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Abstract
Over the past century, a variety of environmental stressors, combined with effects from past and current management activities (e.g., fire exclusion, past timber harvest practices, livestock grazing, water diversion), have substantially altered the status of most California ecosystems. These changes include major shifts in ecological disturbance regimes, such as flooding, insect and disease outbreaks, and fire (Barbour et al. 2007, Mooney and Zavaleta 2016). For terrestrial ecosystems, the most profound ecological disturbances are those that substantially increase plant mortality, and in California’s Mediterranean climate, fire has long been viewed as the primary natural disturbance factor driving ecosystem composition, structure, function, and geographic distribution (Keeley and Safford 2016, van Wagtendonk and Fites-Kaufman 2006).
Parent Publication
Citation
Meyer, Marc D.; Long, Jonathan W.; Safford, Hugh D.; Sawyer, Sarah C.; North, Malcolm P.; White, Angela M. 2021. Principles of postfire restoration. In: Meyer, M.D.; Long, J.W.; Safford, H.D., eds. Postfire restoration framework for national forests in California. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-270. Albany, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station: 1-30. Chapter 1.
