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

1988年黄石公园火灾的规模之大，是美国大陆国家公园发生的最大火灾，为解决当今生态学中的一些核心问题创造了一个特殊的机会。Romme、Turner和Gardner博士将利用黄石国家公园的火灾提出三个基本问题：第一，气候和景观格局如何相互作用，创造出可能发生极大火灾的情况。调查人员以前的经验表明，景观结构和气象条件的参数可能存在相互作用来控制火势大小的阈值。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干扰制度的影响。其次，罗姆、特纳和加德纳博士提出了火的大小如何影响景观格局的问题。他们假设，中等规模的火灾景观异质性最大，非常小或非常大的火灾景观异质性最小。他们将使用遥感图像和公园的地理信息系统来验证这一假设。第三，他们问具有不同繁殖模式的植物对火的大小、严重程度和异质性有何反应。他们将在连续三个野外季节对1972至1988年间被烧毁的地区进行抽样，以测试与景观参数(例如，被烧毁的斑块的大小、与未被烧毁的边缘的距离，以及被烧毁的斑块的内部异质性)与个体物种重建和群落丰富度之间的具体假设。这次对黄石公园火灾的调查不仅将帮助我们了解1988年的事件，而且将为我们提供关于所有景观中植被模式和生态过程之间相互作用的见解。隆姆、特纳和加德纳博士是景观生态学领域的国际专家。这项研究的设施非常好。

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.