‘Lifeboats’ Amid the World’s Wildfires

Refugia can exist within a burning forest with a single tree. Having done controlled burns in my mixed hardwood forest, the underbrush burns like a tinder box and red cedars go up like roman candles, the large oaks may char, but always live. They are most grateful for the elimination of the water competing cedars. The wildlife are happy for the copious production of acorns, that feed many forest critters. Fire is good.

The institute now known as fRI Research (formerly the Foothills Model Forest and Foothills Research Institute) has been studying these “natural disturbance” patterns since the mid-1990s and developed an approach to land management called Healthy Landscapes. This approach uses harvests and prescribed burning to emulate the effects of historic and projected natural disturbance events—primarily wildfire but also including insects, disease, wind, and precipitation. Recent iterations incorporate the expected future effects of climate change as well as past patterns derived from lake sediments, tree rings, aerial photography, and other evidence. Healthy Landscapes has been embraced by governments and forest companies across Western Canada. The results on the ground include prescribed burning programs in national parks and major changes in the planning and execution of harvests. For example, forest companies are now using much larger harvest areas that include significant “retained structure” (i.e. refugia). Harvests are planned as single events rather than the previous “two-pass” checkerboard of clearcuts. Landscapes have evolved and adapted within a natural range of variability, and by managing on that basis, we can maintain more of the biological diversity and other desirable attributes. For more information, see https://friresearch.ca/program/healthy-landscapes-program I am the co-author of a forthcoming book on the work of fRI Research.

Stop building communities in or near the forest. That should help to maintain areas where flora and fauna will thrive.

In Hawai’i, an analogous kipuka is created when lava flows surround an area of untouched forest. Lava is a bit more devastating than fire so the kipukas are essentially permanent refugia.

Visiting National Parks over the past 20 years I'm stuck by the increasing frequency and severity of fires. Larger and larger areas are burning - at higher temperatures. I'd love to believe there's hope but have to wonder. The climate IS changing - getting warmer and drier - all over. Every time we've been by Hoover Dam the level of Lake Mead has been lower. It's easier to see the change in person - when docks are more than half mile from their original locations. Pine bark beetles are killing off huge numbers of trees all over the west, providing immense reserves of fuel. Rocky Mountain NP is half brown in places. One of our favorite places - Glacier NP is losing its glaciers AND forests. I feel as if I've been witness to to a horrid transition and wonder if this is how the Anasazi felt as they saw their world change. Native Americans talked of a great change marked by trees dying from the top down. That is all too common here now. Small refuges are not enough to compensate for the destruction we're seeing now.

Gaea looks after those humans don't, or won't...

This is fascinating and hopeful. Perhaps planting and nurturing refugia can and should become central to forest management as the climate changes.

Tropical rain forests are and have been the ultimate refugia for many millions of years.

While a bit off-topic, for those interested in refugia, "After the Ice Age: The return of life to glaciated North America" is worth reading. A wonderful book by the mathematical ecologist, E.C. Pielou. One of those people you wished you'd taken a course with.

Refugia. How lovely to know such a thing exists in the world. Thanks for the article.

After the fires in Northern California, I noticed that in some places the trees survived, and in some places they did not. The same is true of houses in Santa Rosa: there are neighborhoods that look the same as they did before the fire, right next to neighborhoods that are burned bare.

Regeneration stands (clearcuts, or plantations after wildfires) also work as fire refugia, in two ways; sometimes a crown fire will lose momentum and turn into a creeping fire when it hits the plantation. With wind-driven fires, the fire usually continues to burn older trees beyond the plantation. Sometimes, the stand of old growth uphill from the plantation will be spared (at least until the momemtum returns). This would be the case in a terrain-driven fire, more often than a wind-driven fire. Forest management should include strategicly-placed clear cuts to create pockets of fire refugia.

Many will remember the 1988 Yellowstone fire, which devastated large areas of the northwestern section of that park. It's rapid regeneration was proof, for decades, of the benefits of a 'Let It Burn' approach to forest management. We came to understand that such fires, which have occurred naturally at 100-to-300 year intervals for the last 10,000 years, were vital to the health of these forests. But then something odd happened. The same area experienced another intense burn again in 2016 - far sooner than the 100 or so years needed for complete regeneration. Regrowth in that area now is primarily scrub, the kind of vegetation that one expects to see in southern California, not northern Wyoming. And it's not alone - forests in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah are similarly threatened. Refugia work, when given enough time. But rapid climate change is changing much more than the weather. It seems their time is running out.

Thanks for an informative article about an aspect of wildfires that I had not known of. Please do some follow up on the research being conducted because this is increasingly important in our world.

The problem with identifying refugia is that the climate is changing and what was a shelter one year may become no different from the surrounding fire areas the next. Old growth can be cooler and wetter than neighboring stands of trees in a way that's obvious when one walks thru a forest here. Old growth seems to create it's own climate, but of course, that can change too albeit slower than the surrounding trees in the PNW where so much of the National Forests here are primarily tree farms. Perhaps refugia could be formed by installing catchment, cisterns, or another method that provides water to a segment of the forests during the dry summers weeks and months like the example of the "Refugia in April 2015" photograph you provide. Cooler and wetter areas may become refuges and the cisterns could be fed with snow during winter months. Old growth and late secondary growth here develop symbiosis with fungi and remain a lot more stable compared to the vast tracts of young trees that don't get old enough to develop these associations. Will another Great Fire 0f 1910 be the outcome of our current policies and failure to adjust to the changing climate? That fire burned over 3 million acres.