Natural fire regime : a guide for sustainable management of the Canadian boreal forest

By Yves Bergeron, Alain Leduc, B. Harvey, Sylvie Gauthier. 2002

507 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The combination of certain features of fi re disturbance, notably fi re frequency, size and severity, may be used to characterize the disturbance regime in any region of the boreal forest. As some consequences of fi re resemble the effects of industrial forest harvesting, conventional forest management is often considered as a disturbance that has effects similar to those of natural disturbances. Although the analogy between forest management and fi re disturbance in boreal ecosystems has some merit, it is important to recognise that it also has its limitations. Short fi re cycles generally described for boreal ecosystems do not appear to be universal; rather, important spatial and temporal variations have been observed in Canada. These variations in the fi re cycle have an important infl uence on forest composition and structure at the landscape and regional levels. Size and severity of fi res also show a large range of variability. In regions where the natural matrix of the boreal forest remains relatively intact, maintenance of this natural variability should be targeted by forest managers concerned with biodiversity conservation. Current forest management tends to reduce this variability: for example, fully regulated, even-aged management will tend to truncate the natural forest age distribution and eliminate over-mature and old-growth forests from the landscape. We suggest that the development of strategic-level forest management planning approaches and silvicultural techniques designed to maintain a spectrum of forest compositions and structures at different scales in the landscape is one avenue to maintain this variability. Although we use the boreal forest of Quebec for our examples, it is possible to apply the approach to those portions of the boreal forest where the fi re regime favours the development of even-aged stands in burns.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Insect Science, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c78b582b86646a5c58b4e279344c606ed35da19a

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Citations in the corpus

Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience (2006, background): “Typically, NDBM approaches seek to maintain biodiversity relative to present or reference (pre-industrial or pre-European settlement) forest ecosystems (Bergeron et al. 2002).”
Comparing composition and structure in old-growth and harvested (selection and diameter-limit cuts) northern hardwood stands in Quebec (2005, background): “If compared to natural disturbance regimes, disturbances associated with forest management differ in their rate of occurrence, extent, severity (Bergeron et al., 2002) and synchronicity.”
Habitat selection by black bears in an intensively logged boreal forest (2008, background): “As a result, the natural age structure and stand composition in humid boreal forests have been distorted by ongoing forestry management practices (Hunter 1993; Bergeron et al. 2002).”
Forest age distribution under mixed-severity fire regimes : a simulation-based analysis for middle boreal Fennoscandia (2002, background): “…or restoring the natural range of variability in boreal forest ecosystems is a widely approved approach to protecting biodiversity and other nontimber values (Haila et al. 1994, Angelstam and Pettersson 1997, Fries 1997, Landres et al. 1999, Niemelä 1999, Bergeron et al. 2002, Kuuluvainen 2002).”
Fire frequency and vegetation dynamics for the south-central boreal forest of Quebec, Canada (2002, background): “However, studies have also shown that within a single fire, there is a large variation in terms of fire intensity (Kafka et al. 2001; Bergeron et al. 2002).”
Landscape context affects the success of habitat restoration: large‐scale colonization patterns of saproxylic and fire‐associated species in boreal forests (2012, background): “Ecological changes include the loss of structural elements – such as old trees (Andersson & Östlund, 2004) and decaying wood (Siitonen, 2001) – but also the disappearance of the disturbances that are typical in natural forests (Kouki et al., 2001; Bergeron et al., 2002; Kuuluvainen, 2002).”
Understory Vegetation Dynamics of North American Boreal Forests (2006, background): “Emulating natural forest succession processes is of increasing interest in boreal forest management (Bergeron et al., 2002).”
Natural forest dynamics in boreal Fennoscandia: a review and classification (2011, background): “Knowledge of the characteristics of natural forest habitats and their spatiotemporal dynamics at different scales is therefore indispensable for all efforts to sustain forest biodiversity (Angelstam 1998, Bergeron et al. 2002).”
Silvicultural disturbance severity and plant communities of the southern Canadian boreal forest (2002, background): “In response, Canadian boreal forest research has entered a new phase in which knowledge of natural disturbance dynamics is actively incorporated into stand and landscape level forest management (Bergeron et al. 1999, Spence et al. 1999, Bergeron et al. 2002).”
Natural disturbance impacts on ecosystem services and biodiversity in temperate and boreal forests (2015, unknown): “In human-altered boreal forest ecosystems, for instance, where fire is the major natural disturbance agent, there are suggestions for the application of prescribed burning as a measure to restore natural forest conditions (Bergeron et al., 2002; Toivanen & Kotiaho, 2007; Olsson & Jonsson, 2010).”
Principles of ecological restoration of boreal forested ecosystems: Finland as an example (2002, background): “Understanding the structure and function of natural forested ecosystems forms the necessary basis for all forest restoration activities (Landres et al. 1999, Bergeron et al. 2002, Kuuluvainen 2002).”