title: Seven hundred years of human-driven and climate-influenced fire activity in a British Columbia coastal temperate rainforest.
abstract: While wildland fire is globally most common at the savannah-grassland ecotone, there is little evidence of fire in coastal temperate rainforests. We reconstructed fire activity with aca700-year fire history derived from fire scars and stand establishment from 30 sites in a very wet (up to 4000 mm annual precipitation) temperate rainforest in coastal British Columbia, Canada. Drought and warmer temperatures in the year prior were positively associated with fire events though there was little coherence of climate indices on the years of fires. At the decadal scale, fires were more likely to occur after positive El Niño-Southern Oscillation and Pacific Decadal Oscillation phases and exhibited 30-year periods of synchrony with the negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation. Fire frequency was significantly inversely correlated with the distance from former Indigenous habitation sites and fires ceased following cultural disorganization caused by disease and other European impacts in the late nineteenth century. Indigenous people were likely to have been the primary ignition source in this and many coastal temperate rainforest settings. These data are directly relevant to contemporary forest management and discredit the myth of coastal temperate rainforests as pristine landscapes.
authors.affiliation: School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, 3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria, British Columbia, CanadaV8P 5C2; Hakai Institute, Calvert Island, PO Box 309, Heriot Bay, British Columbia, CanadaV0P 1H0.
authors.forename: Kira M
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8896-2797
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Hoffman
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography , 1251 University of Oregon , Eugene, OR 97403-1251 , USA.
authors.forename: Daniel G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Gavin
authors.affiliation: School of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria, 3800 Finnerty Road, Victoria, British Columbia, CanadaV8P 5C2; Hakai Institute, Calvert Island, PO Box 309, Heriot Bay, British Columbia, CanadaV0P 1H0.
authors.forename: Brian M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Starzomski
keywords: Arctic Oscillation; El Niño-Southern Oscillation; Pacific Decadal Oscillation; anthropogenic burning; coastal temperate rainforest; pacific northwest