HR: 10:20h
AN: U52A-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Fire Regimes and Forest Structure in the Mountains of Northwestern Mexico and Southern California
AU: * Stephens, S L
EM: stephens@nature.berkeley.edu
AF: Department of Environmental Sciecne, Policy, and Management, 151 Hilgard Hall UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 United States
AB: In contrast to a few isolated forests in northern Mexico, most forests in the western Untied States have been significantly modified by fire suppression, harvesting, and livestock grazing. The culmination of these past management activities has produced over 20 million ha of US forests with high fire hazards and many of these areas are in need of restoration. Understanding reference conditions is challenging because we have few intact forests functioning under the continuing influence of climate variation, insects, diseases, and frequent fires. This presentation summarizes information from reference sites in northwestern Mexico and contrasts it to current forest structure and fire regimes in southern California forests. Heterogeneity is common in the intact forests of northwestern Mexico. Restoration targets across similar forests in the United States and elsewhere should incorporate variation and not manage for average characteristics at the stand level, replicated for all stands across very large spatial scales. Conservation of the forests in the northwester Mexico is critical because it is the last landscape-scale, old-growth mixed conifer forest in western North America with a relatively intact frequent fire regime.
DE: 9350 North America
DE: 6324 Legislation and regulations
DE: 1600 GLOBAL CHANGE (New category)
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting