DOI: 10.25921/kp81-5q22
title: NOAA/WDS Paleoclimatology - Huffman fire data from Schoolhouse Gulch - IMPD USSCH001

description: Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests occur at their warmer, drier environmental limits in the Mogollon Highlands ecoregion (MHE) of the Southwestern United States, and are commonly found in stringers or discrete stands that form ecotones with interior chaparral. These "rear edge" forests are likely to be highly vulnerable to rapid changes in structure and composition with climate warming, drought, and wildfire. There is increasing interest in understanding historical conditions, ecosystem changes, and restoration needs for MHE forests. However, comprehensive reconstruction analysis of fire regimes and stand structure has not been done for these systems, which differ from many montane ponderosa pine forests by having an abundance of understory shrubs. In this study we used demographic data from field plots, fire scar samples, and dendroecology to reconstruct historical fire regimes and landscape structure at ponderosa pine-dominated sites that spanned a range of environmental conditions on the Prescott and Tonto National Forests. We found strong evidence of historical surface fire regimes with mean fire intervals ranging 1.3-15.6 years across the five MHE sites during the period 1700-1879. We found very little evidence of historical high-severity fire at any study site. Historical forest structure was open with tree densities ranging 84.7-136.4 trees ha-1 and stand basal area (BA) ranging 4.5-8.4 m2 ha-1. Historical composition showed codominance of ponderosa pine, Arizona white oak (Quercus arizonica), Emory oak (Q. emoryi), and Gambel oak (Q. gambelii). Thus, oak species and likely other hardwoods were important historical components of these ecosystems. Contemporary forests are greater in stand density and BA by 359-703% and 285–502%, respectively, compared to historical estimates. In addition, we observed contemporary shifts in species composition. Changes related to disruption of historical fire regimes have increased susceptibility of ponderosa pine forests in the MHE to rapid shifts in structure and composition that may come about with climate change and high-intensity wildfire. Meeting fuels reduction and ecological restoration goals will be challenging for land managers due to vigorous regeneration responses of shrubs to tree thinning, prescribed burning, or other management activities. Managers will be required to balance attention to historical reference conditions, conservation of biological diversity, and needs for fuels management.
description: This dataset was contributed as part of the North American Tree-ring Fire Scar Synthesis (NAFSS) project (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/34853). Data were contributed to the project from the original data generators.

Sample Storage Location: Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University
Dating Method: Dated
Related ITRDB_Chronology: Not Applicable

Fire scar data from this site are available in FHX2 format at:
  https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/northamerica/NAFSS/ussch001.fhx
along with associated metadata, including links to supplemental information files and Fire History Graphs, at:
  https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/northamerica/NAFSS/ussch001-noaa.txt

Fire History Graphs: Fire History Graphs illustrate specific years when fires occurred and how many trees were scarred. They are available in both PDF and PNG formats. The graphs consist of 2 parts, both of which show the X axis (time line) at the bottom with the earliest year of information on the left and the latest on the right. The Fire Index Plot is the topmost plot, and shows two variables: sample depth (the number of recording trees in each year) as a blue line along the left Y axis, compared with the percent trees scarred shown as gray bars along the right Y axis. Below, the Fire Chronology Plot consists of horizontal lines representing injuries by year on individual sampled trees. Symbols are overlain that denote the years containing the dendrochronologically-dated fire scars or injuries. The sample ID of each tree is displayed to the right of each line. The Composite Axis below represents the composite information from all individual series. The symbols used to represent the fire scars or injuries, and the filters used to determine the composite information, are shown in the legend. These graphs were created using the Fire History Analysis and Exploration System (FHAES). See https://www.fhaes.org/ for more information.