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Search For A Solution: Sustaining the Land, People, and Economy of the Blue Mountains

Chapter 7: FIRE IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS: A HISTORY, ECOLOGY, AND RESEARCH AGENDA

James K. Agee

CONCLUSIONS

Fire was a common visitor to Blue Mountain ecosystems in the past. It will be in the future. Although we lack the ability to predict or mimic many disturbances, we have the ability to choose, to some extent, what relationship we want with fire. Those choices have in the past not always been wise, either in fire exclusion or fire use. Future choices should be based on the notion that natural resources management is a grand experiment, but not one that has to be unpredictable.

Where the prediction tools are available, we need to make better use of them. Where they are absent, we need to develop them. The concepts of plant associations and landscape ecology are useful ways to organize and integrate information about fire and other ecosystem components and processes. Increasing and applying this information to the ecosystems of the Blue Mountains will ensure their sustained productivity in the broadest biological and social context.

Contents of Chapter Seven:

• Introduction
• Fire As a Natural Process
• Fire As a Disturbance Agent
• The Fire Regime
• Fire Adaptations of Plants
• The Fire Environment
• Environmental Effects of Fire
• Natural Fire Regimes of the Blue Mountains
• Vegetation and Fire Regimes
• Fire History of the Blue Mountains
• Fire Effects in the Blue Mountains
• Effects of Management on Fire Regimes
• Fire Exclusion Policy
• Timber Harvesting
• Livestock Grazing
• Effects of These Changes on the Landscape
• A Research Program in Fire Ecology and Management
• The Management Challenge
• The Research Challenge
• Education and Training
• Fire Research
• Conclusion