Abstract
Fire history for blue oak (Quercus douglasii Hook. & Arn.) woodlands in California’s southern Sierra Nevada range was characterized with samples of 49 trees. Mean fire interval was 12.8 years from 1850 to 1965, with apparent fire exclusion since that time. Changes in fire frequency could affect oak woodland ecosystem processes such as recruitment, tree growth and mortality, and vegetation composition.
Highlights
Fire has been documented as a regular part of the California’s oak woodland ecosystem for the past several thousand years (Byrne et al 1991)
McClaren and Bartolome (1989) documented a mean fire interval (MFI) of 25.2 years between 1681 and 1848, 7.1 years from 1849 to 1948, and no fires from 1949 to the present for blue oak stands in the central Sierra Nevada foothills
The study area was located on a private blue oak woodland ranch in the southern Sierra Nevada foothills near the town of California Hot Springs in Tulare County, California, USA
Summary
Fire has been documented as a regular part of the California’s oak woodland ecosystem for the past several thousand years (Byrne et al 1991). Over 90 % of California’s blue oak woodlands are privately owned (Waddell and Barrett 2005), and contain the highest level of biological diversity of any broad habitat in the state (Allen-Diaz et al 2007).
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