| 项目编号: | 1555041
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| 项目名称: | CAREER: Fire management effects on Sierra Nevada ecohydrology - a dynamical systems approach |
| 作者: | Sally Thompson
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| 承担单位: | University of California-Berkeley
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| 批准年: | 2016
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| 开始日期: | 2016-06-01
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| 结束日期: | 2021-05-31
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| 资助金额: | 536987
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| 资助来源: | US-NSF
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| 项目类别: | Standard Grant
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| 国家: | US
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| 语种: | 英语
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| 特色学科分类: | Geosciences - Earth Sciences
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| 英文关键词: | sierra nevada
; fire
; fire regime
; fire risk
; effect
; fire suppression
; hydrology
; post-fire
; ecosystem function
; forested mountain ecosystem
; vegetation
; fire history impact snowpack dynamics
; freeze-thaw process impact post-fire soil hydrophobicity
; result
; distinct post-fire vegetation succession
; new fire management
; california fire science consortium
; fire-prone ecosystem
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| 英文摘要: | Forested mountain watersheds supply the majority of water to the western United States, and are fundamentally fire-prone ecosystems. Contemporary drought, and projected future climate change, simultaneously exacerbate fire risks in the Sierra Nevada and threaten the sustainability of the water supply. Management approaches that could simultaneously reduce fire risks while safeguarding water supplies are sorely needed. This research takes advantage of a unique pair of watersheds in the Sierra Nevada where fire suppression was practiced for almost a century prior to the 1970s, and managed wildfire has been practiced since then. These basins will be studied to determine how vegetation cover, snow and soil moisture behavior, and water yields have responded to the changed fire regime. The results will be synthesized in a modeling framework that can be applied to evaluate the potential consequences of similar shifts in fire regime elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada. Results of the research will provide an evidence basis to motivate new fire management in the Sierra Nevada, reducing fire risk and enhancing water security in a region that supplies 60% of California's 38 million residents. These results will be shared through an outreach program developed with the California Fire Science Consortium. The project will also include a citizen-science project involving middle-school students participating in outdoor environmental education programs run by NatureBridge at Yosemite National Park.
The removal of fire from forested mountain ecosystems represents a century-long, massive, and poorly-understood experiment, altering the composition, demography, allometry and succession dynamics of forests, with presumed (although largely unquantified) effects on biogeochemistry, hydrology and ecosystem function. This research project leverages a unique opportunity to explore these effects by examining changes in vegetation, fire and hydrology in the only two watersheds in the Sierra Nevada where fire suppression has been deliberately alleviated and the natural fire regime allowed to re-establish. Historical and contemporary aerial photography will be used to reconstruct vegetation histories in the study watersheds. The resulting vegetation maps will be used as a basis for upscaling distributed soil moisture and fuel moisture measurements made throughout the study basins, and as input into distributed hydrological models. Weather stations, snow cameras and soil moisture observations will be installed in sites with distinct post-fire vegetation successions to characterize the effects of vegetation change on local meteorological and hydrological conditions. Laboratory experiments will be undertaken to evaluate the persistence of soil hydrophobicity under repeated freeze-thaw cycles, characteristic of the Sierra Nevada wet season. The process insights obtained through these field observations will be used to develop, parameterize and test a probabilistic model representing the dynamic interactions of fire, vegetation and water. The project will contribute new process understanding about the interaction of fire and hydrology in snow dominated landscapes, specifically how fire history impacts snowpack dynamics (such as interception, sublimation and melt timing), and how freeze-thaw processes impact post-fire soil hydrophobicity. It will generate unique spatial, temporal and historical datasets that will reveal the joint consequences of fire suppression and its alleviation on vegetation and hydrology in montane forests. |
| 资源类型: | 项目
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| 标识符: | http://119.78.100.158/handle/2HF3EXSE/92105
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| Appears in Collections: | 全球变化的国际研究计划
科学计划与规划
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| Recommended Citation: | |
Sally Thompson. CAREER: Fire management effects on Sierra Nevada ecohydrology - a dynamical systems approach. 2016-01-01.
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