Moritz Max A, Morais Marco E, Summerell Lora A, Carlson J M, Doyle John
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Dec 13;102(50):17912-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0508985102. Epub 2005 Dec 6.
Recent, large fires in the western United States have rekindled debates about fire management and the role of natural fire regimes in the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems. This real-world experience parallels debates involving abstract models of forest fires, a central metaphor in complex systems theory. Both real and modeled fire-prone landscapes exhibit roughly power law statistics in fire size versus frequency. Here, we examine historical fire catalogs and a detailed fire simulation model; both are in agreement with a highly optimized tolerance model. Highly optimized tolerance suggests robustness tradeoffs underlie resilience in different fire-prone ecosystems. Understanding these mechanisms may provide new insights into the structure of ecological systems and be key in evaluating fire management strategies and sensitivities to climate change.
美国西部近期发生的大规模火灾再次引发了关于火灾管理以及自然火灾规律在陆地生态系统恢复力中所起作用的争论。这一现实世界的经历与涉及森林火灾抽象模型的争论相似，森林火灾模型是复杂系统理论中的一个核心隐喻。真实的和模拟的火灾频发地区在火灾规模与发生频率方面都呈现出大致的幂律统计规律。在此，我们研究了历史火灾记录和一个详细的火灾模拟模型；二者均与高度优化容限模型相符。高度优化容限表明，在不同的火灾频发生态系统中，稳健性权衡是恢复力的基础。理解这些机制可能会为生态系统的结构提供新的见解，并且对于评估火灾管理策略以及对气候变化的敏感性至关重要。
