Fire Types and Regimes
Fire regime refers to the long-term nature of fire in an ecosystem (Brown 2000), including both frequency and severity of effects. The interval between fires in southern forests may be as short as a year or as long as centuries. The intensity of fire and severity of effects can vary in scale from benign to catastrophic. Because of the spatial and temporal variability of fire and its effects, descriptions of fire regimes are broad (Whelan 1995). The definitions of fire regimes used here follow the descriptions used in Brown and Smith (2000) and include understory, mixed and stand-replacing regimes. We can also distinguish between three types of fire depending on the vertical strata being consumed.
In explaining the climate and vegetation interactions that influence fire regimes in southern forests, we refer to several broad physiographic regions (Martin and Boyce 1993). Each region has its own forest types with their associated fire regimes:
Occurrences and frequencies of fire regimes for specific plant communities before European settlement are summarized in the Table of fire occurrence and frequency.
Encyclopedia ID: p1043
