PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 15: A toolbox for fire ecology: Mechanisms linking fire behavior and ecological effect
Organizer(s): ST Michaletz and RO Weber
Tuesday, August 9, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 511 B, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Process approaches and the science of fire ecology.

Michaletz, Sean^*,1, Johnson, Edward¹, ¹ University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, CANADA

ABSTRACT- Fire ecology is at a methodological crossroads. Descriptive approaches have been the tradition, primarily because early studies from forestry and plant community ecology sought to describe patterns of fire effects. However, advances in related areas such as plant population ecology demand a more rigorous understanding of the mechanisms linking fire behavior to ecological processes. This need has been largely ignored within fire ecology and descriptive approaches continue to be erroneously applied to infer causation. An alternative approach gaining acceptance is the process approach, which directly identifies and tests causal mechanisms of fire effect. Process approaches are effective because they continuously improve our understanding through a process of mechanism proposal, validation or refutation, and refinement. In fire ecology, process approaches typically link physical process theory (e.g. heat and mass transfer) to the ecological processes driving ecological patterns. Statistical methods are then used to test the model with independent experimental data. This talk critically examines the evolution of questions and approaches throughout the history of fire ecology and in the context of contemporary ecology to identify areas where process approaches promise to make major contributions.

Key words: Fire ecology, Forest ecology, Biogeosciences, Mechanistic Modeling