Submitted By:: Mam Nausheen Fire As Ecological Factors Ecology
Submitted By:: Mam Nausheen Fire As Ecological Factors Ecology
Submitted By:: Mam Nausheen Fire As Ecological Factors Ecology
Course: Ecology
Semester: 1
Fire components:
Fires will often break out during a dry season, but in some
areas wildfires may also commonly occur during a time of year when lightning is
prevalent. The frequency over a span of years at which fire will occur at a
particular location is a measure of how common wildfires are in a given
ecosystem. It is either defined as the average interval between fires at a given site,
or the average interval between fires in an equivalent specified area.
Defined as the energy released per unit length of fireline (kW m −1), wildfire
intensity can be estimated either as
the product of
o the linear spread rate (m s−1),
o the low heat of combustion (kJ kg−1),
o and the combusted fuel mass per unit area,
or it can be estimated from the flame length
Abiotic response:
Fires can affect soils through heating and combustion
processes. Depending on the temperatures of the soils caused by the combustion
processes, different effects will happen- from evaporation of water at the lower
temperature ranges, to the combustion of soil organic matter and formation of
pyrogenic organic matter, otherwise known as charcoal. Fires can cause changes in
soil nutrients through a variety of mechanisms, which include oxidation,
volatilization, erosion, and leaching by water, but the event must usually be of high
temperatures in order of significant loss of nutrients to occur. However, quantity of
nutrients available in soils are usually increased due to the ash that is generated,
and this is made quickly available, as opposed to the slow release of nutrients by
decomposition. Rock spalling (or thermal exfoliation) accelerates weathering of
rock and potentially the release of some nutrients.
Fire in wetlands:
Although it may seem strange, many kinds of wetlands are also influenced by fire.
This usually occurs during periods of drought. In landscapes with peat soils, such
as bogs, the peat substrate itself may burn, leaving holes that refill with water as
new ponds. Fires that are less intense will remove accumulated litter and allow
other wetland plants to regenerate from buried seeds, or from rhizomes. Wetlands
that are influenced by fire include coastal marshes, wet prairies, peat
bogs, floodplains, prairie marshes and flatwoods.
Fire suppression
Fire serves many important functions within fire-adapted ecosystems. Fire plays an
important role in nutrient cycling, diversity maintenance and habitat structure. The
suppression of fire can lead to unforeseen changes in ecosystems that often
adversely affect the plants, animals and humans that depend upon that habitat.
Wildfires that deviate from a historical fire regime because of fire suppression are
called "uncharacteristic fires".
Chaparral communities
In 2003, southern California witnessed powerful chaparral wildfires. Hundreds of
homes and hundreds of thousands of acres of land went up in flames. Extreme fire
weather (low humidity, low fuel moisture and high winds) and the accumulation of
dead plant material from 8 years of drought, contributed to a catastrophic outcome.
Although some have maintained that fire suppression contributed to an unnatural
buildup of fuel loads, a detailed analysis of historical fire data has showed that this
may not have been the case.
Fish impacts
The Boise National Forest is a US national forest located north and east of the city
of Boise, Idaho. Following several uncharacteristically large wildfires, an
immediately negative impact on fish populations was observed, posing particular
danger to small and isolated fish populations. In the long term, however, fire
appears to rejuvenate fish habitats by causing hydraulic changes that increase
flooding and lead to silt removal and the deposition of a favorable habitat
substrate. This leads to larger post-fire populations of the fish that are able to
recolonize these improved areas. But although fire generally appears favorable for
fish populations in these ecosystems, the more intense effects of uncharacteristic
wildfires, in combination with the fragmentation of populations by human barriers
to dispersal such as weirs and dams, will pose a threat to fish populations.
Although fire can occur during the growing or the dormant seasons, managed fire
during the dormant season is most effective at increasing the grass
and forb cover, biodiversity and plant nutrient uptake in shortgrass
prairies. Managers must also take into account, however, how invasive and non-
native species respond to fire if they want to restore the integrity of a native
ecosystem. For example, fire can only control the invasive spotted
knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) on the Michigan tallgrass prairie in the summer,
because this is the time in the knapweed's life cycle that is most important to its
reproductive growth.
United States
Fire policy in the United States involves the federal government, individual state
governments, tribal governments, interest groups, and the general public. The new
federal outlook on fire policy parallels advances in ecology and is moving towards
the view that many ecosystems depend on disturbance for their diversity and for
the proper maintenance of their natural processes. Although human safety is still
the number one priority in fire management, new US government objectives
include a long-term view of ecosystems. The newest policy allows managers to
gauge the relative values of private property and resources in particular situations
and to set their priorities accordingly.
Sediment yields:
Sediment yield is highly variable over space. In some cases, even a small part of the
landscape unit contributes a disproportionate amount of the total sediment yield. For
instance, intensive local logging leads to a substantial increase in sediment yield.
Sometimes, the yield ratio between a logging zone and a ‘normal’ one can reach
several hundreds. Hence, knowledge of the spatial variation in yield is required to
focus yield reduction efforts on the landscape units that deliver the maximum amount
of sediments to the reservoir.
Fire effect:
Creating realistic simulated fire in After Effects is one of the most challenging tasks for any
VFX artist. There are a lot of areas in which After Effects soars — motion graphics, tracking,
2D animation — but physics simulations is not one of them.The best option for creating
realistic fire effects is using expensive software like Houdini or Fume FX for Maya. The other
option is to use pre-rendered fire footage which works in some cases, but it isn’t very versatile
and can also be quite expensive.You’ve probably been looking around for good fire tutorials
online, but honestly, other than a few tutorials from Andrew Kramer, there aren’t a lot of native-
effects tutorials for creating good fire effects. In this RocketStock exclusive, we’ll show
you how to create realistic fire effects in AE using native plugins and a free After
Effects Fire as a destructive force can rapidly consume large amount of biomass
and cause negative impacts such as post-fire soil erosion and water runoff, and air
pollution; however, as a constructive force fire is also responsible for maintaining
the health and perpetuity of certain fire-dependent ecosystems.
effect preset. Here’s what the end result will look like:
Prescribe burning
Fire dependence:
In the 1930’s, researchers in the southern United States argued against the negative
perspective that has surrounded fire, with the belief that all fire is bad. It was
realized that the devastating picture painted by huge-scale fires produced fear in
the minds of the public (and in politicians and scientists alike), and that this
generated detrimental results in response to any wildland fires. These researchers
recognized that there are species of plants that rely upon the effects of fire to make
the environment more hospitable for regeneration and growth. Fire in these
environments prepares the soil for seeding by creating an open seedbed, making
nutrients more available for uptake and often killing plants that are invading into
the habitat and competing with native species.
Fire history:
Fire history deals with how often fires have occurred in a given geographical area.
Through recorded history, we can see into the recent past, but trees are our source
of information on fires in the distant past. Trees record their history through a
system of growth rings that develop on the trees each year. When a fire goes
through an area, the growth rings of that particular tree may be scarred. On live
trees this is called a fire scar. Fire scars can also be seen on dead trees. Tree origin
dates (calculated from the total number of rings) can also tell when fires occurred,
in that fires gave way for these new trees to develop. The study of growth rings is
called dendrochronology. Utilizing dendrochronology, we can determine when
fires have occurred in the past, and sometimes determine their intensity and
direction as well as other information about the weather patterns in that era.
Causes of fire: