Causes and Consequences of Large-scale Fires in Yellowstone National Park

1988年黄石公园大火的规模是美国大陆国家公园经历过的最大的火灾，它为解决当今生态学的一些核心问题创造了一个难得的机会。Drs。Romme， Turner和Gardner将利用黄石国家公园的火灾提出三个基本问题：第一，气候和景观模式如何相互作用，创造可能发生特大火灾的情况。研究人员以往的经验表明，景观结构和气象条件的参数可能存在阈值，它们相互作用以控制火灾规模。他们建议确定阈值，然后在建模方法中使用它们来探索全球气候变化对黄石公园扰动制度的影响。第二,Drs。Romme， Turner和Gardner询问火灾大小如何影响景观格局。他们假设，中等规模的火灾的景观异质性最大，而非常小或非常大的火灾的景观异质性最小。他们将利用遥感图像和公园的地理信息系统来验证这一假设。第三，他们询问具有不同繁殖模式的植物如何对火灾的大小、严重程度和异质性作出反应。他们将在1972年至1988年连续三个季节对被烧毁的地区进行采样，以测试有关景观参数的特定假设(例如，被烧毁的斑块的大小，与未燃烧边缘的距离，内部异质性对物种个体重建和群落丰富度的影响。对黄石公园大火的调查不仅有助于我们了解1988年的事件，还将为所有景观中植被模式和生态过程之间的相互作用提供见解。Drs。罗姆、特纳和加德纳是景观生态学领域的国际专家。这项研究的设备非常好。

The magnitude of the Yellowstone fires of 1988, which were the largest fires every experienced in a national park within the continental United States, has created an exceptional opportunity to address some of the central questions in ecology today. Drs. Romme, Turner and Gardner will use the Yellowstone National Park fires to ask three basic questions: First, how climate and landscape pattern interact to create situations in which extremely large fires are possible. The investigator's previous experience suggest that there may be thresholds in parameters of landscape structure and meteorological conditions that interact to control fire size. They propose to identify the thresholds and then use them in a modeling approach to explore the implications of global climate change for Yellowstone's disturbance regime. Second, Drs. Romme, Turner and Gardner ask how fire size affects landscape pattern. They hypothesize that landscape heterogeneity is greatest with fires of intermediate size and least with very small or very large fires. They will test this hypothesis by using remotely sensed imagery and the Park's geographic information system. Third, they ask how plants having different modes of reproduction respond to fire size, severity, and heterogeneity. They will sample areas burned from 1972 to 1988 in three successive field seasons to test specific hypotheses relating landscape parameters (e.g. the size of a burned patch, distance from an unburned edge, and internal heterogeneity of a burned patch) to the reestablishment of individual species and to community richness. This investigation of Yellowstone fires will not only help us understand the events of 1988 but will provide insights into interactions between vegetation patterns and ecological processes in all landscapes. Drs. Romme, Turner and Gardner are international experts in the area of landscape ecology. The facilities for this research are excellent.