HR: 16:30h
AN: B34A-03    [Abstracts]
TI: Interactions Between Climate Change, Fire and Invasive Plants in California Ecosystems
AU: * Keeley, J E
EM: Jon E Keeley
AF: USGS Western Ecological Research Center, Sequoia National Park, 47050 Generals Hwy, Three Rivers, CA 93271, United States
AU: * Keeley, J E
EM: Jon E Keeley
AF: Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States
AB: Changes in fire regimes are predicted in many climate change scenarios. The types of changes are greatly affected by the fuel structure of the ecosystem and different trajectories of change are expected in surface fire regimes than in crown fire regimes. However, in the multi-factorial world of natural ecosystems, climate is only one of the drivers of future change and some of the known threats to ecosystem stability are expected to push the system over particular thresholds of tolerance very rapidly. Invasive species have been widely recognized as drivers of ecosystem change, often generating feedback effects that alter fuel structure and future fire behavior. Human demographic changes, and the concomitant changes in anthropogenic fire ignitions are an additional threat to future ecosystem stability. I will address how these factors might interact with climate change in ecosystems of very different fuel structure, including surface fire ponderosa pine forests and crown fire chaparral shrublands in California.
UR: http://www.werc.usgs.gov/seki/keeley.asp
DE: 0410 Biodiversity
DE: 0439 Ecosystems, structure and dynamics (4815)
DE: 0468 Natural hazards
DE: 0476 Plant ecology (1851)
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting