Abstracts
SEARCH Open Science Meeting
October 27, 2003
Seattle, Washington, USA
Human Impacts to Fire Regime in Interior Alaska
La'ona DeWilde1
1Biology Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks, P.O. Box 82175, Fairbanks, AK, 99708, USA, Phone 907-347-9677, Fax 907-474-6967, ftld1@uaf.edu
A thorough analysis of human impacts on interior Alaska’s fire regime demonstrates that human activities have a large effect on fire regime. The Fairbanks region, which has a large human population with road influences, differs from two other regions with low human populations and no roads.
Alaska’s land is separated into four classes designated for different levels of protection: Critical, Full, Modified and Limited, going from high level of protection to low level of protection. In the Fairbanks region, humans have impacted fire regime by causing more fires in certain fuel types and doubling the length of the fire season. Despite the increased number of fires in the Fairbanks region, more of the Fairbanks region is designated to receive a high level of suppression. Therefore, less area of land burns in the Fairbanks region, even with fuel type controlled for.
For Alaska as a whole, human ignitions and suppression have only a minor affect on fire regime, and climate strongly influences the total area burned. However, in areas where people live, human ignitions account for most of the area burned, and climate has no significant effect on area burned. In the Fairbanks region, the reduction in area burned, due to fire suppression, will, over the long term, increase the proportion of flammable vegetation on the landscape and therefore future fire risk to people. In summary, the net effect of people on Alaskan fire regime has been to reduce area burned, reduce its sensitivity to climate variation, and increase the future risk of fires that threaten human life and property.
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