The ecological importance of mixed-severity fires: Nature's phoenix [Book Review]

The stated goal of a recent book, The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix, edited by Dominick A. DellaSala and Chad T. Hansen, is to provide a global reference on the benefits of mixedand high-severity fires. Note that the goal is not to provide an objective reference on the ecological aspects of mixedand high-severity fires. Rather, the book appears to be mostly about convincing the reader that large severe fires occur in perhaps all forest types and provide important biological legacies and rare early-seral habitats and further that postfire logging degrades a highly valued habitat and postfire conifer planting sets forests up for severe fires in the future. The book is organized into 3 sections and 13 chapters written by 27 authors mostly from the United States, plus Canada, the Czech Republic, Australia, and Norway. Section 1 of the book is titled “Biodiversity of Mixedand High-Severity Fires. ” I was looking forward to a global accounting of the biodiversity of such fires and was instead surprised by the assortment of chapters in this section. Chapter 1, by Chad Hanson and colleagues, is designed to set the stage and focuses on dry ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forest types. The main theme of this chapter is that large high-severity fires in these forest types were more common historically than many managers and scientists assume. Chapter 2 makes the case for how “mega-fires” have occurred in about every vegetation type in the United States plus a few in Portugal and Canada and that these large fires are exclusively driven by weather. Knowledgeable readers will note the authors’ reliance on only a subset of published work to support their premises and use of unpublished data to support certain points. For example, DellaSala and Hanson present unpublished data to counter published studies documenting low conifer regeneration on large severely burned areas; these unpublished data are then again referenced in Chapter 8. Chapter 3 is mostly focused on the northern Rockies and relies extensively on unpublished data even though there is a rich body of published work on birds associated with severely burned areas, including a number by Richard Hutto, the lead author. In Chapter 4, Monica Bond arranges the text by animal taxonomic group (bats, small mammals, carnivores, and ungulates), and the text drifts from deserts to high elevation forests. The appendix table summarizes the number of studies showing negative, neutral, or positive population response by mammal species based on time since fire, but does not include vegetation type. In Chapter 5, Breeane Jackson and her colleagues focus on western North America, and the chapter is arranged by the major factors that influence the effects of fire on organisms and processes in linked stream-riparian ecosystems. In the final chapter in Section 1, Dominik Kulakowski and Thomas Veblen address the interaction between fire and bark beetle outbreaks in lodgepole pine and sprucefir forests. This chapter relies more heavily on published literature than some of the others but clearly with a goal of asserting that bark beetle infestations in these two forest types do not set the stage for more severe fires. I was surprised that none of the chapters addresses other taxonomic groups such as plants (which constitute the majority of the biodiversity in many forest types) and arthropods (although there is a short case study on invertebrates in the second section). Section 2 explores the prevalence and broad ecological importance of large fire events in space and time. In Chapter 7, Richard Halsey and Alexandra Syphard describe how the management paradigm in California chaparral is gradually shifting. In Chapter 8, Laurence Berry and Holly Sitters highlight concerns about clearcutting and postfire logging critically endangering mountain ash forests in southeastern Asia. Ronald Abrams describes how mixedand high-severity fires are critical in maintaining biodiversity in sub-Saharan Africa and how people can and do live with high-severity fire. Chapter 8 concludes with Petr Heneberg’s case study about the importance of a mosaic of fire severities, including high severity, in sustaining invertebrate biodiversity in central Europe. The main theme of Chapter 9 is that warmer climates will indeed be linked with increases in the number and size of wildfires; however, whether such increases are within the (deep time) historical range of variability are unknown. That is, Cathy Whitlock and her colleagues contend that most studies cover only the recent past and therefore probably do not account for the “true” natural variability if a longer time period had been considered. In Chapter 10, Stephen Mitchell’s major theme regarding severe fires and carbon is that the majority of the carbon stored in montane forests remains unconsumed, even in high-severity wildfires, due to storage in the soil and tree boles. Section 3 focuses on managing mixedand high-severity fires. In Chapter 11, DellaSala and colleagues make the case that postfire BOOK REVIEW For. Sci. 62(6):710–711 http://dx.doi. org/10.5849/forsci.16-999