Preliminary evidence of mixed-severity fire regimes in the east slopes of the Rocky Mountains

AMOROSO, MARIANO; DANIELS, LORI; BATAINEH, MOHAMMAD; ANDISON, DAVID; STOCKDALE, CHRIS

Edmonton, Canada

Jornada; The Foothills Research Institute Natural Disturbance Program: What do we have for you?; 2009

Sustainable forest management aims to conserve biodiversity and maintain ecosystem function while maintaining renewable resources. To achieve this goal requires knowledge of the spatial and temporal attributes of natural disturbance regimes and disturbance impacts on forest composition and structure that can be used to guide management. The premise of this approach is that management to maintain historic forest structures and functions on current and future landscapes will maintain the habitat suitable for the biota adapted to the system. This research, a collaboration with Hinton Wood Products and the Foothills Research Institute Natural Disturbance Program, investigates the fire regimes of the mixed-conifer, mountain forests of the Rocky Mountain foothills of west-central Alberta. We conducted a pilot study to test for spatial and temporal variation in fire history and reconstruct the impacts of historic fires on forest structure and dynamics.