Wildland Fire and an Ecosystem Approach to Management

Many natural resource agencies in the United States are adopting ecosystem approaches to management. These approaches integrate ecological principles, human systems, and the goals of sustainability, permanence, and resiliency into the practices of resource management agencies. These approaches focus on stewardship of systems using integrative and adaptive management practices rather than focusing primarily on commodities (e.g., board-feet, select wildlife species, or recreation days). Ecosystem approaches to management are practiced on landscape-scale levels that extend beyond the formal jurisdictional boundaries of any one agency.

This concept has grown out of the combination of pressure to meet emerging societal values involving natural resources, and development of the science of ecology to the point where it can be used for management planning and decision-making (Grumbine, 1994; Albert, 1995). Development of ecosystem management has been more evolutionary than revolutionary (Franklin, 1997).

The Ecological Society of America (Christensen, et al., 1996, pp. 665-666) stated that ecosystem management is based on eight central elements:

1. Sustainability

   Ecosystem management does not focus primarily on "deliverables" but rather regards intergenerational sustainability as a precondition.

2. Goals

   Ecosystem management establishes measurable goals that specify future processes and outcomes necessary for sustainability.

3. Sound ecological models and understanding

   Ecosystem management relies on research performed at all levels of ecological organization.

4. Complexity and connectedness

   Ecosystem management recognizes that biological diversity and structural complexity strengthen ecosystems against disturbance and supply the genetic resources necessary to adapt to long-term change.

5. The dynamic character of ecosystems

   Recognizing that change and evolution are inherent in ecosystem sustainability, ecosystem management avoids attempts to "freeze" ecosystems in a particular state or configuration.

6. Context and scale

   Ecosystem processes operate over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, and their behavior at any given location is greatly affected by surrounding systems. Thus there is no single appropriate scale or time frame for management.

7. Humans as ecosystem components

   Ecosystem management values the active role of humans in achieving sustainable management goals.

8. Adaptability and accountability

   Ecosystem management acknowledges that current knowledge and paradigms of ecosystem function are provisional, incomplete, and subject to change. Management approaches must be viewed as hypotheses to be tested by research and monitoring programs.

The Ecological Society of America (Christensen, et al., 1996, p. 666) continues the discussion by stating that four fundamental scientific precepts guide ecosystem management. These are:

1. Spatial and temporal scale are critical

   Ecosystem function includes inputs, outputs, cycling of materials and energy, and the interactions of organisms. Boundaries defined for the study or management of one process are often inappropriate for the study of others; thus, ecosystem management requires a broad view.

2. Ecosystem function depends on its structure, diversity, and integrity

   Ecosystem management seeks to maintain biological diversity as a critical component in strengthening ecosystems against disturbance. Thus, management of biological diversity requires a broad perspective and recognizes that the complexity and function of any particular location is influenced heavily by the surrounding system.

3. Ecosystems are dynamic in space and time

   Ecosystem management is challenging in part because ecosystems are constantly changing. Over time, scales of decades or centuries, many landscapes are altered by natural disturbances that lead to mosaics of successional patches of different ages. Such patch dynamics are critical to ecosystem structure and function.

4. Uncertainty, surprise, and limits to knowledge

   Ecosystem management acknowledges that, given sufficient time and space, unlikely events are certain to occur. Adaptive management addresses this uncertainty by combining democratic principles, scientific analysis, education, and institutional learning to increase our understanding of ecosystem processes and the consequences of management interventions, and to improve the quality of data upon which decisions must be made.

   Grumbine (1994, p. 31) lays out five specific goals that frequently appear in ecosystem management:

   1. Maintain viable populations of all native species in situ.
   2. Represent, within protected areas, all native ecosystem types across their natural range of variation.
   3. Maintain evolutionary and ecological processes (i.e., disturbance regimes, hydrological processes, nutrient cycles, etc.).
   4. Manage over periods of time long enough to maintain the evolutionary potential of species and ecosystems.
   5. Accommodate human use and occupancy within these constraints.

Based on these views of ecosystem management, it is clear that maintenance or restoration of natural disturbance regimes are necessary components. However, these regimes must somehow be integrated into the human use and occupancy component.

Fire is an important element of many ecosystems, and is necessary for some species to complete their life cycles. In a review of 90 ecosystem management projects in the United States, Yaffee et al. (1996) found that in 34% of the projects that disrupted the natural fire regime an important human-caused stress on the ecosystem was considered. For ecosystem management to maximize its potential to help restore healthy ecosystems, restoration of natural fire regimes are needed in many areas.

Expanding prescribed fire on public or private land seems to be a relatively easy and biologically sound approach to restoring ecological integrity. However, problems often arise when we attempt restoration at a landscape scale, especially across political, jurisdictional, and social boundaries. We know prescribed fire can be ecologically beneficial as part of an ecosystem management plan, and can be economically beneficial by reducing fuel loads and improving the quality of the resource. Yet human biases against wildland fires, based on real and perceived risks of destruction of property, loss of life, air pollution, and other factors make prescribed fire difficult to implement.

For example, the lodgepole pine fire regime includes very infrequent, but high intensity crown fires as part of the natural life cycle of the forest. These fires are difficult to manage and can easily cross jurisdictional boundaries, threatening human communities. Yet suppressing fire in lodgepole pine ecosystems might change the biological community in a manner not fitting the goals of ecosystem management, or may cause continued buildup of fuel loads, thus increasing the likelihood of extreme fires. Current fire management programs struggle with these difficulties. While the amount of land burned under prescription is increasing in wildlands, the total acreage in the wildland-urban interface zone, because of structural density and structural proximity to the fuel sources, preclude extensive use of fire as a tool for reducing fuel loads. Thus, total landscape focus is problematic.

The U.S. Forest Service points out that avoiding prescribed treatments of the land has the following effects:

• Change from relatively low damage, stand-maintenance fires to more severe high damage, stand-replacement fires.
• Conversion from fire-resistant species to fire-intolerant species having less resilience to fire disturbances.
• Less controllable and more costly wildland fires.
• Increasing danger to firefighters.
• Growing threat to wildland/urban interface values where development is occurring in fire prone types.
• Increasing potential for higher particulate matter emissions as fuel loads and understory biomass increase.

Agencies often point to the southeastern forest fire regimes of the United States, where large-scale prescribed burning has occurred in the form of short interval fires since the 1930s, to show that their forest health problems are much less extensive when compared to national trends. Even in the southeast, though, prescribed fire is no panacea; it is only a useful tool. The rapid growth of vegetation during a warm, wet growing season, followed by an extreme dry period in the early summer of 1998 left Florida vulnerable to large, intense fires. Approximately one half million acres burned; the ecosystems of north and central Florida received extensive fire. The situation was exacerbated by widely distributed housing developments tucked into pine and scrub communities. In these areas, prescribed burning had not been extensive enough even though Florida has more acreage of prescribed burns annually than any other state. These wildland-urban interface zones had heavy fuel loads and required much of the firefighting resources.

While aggressive fire suppression is still a dominant strategy to protect lives, property, and highly valued natural and cultural resources, prescribed fire is key to ecosystem restoration. Ecosystem management planning at landscape scales must reflect a comprehensive approach for near-term suppression and long-term periodic burning of fire-dependent natural communities using prescribed fire.

Ecosystem management, because of its cross-jurisdictional, cross-boundary perspective, requires a dedication to conflict management. Competing interests often arise; the issues of fire prescription and fire prevention are good examples. Many publics will have negative perceptions of fire because of past media campaigns. Wildland fire communication has traditionally carried the message of prevention. A parallel message is now needed, i.e., that fires, both prescribed and wildland fire, are necessary to maintain ecosystem health.

Risks exist for natural resource managers in addressing ecological problems beyond a legal or jurisdictional boundary; ecosystem approaches cross these boundaries. Property rights issues must be understood, and sensitivity to them is necessary for good ecosystem management to occur.

However, ecosystem management is more about community responsibility than it is about interfering with any individual's or agency's rights. Ecosystem approaches to natural resource management include creating and valuing open dialogues in both communities of place (residents) and communities of interest (nonresidents who have a vested interest) regarding resource management activities.

Wildland fire policy and practice are central to ecosystem management success. Likewise, full implementation of enlightened ecosystem management will, to a great extent, determine if wildland fire management will move beyond annual suppression to a proactive stance of using "fire to prevent fire" and restore ecosystem health.

References

Albert, P. 1995. Incarnating ecosystem management. Conservation Biology 9(4): 952–955.

Christensen, N.L., A.M. Bartuska, J.H. Brown, S.D. Carpenter, C. Antonio, R. Francis, J.F. Franklin, J.A. MacMahon, R.F. Noss, D.J. Parsons, C.H. Peterson, M.G. Turner, and R.G. Woodmansee. 1996. The Report of the Ecological Society of America Committee on the Scientific Basis for Ecosystem Management. Ecological Applications 6(3): 665–691.

Franklin, J.F. 1997. Ecosystem management: An overview. In Boyce, M.S. and A. Haney (eds.), Ecosystem management: Applications for sustainable forest and wildlife resources. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 21–53.

Grumbine, E.R. 1994. What is ecosystem management? Conservation Biology 8(1): 27–38.

Yaffee, S.L., A.F. Phillips, I.C. Frentz, P.W. Hardy, S.M. Maleki, and B.E. Thorpe. 1996. Ecosystem management in the United States: An assessment of current experience. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Author: K. Jeffrey Danter