3C.1
Fire Regimes in Tropical Environments: An Overview
Ronald Myers, The Nature Conservancy, Tallahassee, FL
Fire regimes are sets of recurring conditions of fire that characterize given ecosystems. Those conditions include a specific range of frequency, fire behavior, burn severity, timing of burn, and size/pattern of burn. Eliminate fire, increase fire, or alter one or more of the components of a fire regime beyond the range of variability for a given ecosystem and that ecosystem will change to something else—habitats, species, and resources/services will be lost; climates may change; and fires may become persistent, pervasive and/or catastrophic.
Throughout the world, the alteration of fire regimes is a significant threat to biodiversity and human livelihoods regardless of whether the affected ecosystems are fire-maintained or fire-sensitive. In the tropics, broadleaved forests are generally regarded as fire-sensitive, while many tropical environments support highly significant ecosystems that depend on fire. Recent devastating fires in tropical broadleaved forests in Indonesia, Mexico, West Africa, Central America and the Amazon Basin--where fire normally would play a limited ecological role--and in fire-prone temperate forests in the United States and Australia, that have been subjected to effective fire exclusion, have highlighted the need for 1) a better understanding of fire’s ecological role and the implications of altering historic fire regimes, 2) assessments of, and approaches to, the socio-economic roots of fire, and 3) the development and implementation of more appropriate responses to fire when they occur.
.Session 3C, Changing Fire Regimes in Tropical Environments (Track III)
Tuesday, 18 November 2003, 10:30 AM-6:30 PM
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