Simulating a natural fire regime on an Atlantic coast barrier island complex in Florida, USA

    Authors

    B. W. Duncan; J. F. Weishampel;S. H. Peterson

    Comments

    Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Ecol. Model.

    Keywords

    Florida; Fire regime modeling; HFire; NINO-SOUTHERN-OSCILLATION; EAST-CENTRAL FLORIDA; HISTORIC LANDCOVER; LANDSCAPE CHANGE; WILDFIRE; SCRUB; POPULATION; VEGETATION; DYNAMICS; Ecology

    Abstract

    The HFire fire regime model was used to simulate the natural fire regime (prior to European settlement) on Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Canaveral National Seashore, and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Model simulations were run for 500 years and the model was parameterized using information generated from previously published empirical studies on these properties (e.g., lightning fire ignition frequencies and ignition seasonality). A mosaic pattern of frequent small fires dominated this fire regime with rare but extremely large fires occurring during dry La Nina periods. This simulated fire size distribution very closely matched the previously published fire size distribution for lightning ignitions on these properties. A sensitivity analysis was performed to establish which parameters were most influential and the range of variation surrounding empirically parameterized model output. Dead fuel moisture and wind speed had the largest influence on model outcome. A wide range of variance was observed surrounding the composite simulation with the least being 6% in total burn frequency and the greatest being 49% in total area burned. Because simulation modeling is the best option for fire regime reconstruction in many rapidly growing shrub dominated systems, these results will be of interest to scientists and fire managers for delineating the natural fire regime on these properties, the southeastern United States and other fire adapted shrub systems worldwide. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Ecological Modelling

    Volume

    222

    Issue/Number

    9

    Publication Date

    1-1-2011

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    1639

    Last Page

    1650

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000289931100008

    ISSN

    0304-3800

    Share

    COinS