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Abstract
The incidence of large, costly landscape-scale fires in western North America is increasing. To combat these fires, researchers and managers have expressed increased interest in investigating the effectiveness of past, stand-replacing wildfires as bottom-up controls on fire spread and severity. Specifically, how effective are past wildfires in mitigating the behavior and effect of future fires, and for how long? Our research focused on two recent fires that encountered past wildfires but with significantly different outcomes. The 2006 Tripod Complex fires in Washington State flanked around, but did not reburn, the 1970 Forks Fire, while the 2012 Octopus Mountain Fire in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia reburned much of the 1991 Spar Mountain Fire area. In 2013 we sampled fuels and vegetation in unburned portions of the Tripod/Forks and the Octopus/Spar Mountain fire areas in order to quantify canopy and surface fuel characteristics and elucidate why fire behavior and effects were different between the two wildfire events.
Parent Publication
Citation
Gray, Robert W.; Prichard, Susan J. 2015. A tale of two fires: The relative effectiveness of past wildfires in mitigating wildfire behavior and effects. In: Keane, Robert E.; Jolly, Matt; Parsons, Russell; Riley, Karin. Proceedings of the large wildland fires conference; May 19-23, 2014; Missoula, MT. Proc. RMRS-P-73. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 290-293.
