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This chapter discusses the North Coast bioregion in northwestern portion of the state where numerous valleys and steep coastal and interior mountains create moisture gradients in response to numerous winter storms. Three predominant climatic gradients help determine the vegetation patterns in northwestern California: a west-east gradient extending from a moist, cool coastal summer climate to a drier, warmer interior summer climate; a north-south gradient of decreasing winter precipitation and increasing summer temperatures; and a montane elevational gradient of decreasing temperature and increasing precipitation. The fire ecology and fire regime-plant community interactions in the North Coastal Scrub and the Prairie Zone, the North Coastal Pine Forests Zone, the Sitka Spruce Forest Zone, the Redwood Forest Zone, the Douglas-Fir-Tanoak Forest Zone, and the Oregon White Oak Woodland Zone are described. Fire has always been an integral part of coastal prairie ecology and fire exclusion has led to undesirable consequences.

This chapter describes the Central Valley bioregion, showing that Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers flow through broad interior valleys with extensive, nearly flat alluvial floors. The Central Valley exhibits distinct and neatly arranged ecological zones. The fire ecology of important species and fire regime-plant community interactions in foothill woodland, valley grasslands, riparian forests and freshwater marsh are also reviewed. The Central Valley is arguably the most highly altered bioregion in California. Recent efforts have shown how commonly used management practices affect grassland composition and how various environmental factors interact with these practices. Throughout much of the twentieth century, agricultural burning was a common practice in the Central Valley.

This chapter describes the vast southeast corner of California that constitutes the Southeastern Deserts bioregion. It considers elevation to be the primary determinant of fire ecology zones in the desert bioregion. The primary factor controlling fire occurrence in the desert bioregion is the fuel condition, specifically fuel continuity and fuel type. The basic fire ecology of the predominant plant species in the low-elevation desert shrubland zone, the middle-elevation desert shrubland and the grassland zone, the high-elevation desert shrubland and the woodland zone, the desert montane woodland and the forest zone, and the desert riparian woodland and the oasis zone is reported. The chapter also explores the patterns of post-fire succession, and interactions among plant communities, fire behavior, and fire regimes. Fuel management can be a very important tool for fire managers in the California desert bioregion, even though the areas in which it is used may be a small percentage of the total region.

Fire is a physical process and an ecological process. It is difficult to overstate the importance of fire in California ecosystems. The modern array of bioregions is a product of millions of years of plant evolution, geologic upheavals, and climate change. It is not the occurrence of fire in an ecosystem that constitutes an ecological disturbance; rather it is the actions that have led to changes to the existing fire regimes. There are numerous examples across California where fire and fuel management activities, prescribed burning, fire suppression, or post-fire rehabilitation and restoration can be integrated while conserving and protecting at-risk species, their habitats, and ecological processes. The story of fire in California ecosystems is an epic adventure played out over millennia in a spectacular setting. This book sets the scenes, introduces the characters and situations, and provides the future of fire ecology and the tools to write the next act.

This chapter discusses the habitat classification and ecological dynamics of the Northern coastal scrub and coastal prairie, proposing a geographical distribution of these ecosystems and presenting information about their paleohistoric origins and landscapes, fire ecology, and grazers. The chapter also offers some conclusions about the current priorities for conservation, information about restoration, and suggestions for future research.

Can fire account for the widespread occurrence of open ecosystems? This chapter explores fire as a major consumer shaping vegetation in diverse regions worldwide. The concept of fire regime helps explain the diverse influences of fire on vegetation structure. Fire regimes select compatible growth forms from the species pool. These, in turn, create the fuel which in large part determines the fire regime. Experimental evidence can show whether fire is a major determinant of vegetation structure or merely an emergent property of ecosystems determined by climate and soils. Whether fires consume closed forests or stop at their margins will determine the dominant vegetation in mosaic landscapes. A mechanistic framework for analysing processes influencing fire effects on the boundary is introduced with examples. Pyrophilic open systems in mosaics with pyrophobic closed forests have been considered as examples of Alternative Stable States. Recent evidence for the patterns and processes expected by ASS theory are discussed.

This chapter examines the fire ecology of Tamarix and the role of fire in riparian ecosystems. Tamarisk invasion has been linked to increased wildfire frequency and intensity in riparian ecosystems of the arid West, with negative socioeconomic and ecological consequences. The chapter begins with an overview of fire characteristics in Tamarix stands, focusing on the species's fuel composition, the impact of fire behavior on vegetation structure, and Tamarix response to fire. It then considers the consequences of Tamarix's fire behavior for the community-level dynamics of riparian habitats, with particular emphasis on the physical effects of biological control on tamarisk fire behavior and post-fire tamarisk recovery. It also discusses the implications of tamarisk flammability for tamarisk management, taking into account the use of prescribed fire.

This chapter examines Jeffers’s work of the 1930s, arguing that he developed new narrative modes to accommodate consciousness through comedy rather than tragedy. Although his dominant narrative mode is tragedy, shorter narrative poems throughout the 1930s reveal a comic mode that allows for human consciousness to be biologically integrated into nature. Since the work of the 1920s, fire was a primary trope for consciousness in Jeffers’s poetry, and in the 1930s his representations of the fire ecology of the coastal mountains became a way for him to express a natural role for consciousness in a bioregional sense. In the work of the 1930s, before the outbreak of World War II, Jeffers established a holistic philosophy that included human consciousness as part of the organic and divine universe.