Abstract
Until Euro-American colonization, Indigenous people used fire to modify eco-cultural systems, developing robust Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Since 1980, wildfire activity has increased due to fire-suppression and climate change. In 2017, in Waterton Lakes National Park, AB, the Kenow wildfire burned 19,303 ha, exhibiting extreme fire behavior. It affected forests and the Eskerine Complex, a native-grass prairie treated with prescribed burns since 2006 to reduce aspen (Populus tremuloides) encroachment linked to fire suppression and bison (Bison bison bison) extirpation. One-year post-fire, the Kenow wildfire caused vigorous aspen sprouting, altered stand structure to an early-seral state, and dominant land cover from grass to mineral soil. It did not change aspen-cover extent, or cause non-native grass eruption, but reduced native-grass diversity, and produced more pronounced shifts in ecosystem structure and biodiversity than the prescribed burns. The 2017 Kenow wildfire and prescribed burns differed in phenological timing, scale, and severity. Prescribed burns occurred in late spring, with little fuel available, while the Kenow wildfire occurred in late summer, with abundant fuel—amplifying the difference in severity. As in other climate-limited fire regimes, prescribed burns treatments did not mitigate the severity of the Kenow wildfire. To more effectively reduce the extent of aspen cover, future prescribed burns in this system could be applied in the late season. Incorporating TEK in adaptive co-management can help create more resilient ecosystems for fire and pervasive stressors such as invasive plants, provided one contextualizes current conditions and how they differ from historical conditions.
Highlights
Environmental sciences increasingly recognize the interconnectedness among humans and ecosystems as fundamental to understanding the development and sustainability of terrestrial and aquatic systems (Ostrom, 2009)
Our rebar transect markers indicate that the Kenow wildfire and post-fire wind removed up to 0.70 m of topsoil from some rebar stakes through combustion or wind dispersal, these visual observations indicated that soil removal patterns were very patchy
When we evaluated the influence of the number of prescribed burns (0–3 prescribed burns, Figure 1) on grass-plot ecological response to the Kenow wildfire (Appendix Table 2), the proportion of native grass was higher in plots that had 2
Summary
Environmental sciences increasingly recognize the interconnectedness among humans and ecosystems as fundamental to understanding the development and sustainability of terrestrial and aquatic systems (Ostrom, 2009). Humans have interacted with North American ecosystems for 24,000 year BP (Bourgeon et al, 2017), with human presence in Western North America for at least 14,000 year BP (Gilbert et al, 2008). Indigenous peoples relied upon ecosystems for survival and increased ecosystem productivity by modifying environmental conditions. A primary means by which Indigenous peoples modified eco-cultural systems (Boyd, 1999), frequently occurred in North America prior to Euro-American colonization, promoting ecosystem structure and composition reliant on fire to maintain those conditions As Indigenous peoples’ populations declined due to disease and colonization, their fire-management impacts on plant communities changed (Liebmann et al, 2016)
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