An Analysis Of Literature On Natural Fire Disturbances In Relation To Ontario S Forest Management Guide For Natural Disturbance Pattern Emulation

Ontario's "Forest management guide for natural disturbance pattern emulation" provides direction for emulating natural fire disturbances in forest management planning. This report examines the North American scientific literature on natural fire disturbances in relation to the directions in this guide for: landscape harvest size patterns; landscape harvest patch separation; residual stands; and residual trees & downed woody debris. Gaps in the published knowledge are identified. An annotated bibliography of the literature reviewed for the report is included.

This prospectus presents a broad framework for a series of research studies to investigate Ontario boreal forest fire regime at multiple scales. The broad research goal is to reduce uncertainties in knowledge about boreal forest fire regimes related to policy directions in Ministry of Natural Resources' Forest management guide for natural disturbance pattern emulation. The research studies are grouped into three categories: reviews and syntheses of published literature; determining the characteristics of the broad-scale fire regime in boreal Ontario; and spatial mapping and monitoring.

The Forest Management Guide for Natural Disturbance Pattern Emulation (NDPE), which has been applied in Ontario since 2003, specifies directions and provides standards and guidance to emulate fire disturbances. Included in the NDPE guide are specific directions about the amount of residual structure to be retained during forest harvest. Improved understanding of the characteristics of post-fire residual structure in natural conditions will help forest policymakers to provide better strategic guidance for emulating natural fire disturbance patterns during forest harvesting, and forest managers to make better tactical decisions about retaining post-harvest residual structure to emulate fire disturbances. The objective of this report is to characterize the extent and variability of post-fire residual patch occurrence in natural boreal forest fire events to better understand their extent and spatial patterns and to relate these results to the directions provided in Ontario's NDPE guide.--Document.

"This bibliography compiles all publications written, co-authored, or commissioned by OFRI staff between 2001 and 2005. During this period over 200 publications were produced including 3 books, 87 journal articles, 26 reports, 11 technical notes, 5 newsletters, 47 papers/summaries in conference/workshop proceedings. Topics covered are diverse: understanding natural disturbance regimes and landscape dynamics, carbon budgets and effects of climate change on forests, results of 1998 ice storm research, silviculture studies covering everything from site preparation, tree improvement, stock production, planting, and vegetation management, to stand growth and yield, thinning, disease management and harvesting for conifer, mixedwood, and hardwood forests in the boreal and Great Lakes region of Ontario. Author and subject indexes are provided."--Document.

In the other three ecoregions, it underestimated fire size distribution under all simulation scenarios. The guide's direction for spatial proximity was not congruent with results from any simulated scenario in any ecoregion. However, the probability of spatial proximity was low in all but one ecoregion. In addition to the assessment of NDPE guide's direction, this study demonstrates that fire size distributions appear to be unique to ecoregions, and that these can vary further if the fire weather conditions change."--Abstract

Fire intensity within forest fires varies as weather and site conditions change, leaving live forest patches, and individual trees, as well as dead structure as standing trees and downed stems. Such remnant structure from pre-burn forests are collectively known as post-fire residuals. This review of the literature is focused on establishing the state of knowledge on post-fire residuals as relevant to directions in Ontario's Forest management guide for natural disturbance pattern emulation (NDPE). It covers information reported for boreal North America, captured from reports that are published and universally accessible. The report includes a description of the methodological steps followed in searching, reviewing, and synthesizing literature; definitions and descriptions of post-fire residuals; abundance and variability of specific types of post-fire residual structure; and associations of post-fire residual structure with forest cover, site conditions, and fire behaviour. It also identifies knowledge gaps and uncertainties about aspects of post-fire residual structure that are relevant to the NDPE guide directions.--Includes text from document.