En este estudio, enmarco los incendios en la era de la colonización en un contexto histórico mediante el examen de datos de cicatrices de fuego en comparación con los datos históricos, e investigo la relación fuego-vegetación-clima dentro de un contexto de 400 años. Los cambios radicales en los bosques en esta región fueron atribuidos mayoritariamente a incendios anómalos durante la colonización, mediante la quema de pilas (acumulación de ramas y parte superior del dosel de árboles), luego de cortas de aprovechamiento forestal. Los estados de la Región de los Lagos en EEUU experimentaron cambios sin precedentes en el uso de la tierra, incluyendo incendios grandes y destructivos. While settlement land use changes of Lake States forests were pervasive, fires were not the ultimate degrading factor, but rather likely one of the few natural processes still at work. 400 year) context and more mechanistic understanding of landscape dynamics. Historical written accounts of fires and settlement era survey records provide a reference point for landscape changes but lack temporal depth to understand forest dynamics. Furthermore, slash would not have been a major contributor to fire behavior or effects in the Peshtigo Fire when logging was still limited to relatively accessible pine forests.

The burned area in the October 8, 1871, Peshtigo Fire was comprised of mesic forests where fuels were always abundant and high-severity fires would be expected under the drought conditions in 1871. Settlement fires tended to burn during significantly dry periods, the same conditions driving large fires for the past 400 years. Settlement era fires were similar across disparate ecoregions and forest types including areas with very different land use history.

Only one out of 25 sites had more frequent settlement era fires, and that site was a pine forest that had never been harvested. Settlement era fires (1851–1947) were less frequent than pre-settlement fires (1548–1850) with little evidence that slash impacted fire frequency or occurrence at site or ecoregion scales. In this study, I place settlement era fires in a historical context by examining fire scar data in comparison to historical accounts and investigate fire-vegetation-climate relationships within a 400-year context. Forest changes were radical in this region and largely attributed to anomalous settlement era fires in slash (cumulation of tops and branches) following cutover logging. The Lake States experienced unprecedented land use changes during Euro-American settlement including large, destructive fires.

Delain the human contradiction 320