Title

Simulating A Natural Fire Regime On An Atlantic Coast Barrier Island Complex In Florida, Usa

Keywords

Fire regime modeling; Florida; HFire

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 Niña 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. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Publication Date

5-10-2011

Publication Title

Ecological Modelling

Volume

222

Issue

9

Number of Pages

1639-1650

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.02.017

Socpus ID

79953303449 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/79953303449

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