Driving Forces for Conserving Dynamic Landscapes

Fire in California's Ecosystems. van Wagtendonk, J. W., N. G. Sugihara, S. L. Stephens, A. E. Thode, K. E. Shaffer, and J. A. Fites-Kaufman. 2018. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. 596 pp. $120.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-520-28683-2. The Great Plains – A Fire Survey (To the Last Smoke). Pyne, S. J. 2017. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ. 215 pp. $14.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-8165-3512-5. Conservation on the Northern Plains: New Perspectives. Amato, A. J. 2017. Center for Western Studies, Augustana University, Sioux Falls, SD. 215 pp. $12.00 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-931170-95-9. These 3 books contribute to the understanding and management of disturbance-dependent ecosystems. The authors aim to address the rather difficult questions of how to reconstruct historical disturbance regimes and include them in today's social and economic situations and how people can live with the forces of nature. Conservation in these dynamic and complex ecosystems is far more than fencing and attempts to exclude disturbance. To the contrary, disturbance is needed for ecosystem functioning. The 3 books highlight that due to the drastic loss of ecosystem functions and completely different landscape contexts relative to pre-European settlement conditions, the natural disturbance regimes need to be actively reintroduced. This is an enormous task with a lot of challenges. After reading these books, one can understand that the conservation of dynamic, diverse, and functioning ecosystems often requires drastic interventions and an unconventional conservation attitude. Fire in California's Ecosystems is a comprehensive synthesis of fire regimes and their impact in California. The ecosystems in California have always been susceptible to fire, yet more than half of the ecosystems are highly fire prone and require particular fire regimes for their persistence. Furthermore, they have changed profoundly due to rapidly growing human populations, accelerated urbanization, and agricultural intensification. The expanding urban wildlife interface makes fire a really hot (pun intended) and difficult topic in California. The authors synthesize the theoretical and practical aspects of fire issues in a well-organized structure that makes it easy for the readers to find information on specific aspects of fire. This comprehensive volume will definitely improve understanding of fire regimes and their ecological impacts in order to “manage wildlands and fire in harmony with nature,” as the authors state in their introduction. Information in this comprehensive monograph on fire regimes and fire ecology applies to similar systems worldwide. Fire is a globally relevant phenomenon, the importance of which is rapidly increasing in the face of climate change. Each year, approximately 4% of the global land surface burns (Doerr & Santín 2016). For effective ecosystem conservation, we need to understand fire regimes and identify potential threats and the possibilities for prescribed burning (Valkó et al. 2014). The book provides a general overview on fire ecology, which is an excellent source of information for university students, conservationists, and researchers who want to learn more about fire ecology. There are thematic chapters on climate–fire relationships, the role of fire as a physical and ecological process, and the interactions among fire and the physical environment, plants, and animals. The most extensive part of the book provides a comprehensive synthesis of the history and ecology of fire in California's 9 bioregions, from the humid northwest to the arid southeast. Each chapter in this section contains a description of the bioregion, its fire history, current fire regimes, and management issues. The final part is about fire and people and focuses on fire management issues in the past, present, and future. Readers will learn about the changing attitude of people toward fire, from the Native American era, to the era of European and Asian settlement, and to the fire-suppression era. Today Californians need to cope with the difficult task of living in a highly fire-prone ecosystem. This final part will probably be the most interesting for conservation scientists, especially the chapters about the linkages between fire and invasive plants and fire and endangered species. A major message for the future is about fire policy: It is crucial to restore the role of fire as a natural disturbance while moderating its effects on society. The Great Plains – A Fire Survey is the fifth volume of the series To the Last Smoke, which consists of regional fire stories written in a fictional style. The collection offers a very pleasant read not only for scientists but also for the wider public. The book is divided into short stories that take readers on a virtual trip through the prairies from North Dakota to Texas. Readers will learn about the history of fire in the Great Plains and gain understanding of the role of fire in maintaining the species and habitat diversity of this dynamic landscape. Topics include the recent drastic changes in fire regimes and their ecological consequences and objectives of prescribed burning. Good examples of fire management and fire research working in symbiosis, such as at the Konza Prairie Biological Station, are provided. Pyne claims fire is an ecological force that binds the pieces of prairie ecosystems together and allows proper ecosystem functioning. Before landscape transformation, the average fire-return interval was 2–4 years. Today it is often 10 times longer. Invasion by woody species is favored by this interrupted fire regime, and without prescribed burning, it is a realistic estimate that the prairie will be overgrown by woody species within a few decades. The situation is worsened by extensive habitat loss due to the intensification of agriculture and urbanization—96–98% of the original tallgrass prairie has disappeared already. This situation creates several problems for proper fire management. Because grassland units are often small and ownership differs among parcels (e.g., private vs. public), igniting large-scale fires that resemble historical fire events is complicated. The original grazing–burning interactions that shaped the structure and species composition of the prairies acted on large and continuous areas (see the fire-grazing model by Fuhlendorf and Engle [2004]). There was a spatially and temporally shifting mosaic of fire and grazing where free-ranging animals roamed that was influenced by the spatial and temporal patterns of fire. Grazers preferred recently burned areas, where there was fresh, re-sprouting vegetation a few months after a fire. Unburned patches were less favored by the ungulates; therefore, decreased grazing pressure led to litter accumulation and increased probability of subsequent ignition. Thus, the 2 major consumers of the vegetation were fire and grazers (see also Bond and Keeley 2005), which maintained a spatially and temporally heterogeneous habitat structure at the landscape scale. Today, the remaining prairie areas are often too small to allow the coexistence of fire and animal husbandry. If a large area is burned, the livestock cannot graze there for a couple of weeks, and it is often difficult to keep the cattle out of fresh burns and to find alternative forage. There is no motivation for farmers’ to burn, which makes the reintroduction of historical disturbance regime difficult. Pyne claims that too little fire is much worse than too much and calls attention to the fact that the most important driving force of the prairie and the traditional ecological knowledge related to fire disappeared, despite the efforts of agencies to reintroduce prescribed fire. Conservation on the Northern Plains is an edited collection of 11 essays about the people, places, and stories related to nature conservation in the northern plains told from different angles. The authors use a narrative style, which makes the book interesting reading for anyone concerned about this unique and disappearing ecosystem. The prairies were the cradles of national parks, and even the concept of ecosystems ecology originated from prairie bogs. Despite these facts, prairie ecosystems have suffered huge losses. The stories in the book illustrate the serious problems that resulted from landscape-level changes; ecological processes that formerly acted on much larger scales are disappearing or remain restricted to small landscape units. In the modern socioeconomic situation, there are several social problems related to large carnivores, free-ranging wild horses, and fire. The book offers personal viewpoints and experiences of different people—ranchers, conservationists, scientists, farmers, and hunters, people whose lives are closely entwined with the Northern Plains. The authors call for conversation and cooperation among these people to effectively conserve the prairies for future generations. Conservation of the remaining prairie will be possible only with the involvement of stakeholders and local people, which is discussed from many different angles in this book. The personal responsibility of farmers and ranchers for prairie conserve is great because private land is the most important refugium for endangered plants and animals and because on public lands wildlife is generally overexploited. A growing number of farmers are seriously concerned about the environmental impacts of intensified agriculture, such as negative effects of agrochemicals on soils, water, and biota and the tremendous rate of conversion of native tallgrass prairie to maize fields. This process is ongoing: between 2006 and 2011, over 400 million ha (approximately 0.7% of the original total area) of native prairie had been ploughed. A new way of farming aims to provide sustainable land use and wise management of natural resources even for large-scale and profit-oriented operations. These farming practices include cover cropping, organic seeds, and application of few chemicals. There is also an increasing trend for restoring prairie on former croplands. Restoration and new farming techniques protect soil resources and moisture and provide important ecosystem services.