Slide talk given by Les Rowntree at Morro Bay Natural History Museum, March 2011

1. The Fire Ecology of Big Sur and
the Central Coast Ranges
Les Rowntree
Morro Bay Natural History Museum
March 21, 2011

3. Today’s Talk
Big Sur Overview
Resources for Fire
Ecology
Fire Ecology 101: 4
important points
Fire History (the last
20,000 years)
The 2008 Big Sur
Basin Complex Fire

9. Vegetation Communities
of Big Sur
Micro-climate Chamise chaparral
gradients: Both
elevation and coast Coastal redwoods
to inland
Mixed redwoods and
Central Coast Scrub hardwoods
Maritime chaparral Other conifers (both
pine and fir)
Coast Range
grasslands Oak woodlands

13. Reference Point: The Basin Complex Fire,
June 21 - July 27 2008
inversion with fog layer below

14. University of California
Press

16. $5.00 (Free to Members)
VOL. 35, NO. 4 • FALL 2007
FREMONTIA
JOURNAL OF THE CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY
SPECIAL ISSUE: CHAPARRAL
CALIFORNIA CHAPARRAL
MANZANITAS
FREEZING AND CHAPARRAL PATTERNS
CHAPARRAL AND FIRE
CHAPARRAL BULBS AND FIRE
THE COST OF LIVING WITH CHAPARRAL
POST-FIRE RECOVERY OF CHAPARRAL IN SAN DIEGO
VOLUME 35:4, FALL 2007

17. Heyday Press

19. photo by David McNew

20. Fire Ecology 101 (1)
A wide range of plant and plant
community responses to fire:
Fire Dependent: plants need fire to
reproduce (knobcone and Bishop pines)
Fire Enhanced: plants expand population
with fire, but also reproduce without it
(oaks)
Fire Neutral: fires neither expand or limit
plant populations (Douglas fir)
Fire Inhibited: fire is detrimental to plants
(Santa Lucia fire)

21. mature seed tree
7-year old Bishop pine seedlings

23. Fire Ecology 101 (2)
Plants and plant populations are adapted
not to fire itself but, instead, to fire
regimes
A fire regime is the frequency, magnitude,
spatial extent, and seasonality of a series of
fires
Magnitude is intensity (amount of energy
released) and severity (impact on the
ecosystem

26. Fire Ecology 101 (3a)
Fire affects individual plants directly
and indirectly
Direct effects on the individual are a
function of fire behavior and individual
plant’s morphology and physiology
Morphology refers to plant structure (shape,
height, placement of seeds and buds, root
structure)
Physiology refers to production and
regulation of chemicals within plant tissue

27. Fire Ecology 101 (3b)
Indirect effects are the changes in the
physical and chemical environment of the
surrounding environment in terms of
nutrients, light, soil substrate and
chemistry, and microclimate of the plant
community.
These changes can differentially affect
sprouting, growth, colonization, and
establishment of varied species

30. colonization, and establishment of varied speciesThese
changes can differentially affect sprouting, growth, colonization,
and Fire Ecology 101 (4a) of
Seeding and sprouting are the main ways
plants and trees recover from (and,
through time, adapt to) fire
Some species such as chamise actually do both,
spread seed AND root sprout
Additionally, within the chaparral community,
some species of the two major genera,
Arctostaphylos and Ceanothus, spread seeds while
other species root sprout
Redwoods also both seed and/or sprout after a
fire

31. chamise seedlings and stump sprouting
manzanita, Lick Fire (Lee Dittman photos)

33. Chaparral Seeders Lose While
Sprouters Gain When Fire Frequency
Increases (4b)
Although chaparral is thought of as a fire enhanced
community, it can suffer and actually diminish as fire
regimes change
Shrubs dependent on fire-cued seed germination were
most sensitive to frequent fire and lost substantial
cover to other functional types, including drought-
deciduous sub-shrubs that typify coastal sage scrub and
nonnative annual grasses. (Keeley)
Seed banks needing a certain amount of time to age in the
soil before they can germinate.
Chaparral seeds don’t respond to heat itself but rather to
gasses in smoke. That may be true of other seeders too

34. Changing Fire Regimes
End of Pleistocene (Ice Age) and
before humans, 20 - 12,000 bp.
Period of “natural fire”
Early to late Holocene, 12,000 bp to
1769; period of Native American
burning
Modern historical period, from
Spanish missions to present day

35. - 20,000 bp. Last Glacial
Maximum (LGM)
- Dry summer
Mediterranean climate
- Sea level ~ 400 ft lower
- All plant species
represented, but in
art by Laura Cunningham different configurations
and with different
distributions
- No humans in CA (as far
as we know)
- Lightning and volcanoes
only source of ignition

36. Period of Native American
Burning, 12,000 bp - 1769 CE
Climate warms (with
some fluctuations) to
current state
Warmest period 8 -3 kya
Sea level rises to current
state ~ 4000 bp
Grazing megafauna
extinct (change in
grasslands?)

37. Period of Native American
Burning, 12,000 bp - 1769 CE
How and what do we know about Indian
burning?
Danger of conflating what little we know
into all-encompassing generalizations
Native Americans cultures changed
continually during this long period of time,
thus reasonable to assume their strategies
and methods of burning also changed

38. Period of Native American
Burning, 12,000 bp - 1769 CE
Reasons for burning: encourage specific plant
species; eliminate competiting species; clean up
the landscape by ridding it of pests, brush, and
snags; fire used to expand grassland habitat for
hunted animal and bird species; enhance fertility
by recycling nutrients; encourage acorn growth
and harvest, etc.
Result: pyrodiversity from frequent low intensity
fires
Environments most changed: grassland/shrub
interface; oak woodlands; perhaps chaparral

39. Effects of Indian Burning
on Big Sur
Three groups: Ohlone; Esselen; Salinan
Currently, earliest dates for Big Sur ~
5000 bp
Inferences about settlement patterns
and density
Conjecture regarding effects on plant
communities vegetation communities

40. Spanish Mission Period,
1769-1830
Introduction of
livestock and field
crops to Coast Ranges
Exotic annual grasses
Disruption of Native
American society
Ban on Indian burning,
1793

41. Effects of Spanish
Settlement on Big Sur
Native Americans close
to San Antonio and
Carmel missions most
effected
Possibility of remnant
groups of Indians in the
Big Sur interior
Effect on plant
communities? Grassland
change begins. Oak
woodlands and animals

42. Mexican Rancho Period,
1830-1850
Burning resumes with
pasture-improvement
mentality
Livestock expands with
hide and tallow
economy
Common that Native
Americans act as labor
force with cattle herds

43. Mexican Rancho Period,
1830-1850
Early American
settlers appear,
logging redwoods,
harvesting tanoak,
making charcoal for
iron forges
All of these activities
increase incidence of
fire in Coast Ranges
and enhance grassland
species change

44. Early American Period,
1850-1906
Might have been period
of greatest burning in
Coast Ranges
And also greatest change
in plant communities
with exotic species
spreading rapidly in grass
and shrub lands, aided by
fire and plowed fields
Sheep, cattle, and wheat
cultures all burned grass
and shrub lands The wild and wooly West

45. Logging in Coast Range Also Responsible
for Burning, Intentional and Accidental
Fires set to clear slash away,
facilitate transport of logs,
and open forest for tanbark
harvesting

46. Effects in Big Sur
Big Sur isolated with only connections via ship, coastal trail to
Monterey, and southern connection to Salinas Valley
Some redwood logging
Wheat cultivation on northern marine terraces (Palo Colorado)
May not have been much free range livestock because of
topography
Earliest settlers had different attitudes about using fire to clear
pasture
Large fires recorded in newspapers. In 1894, reports of a fire
“burning for weeks” covering upper watersheds of central
Santa Lucia mountains. Around 50,000 acres burned in
human-caused fire in July 1903, and 150,000 acres in 1906

47. Fire Prevention and Suppression
Begins in the Coast Ranges, 1906
1906, Monterey and San Luis Obispo forest reserves
created. These became national forests in 1907
1919, merger of Monterey, SLO, and Santa
Barbara national forests into SBNF
1938, name changed to Los Padres NF
Although fire prevention and suppression are policy,
question is whether this was effective right away
If so, the incidence of fires lessened, and fuel buildup
begins. Or did happen only later?

48. Changes to NF fire prevention in the
1930s:
• Trucks replace horses
Work begun on N-F road
and Highway 1 in 1931
• Lookout system
3 in Big Sur area of LPNF
• CCC labor for prevention and
suppression
• Argument can be made that
effective fire suppression only
began in 1930s

49. Changing Fire Regimes
in Big Sur
According to USFS
records, the average
figure for acreage
burned changed from
6700 acres in pre-war
years to 400 acres in
the 1960s
Did this lead to a fuel
build up that fueled
more recent large
fires?

50. Recent Big Sur Fires
2008, Basin-Indians 1977, Marble-Cone.
Complex. (162,818 + 178,000 acres
81,378 acres)
1970, Buckeye.
1999, Kirk Complex. 60,000 acres
87,000 acres
(lightning-ignited)
1985, Rat Creek-
Gorda. 80,000 acres

52. The Basin
Complex Fire,
June 21 - July
27, 2008
photo by Eric
https://picasaweb.google.com/eneitzel/
BasinComplex#

53. Basin Complex Fire
California lightning event produced 6000
ground strikes, resulting in 1000 fires in
northern CA
Early in the fire season
Followed two years of drought that
resulted in dry fuel throughout Big Sur
Changing wind and humidity conditions
during month of fire

54. map of two fires, Gallery and Basin, 4 days into
the event

57. Fire retardant
and
watersheds
(and steelhead)

62. Rizzo Lab,
UC Davis

63. SOD did not increase intensity in all
plots; canopy vs ground fires

64. September 2, 2008
and
April 6, 2009

68. September 2, 2008
and
June 6, 2009
Bottchers Gap

69. September 2, 2008
and
May 5, 2009

70. September
2008
April 2009

71. June 2010

73. June 2010

74. April 2009

76. Fuelbreaks and firelines