Fire Regimes in Various Types of Vegetation

Running Head: FIRE REGIMES IN VARIOUS TYPES OF VEGETATION
FIRE REGIMES IN VARIOUS TYPES OF VEGETATION
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FIRE REGIMES IN VARIOUS TYPES OF VEGETATION1
Executive Summary
This paper aims to understand the fire regimes practiced and observed in the various forms of
wildlife and ecology. It assess the nature of the different forms of fire and regimes that can
look into the adverse effects of these situations, such that they are under control and do not
pose dangerous risks to humans and animals. Such fires could lead to wide-scale loss of
valuable resources and cause an extinction of many rare species of flora and fauna. The study
further, recommends methods to control such instances through the different fire regimes in a
situation of climate and topography that is intensely threatened by the growing negative
effects of global warming and accumulation of greenhouse gases, soaring high the
temperature and pollution levels across the globe.

FIRE REGIMES IN VARIOUS TYPES OF VEGETATION2
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................4
History....................................................................................................................................4
Causes....................................................................................................................................5
Characteristics........................................................................................................................7
Mapping.................................................................................................................................9
Climatic Changes.................................................................................................................10
Invasive Species...................................................................................................................10
Risks to Humans, Animals and other Organisms.................................................................11
Pyrogeography and its applications.....................................................................................12
Recommendations....................................................................................................................13
Detection, Prevention & Suppression..................................................................................13
Conclusion................................................................................................................................14
References................................................................................................................................16

FIRE REGIMES IN VARIOUS TYPES OF VEGETATION3
Introduction
This paper aims to study the concept of fire regimes and the various types of fire
regimes across the globe. Fire regime is a form, frequency and strength of the wildfires and
bushfires, which prevails in a region for a long time. Wildfires occur in areas of vegetation
that are of combustible nature, mostly occurring in the rural regions. While bushfires,
common in Australia, occur during the months that are comparatively warmer, due to the hot
and dry climatic conditions. Similarly, brush fire, desert fire, hill fire, forest fire, peat fire,
grass fire, vegetation fire or veld fire are the different kinds of fires that classifies under the
broad name of wildfire, wild land fire, or rural fire. For millions of years, the indigenous
people have used the fire to enhance the grasslands for the purposes of hunting or clear out
the tracks amidst dense vegetation. However, these fires have also resulted into firestorms,
leading to a huge loss of life, comprising of the flora and fauna. The deposition of huge
amounts of methane gas in swampy interiors of the forests or dry and dead remains of
vegetation adds to the intensity of such fires in the wild. Besides these, conditions of drought
and heat waves add to the situation of fire. The rise in global warming is also increasing the
frequency and adding to the strength of these fires. Names such as Ash Wednesday (1983),
Black Saturday (2009) or Eastern Victorian Alpine bushfire (2006) are popular in Australia
for the bushfires that started on these days, as named, killing a large number of people
besides the animas in these grasslands (Cattau, Husson & Cheyne, 2015). Fire regimes
change, based on spatial and temporal variations like climate, topography, and fuel.
Preventions and care can be taken to effectively prevent such uncontrolled outburst of forest
fires by understanding the historic regimes of fire and their interactions with the climatic
changes. The study further, looks into the study to understand the severity of the fire regimes
besides the classifications that incorporate the various fire types like ground, surface or crown
fires, depending on the size, intensity, seasonality as well as the degree of variability in these

FIRE REGIMES IN VARIOUS TYPES OF VEGETATION4
fire regimes. However, fossil charcoal presents the fact that wildfires are not something new
but their appearance started nearly after the germination of terrestrial vegetation, about 420
million years ago. Being rich in carbon, the earth features to be a flammable planet,
intrinsically with its volcanic eruptions, carbon-rich vegetation and life forms, seasonally
prevalent dry climatic conditions, widespread lightning and the presence of atmospheric
oxygen.
Discussion
History
The increase in the fire regimes across the continents primarily attributes to
the climatic changes as the prime reason for such increase in their number,
overshadowing the human activities that remain as potential threat to the ecology. It
has been noticed that there has been a pronounced scale of land use from the primitive
times that doubled the increase in the forest fires in the Southern Europe at the
commencement of the Neolithic Age (8000-6000 years) to the Bronze Age (5000-
4000 years) to the medieval period (1000 years); in comparison to the Holocene
average that records for the last 115000 years (Vannière et al., 2016). However, it has
been noted that there has been a considerable decline in the emissions of fire-carbon
in the Southern Europe since the last 7000 years (Vannière et al., 2016). This was
primarily due to the cooling off the earth and increased use of the land, thereby
reducing the availability of biomass. In New Zealand and Australia, the collective
effects of the Maori as well as the European fires have reduced the forest cover from
85 – 90 percent to only 25 percent of the terrestrial ecosystem of the New Zealand
(Perry, Wilmshurst & McGlone, 2014). This has reduced the biodiversity as well as
the rate of pollination and dispersal of seeds.

FIRE REGIMES IN VARIOUS TYPES OF VEGETATION5
Causes
The wildfires comprise of the various kinds of fire regimes as mentioned
earlier. Fire is a complicated physical as well as ecological process that dramatically
affects the landscapes, organisms, ecosystems, climate and the biodiversity in the era
of post-settlement. Recurrent fires and their persistence threatens the indigenous
species of plant as well as the ecosystems, which are highly-valued. The primary
causes of such ignitions are:
 Lightning — In the West, the frequency of fires owes more to the
lightning than other reasons. Vale (2013) states that forest fires
originate due to the availability of two substances: a source of ignition
and a fuel. In case of natural fires, the source of ignition is lightning if
not any form of human activity. However, the fuel here acts as the
combustible substances found in the forests like the dried leaves and/
or twigs, marshy or swampy lands with an accumulation of fuels or
marsh gas, chemically known as methane.
 Dry climatic conditions — The increase in the heat and rising
temperatures often lead to situations of drought where the heat from
the Sun also has the potentiality to char dried leaves. In these
situations, any form of ignitions takes no time to spread the fire,
making it difficult to control the spread of such fires.
 Accumulation of inflammable gases like methane in the forest
wetlands — Accumulation of gases in the dense marshlands of the
forests or the wetlands, leads to deposition of fuels which can catch
fire very easily and lead to the spread of the same in no time, owing to
the dense nature of such forests.