School of Forestry and Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University, P.O. Box 15018, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011, USA.
Ecol Appl. 2011 Apr;21(3):764-75. doi: 10.1890/10-0523.1.
The Rarámuri (Tarahumara) people live in the mountains and canyons of the Sierra Madre Occidental of Chihuahua, Mexico. They base their subsistence on multiple-use strategies of their natural resources, including agriculture, pastoralism, and harvesting of native plants and wildlife. Pino Gordo is a Rarámuri settlement in a remote location where the forest has not been commercially logged. We reconstructed the forest fire regime from fire-scarred trees, measured the structure of the never-logged forest, and interviewed community members about fire use. Fire occurrence was consistent throughout the 19th and 20th centuries up to our fire scar collection in 2004. This is the least interrupted surface-fire regime reported to date in North America. Studies from other relict sites such as nature reserves in Mexico or the USA have all shown some recent alterations associated with industrialized society. At Pino Gordo, fires recurred frequently at the three study sites, with a composite mean fire interval of 1.9 years (all fires) to 7.6 years (fires scarring 25% or more of samples). Per-sample fire intervals averaged 10-14 years at the three sites. Approximately two-thirds of fires burned in the season of cambial dormancy, probably during the pre-monsoonal drought. Forests were dominated by pines and contained many large living trees and snags, in contrast to two nearby similar forests that have been logged. Community residents reported using fire for many purposes, consistent with previous literature on fire use by indigenous people. Pino Gordo is a valuable example of a continuing frequent-fire regime in a never-harvested forest. The Rarámuri people have actively conserved this forest through their traditional livelihood and management techniques, as opposed to logging the forest, and have also facilitated the fire regime by burning. The data contribute to a better understanding of the interactions of humans who live in pine forests and the fire regimes of these ecosystems, a topic that has been controversial and difficult to assess from historical or paleoecological evidence.
拉腊米族（塔拉乌马拉族）人生活在墨西哥奇瓦瓦州西马德雷山脉的山区和峡谷中。他们以自然资源的多种用途策略为生计，包括农业、畜牧业以及采集本地植物和野生动物。皮诺·戈多是一个偏远的拉腊米族定居点，那里的森林没有进行商业采伐。我们从树木的火疤重建了森林火灾发生的规律，测量了从未采伐过的森林结构，并采访了社区成员有关火灾利用的情况。19 世纪和 20 世纪，火灾一直持续到我们在 2004 年收集火疤的时期。这是迄今为止在北美报告的受干扰最少的地表火发生规律。来自其他遗留地点的研究，如墨西哥或美国的自然保护区，都表明了与工业化社会有关的一些近期变化。在皮诺·戈多，三个研究点的火灾频繁发生，复合平均火灾间隔为 1.9 年（所有火灾）至 7.6 年（烧伤样本 25%或更多的火灾）。三个地点的样本平均火灾间隔为 10-14 年。大约三分之二的火灾发生在形成层休眠期的季节，可能发生在旱季前的雨季。与附近两个已被采伐的类似森林相比，森林以松树为主，有许多活的大树和枯树。社区居民报告说，他们出于多种目的使用火，这与之前关于原住民用火的文献一致。皮诺·戈多是一个从未被采伐的森林中持续频繁火灾发生规律的宝贵范例。拉腊米族人民通过传统的生计和管理技术积极保护这片森林，而不是砍伐森林，他们还通过燃烧来促进火灾发生的规律。这些数据有助于更好地理解生活在松林里的人类与这些生态系统的火灾发生规律之间的相互作用，这是一个有争议的话题，从历史或古生态学证据来看，很难评估。
