

Holling, C. S. (2004). From complex regions to complex worlds. Ecology and Society, 9(1):11. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art11

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