Humans, climate, and an ignitions-limited fire regime at Vaseux Lake
department or school: Forestry, Faculty of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Pogue, Alexandra Menke
issued: 2017-03-15T16:31:54Z
issued: 2017
related degree: Master of Science - MSc
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: This study investigated the role of human land use and climate as drivers of the historical fire regime of a 400ha protected area in the Okanagan region of British Columbia. I used fire scars and forest demography data to reconstruct spatiotemporal patterns in fires from 1714 - 2013. I also used paleo-climate reconstructions derived from tree ring series to evaluate whether historical fire-climate relationships changed with the displacement of indigenous peoples. Fire patterns were closely coupled with the human history of the study area. Fires were more frequent, less synchronous, and burned earlier in the season when indigenous people were stewarding the study area traditionally. Logistic regression showed that fires were also twice as likely during this period, and that topographic factors were not a significant control of the fire regime. Analysis of fire-climate relationships revealed that human land use superseded the effects of inter-annual and decadal-scale climate as a driver of historical fires. Fires occurred during a variety of conditions when indigenous people were stewarding the study area traditionally, while fires after indigenous people were displaced were associated with El Niño years, which tend to bring warm/dry conditions to the region. The historical fire regime at Vaseux was of mixed-severity in time and space, and this variability helped generate a complex forest structure. Historical fires acted to control tree establishment and mortality, and the forest is now denser than it was historically due to reduced fire frequency in the late 20th century. Continued infilling could shift the fire regime towards a greater component of high-severity fire. The results suggest that indigenous traditional land stewardship was the dominant control of historical fire dynamics at Vaseux. Managers wishing to preserve habitat and forest structures generated by the historical fire regime will need to account for the influence of indigenous burning, and modern l…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/60911
note: Humans, Climate and an Ignitions-Limited Fire Regime at Vaseux Lake by Alexandra Menke Pogue B.A., Whitman College, 2009 A THESIS SUMBITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE in The Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (Forestry) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) March, 2017 © Alexandra Menke Pogue, 2017 ii ABSTRACT This study investigated the role of human land use and climate as drivers of the historical fire regime of a 400ha protected area in the Okanagan region of British Columbia. I used fire scars and forest demography data to reconstruct spatiotemporal patterns in fires from 1714 - 2013. I also used paleo-climate reconstructions derived from tree ring series to evaluate whether historical fire-climate relationships changed with the displacement of indigenous peoples. Fire patterns were closely coupled with the human history of the study area. Fires were more frequent, less synchronous, and burned earlier in the season when indigenous people were stewarding the study area traditionally. Logistic regression showed that fires were also twice as likely during this period, and that topographic factors were not a significant control of the fire regime. Analysis of fire-climate relationships revealed that human land use superseded the effects of inter-annual and decadal-scale climate as a driver of historical fires. Fires occurred during a variety of conditions when indigenous people were stewarding the study area traditionally, while fires after indigenous people were displaced were associated with El Niño years, which tend to bring warm/dry conditions to the region. The historical fire regime at Vaseux was of mixed-severity in time and space, and this variability helped generate a complex forest structure. Historical fires acted to control tree establishment and mortality, and the forest is now denser than it was historically due to reduced fire frequency in the late 20th century. Continued infillin…
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2017-05
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0343231
language: eng
degree discipline: Forestry
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/60911