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Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Fire Regime

Record updated:
NRFSN number: 18359

Our research is focused on understanding the dynamics of fire regimes at relatively broad scales, and our extension work involves applying this information to ecosystem management. Students and staff in the lab work and publish on a wide variety of projects related to fire and are involved in both field and lab analyses, including the application of spatial approaches to understanding natural disturbances.

Much of our research is focused on understanding the dynamics of fire regimes at relatively broad scales and using this information in ecosystem management. We employ quantitative analyses of fire occurrence patterns, examining the relative importance of different mechanisms that drive fire activity on the landscape. Not suprisingly, different factors exert their influence at different scales of space and time. The challenge is to analyze these mechanisms, and, to the degree possible, quantify trade-offs in their importance. A fire regime is a complex phenomenon, driven by a variety of biotic and abiotic factors. Fire is also one of the clearest examples of the linkage between “pattern and process” on the landscape. Over short timescales, fires generate spatial patterns of age classes and affect vegetation stand structures, all of which can feed back to alter the likelihood and behavior of future fires. Over very long timescales, fires affect patterns of species composition in ecosystems, which also feed back to influence the fire regime in question.

Max Moritz is a Wildfire Specialist in U.C. Cooperative Extension, part of the U.C. Agriculture and Natural Resources Division. He now manages his lab from UCSB, where he is an adjunct professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and an affiliate of the Earth Research Institute .

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