Using Fire History Data to Map Temporal Sequences of Fire Return Intervals and Seasons

Analysis of complex spatio-temporal fire data is an important tool to assist the management and study of fire regimes. For fire ecologists, a useful visual aid to identify contrasting fire regimes is to map temporal sequences of data such as fire return intervals, seasons, and types (planned versus unplanned fire) across the landscape. However, most of the programs that map this information are costly and complex, requiring specialist training. We present a simple yet novel method for creating sequences of temporal data for mapping fire regimes using basic geographic information system (GIS) techniques and logical test functions in Microsoft® Excel 2003 (Microsoft, Bellevue, Washington, USA). Using fire history data (1972 to 2005) for southwestern Australia, we assigned integer classifications to fire return intervals (short, moderate, and long) and fire types and seasons (wildfires and prescribed burns in different seasons) and joined the integer classifications together to form a sequence of numbers representing the order of either fire return intervals or fire seasons in reverse time sequence. This sequence can be mapped in a GIS environment so that spatial dimensions formed by overlapping polygons are readily observed, and the temporal sequence of fire data within each polygon can be interpreted across the landscape. We applied the technique to examine experimental design options for investigating the effects of contrasting fire regimes on biota at the landscape scale. This investigation identified several important factors: 1) patterns were evident in fire types and seasons, 2) patterns were evident for fire return interval sequences, and 3) combining fire types and seasons with fire return intervals significantly constrained options for the study design. A visual analysis of this type highlights fire regime patterns in the landscape and permits a feasibility study for the development of study design options and the spatial arrangement of potential study sites.

[1]  G. Cary,et al.  Effects of fire frequency on plant species composition of sandstone communities in the Sydney region: Combinations of inter‐fire intervals , 1995 .

[2]  M. M. Moore,et al.  DETERMINING REFERENCE CONDITIONS FOR ECOSYSTEM MANAGEMENT OF SOUTHWESTERN PONDEROSA PINE FORESTS , 1997 .

[3]  Perry de Valpine,et al.  The fire frequency analysis branch of the pyrostatistics tree: sampling decisions and censoring in fire interval data , 2009, Environmental and Ecological Statistics.

[4]  G. Wardell-Johnson,et al.  Fire frequency and time‐since‐fire effects on the open‐forest and woodland flora of Girraween National Park, south‐east Queensland, Australia , 2004 .

[5]  L. McCaw,et al.  Fire Interval Sequences to Aid in Site Selection for Biodiversity Studies: Mapping the Fire Regime , 2009 .

[6]  May Yuan,et al.  Use of Knowledge Acquisition to Build Wildfire Representation in Geographical Information Systems , 1997, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[7]  Grant Wardell-Johnson,et al.  Fire and Plant Interactions in Forested Ecosystems of South-West Western Australia , 2003 .

[8]  A. Gill.  Fire and The Australian Flora: A Review , 1975 .

[9]  G. Cary.  Importance of a changing climate for fire regimes in Australia. , 2002 .

[10]  Grant Wardell-Johnson,et al.  Post-fire juvenile period of plants in south-west Australia forets and implications for fire management , 2008 .

[11]  A. Sullivan,et al.  Project Vesta: Fire in Dry Eucalypt Forest: Fuel Structure, Fuel Dynamics and Fire Behaviour , 2008 .

[12]  Roy S. Wittkuhn,et al.  Creation of a fire history database for southwestern Australia: giving old maps new life in a Geographic Information System. , 2009 .

[13]  Alan N. Andersen,et al.  Fire in tropical savannas : the Kapalga experiment , 2003 .

[14]  A. Andersen.  Burning Issues in Savanna Ecology and Management , 2003 .

[15]  Matthew G. Rollins,et al.  Mapping Fire Regimes Across Time and Space: Understanding Coarse and Fine-scale Fire Patterns , 2001 .

[16]  N. Burrows,et al.  Linking fire ecology and fire management in south-west Australian forest landscapes , 2008 .

[17]  John F. Roddick,et al.  Survey of Spatio-Temporal Databases , 1999, GeoInformatica.

[18]  A. Gill,et al.  Flammable Australia: The Fire Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent , 2009 .

[19]  Mary L. Cadenasso,et al.  Dimensions of ecosystem complexity: Heterogeneity, connectivity, and history , 2006 .

[20]  N. Burrows,et al.  Fire in south-west Western Australia: synthesis of current knowledge, management implications and new research directions. , 2003 .

[21]  J. Koch,et al.  Post-fire succession in the northern jarrah forest of Western Australia. , 1980 .

[22]  A. Gill,et al.  Which mosaic? A landscape ecological approach for evaluating interactions between fire regimes, habitat and animals , 2005 .

[23]  Daniel Polakow,et al.  Modelling fire-return interval T: stochasticity and censoring in the two-parameter Weibull model , 1999 .

[24]  Harry Biggs,et al.  A patch mosaic burning system for conservation areas in southern African savannas , 2001 .

[25]  N. Burrows,et al.  Fire and terrestrial invertebrates in south-west Western Australia. , 2003 .

[26]  S. Levin.  The problem of pattern and scale in ecology , 1992 .

[27]  Matthias M. Boer,et al.  Long-term impacts of prescribed burning on regional extent and incidence of wildfires : evidence from 50 years of active fire management in SW Australian forests , 2009 .

[28]  Robert H. Smith,et al.  Epigeous macrofungal succession in the first five years following a wildfire in karri (Eucalyptus diversicolor) regrowth forest in Western Australia , 2008 .

[29]  Nikos Pelekis,et al.  Literature review of spatio-temporal database models , 2004, The Knowledge Engineering Review.