Fire effects refer to the range of direct and indirect impacts wildland fire has on the biotic and abiotic components of the environment. Monitoring fire effects is important for quantifying the results of management activities and identifying patterns of success that can help hone management strategy for the future. Unfortunately, fire effects are usually poorly monitored, if at all, because of the large technical expenditure required to accomplish monitoring activities across broad enough spatial scales to accurately capture variability in effects. However, relatively new approaches for deriving burn severity indices from field and multispectral data can accurately detect change in vegetation and soils reduction. Further, a limited number of studies have recently found these data to also be correlated with changes in carbon pools, fuel loads, stand structure, and regeneration patterns, which are relevant for both risk and ecological management. Of the studies presently available, all have been focused in western pyrogenic forests, which provide limited insight to effects in eastern pyrogenic forests, but do suggest the potential for research with an eastern forest focus. I therefore conducted a series of studies using these approaches to quantify burn severity and identify correlations between burn severity and rates of fuel reduction and tree mortality in eastern pitch pine-oak forests of the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve, which have the highest fire frequency and most active fire management agency in the North Atlantic region. I also investigated patterns of burn severity within fire types and timing using burn severity indices. The results presented provide a directly applicable and rapidly deployable method to monitor general fire effects, in a way that can be easily archived for future reference. These results can be incorporated into current burn strategy to maximize the effectiveness of activities intended to reduce fuels and thinning pitch pine stands, and provide a foundation for additional work in determining correlations between burn severity index data and other effects of interest to forest managers. Further, the results of this work suggests that burn severity can be used to predict these rates more accurately than simply knowing if a region burned or not, and identify key differences of fire of differing type and timing.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Ecology and Evolution
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Fire ecology -- New Jersey -- Pine Barrens
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Identifier
ETD_8406
Identifier (type = doi)
doi:10.7282/T3RR22BK
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (xvii, 146 p. : ill.)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Michael R. Gallagher
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.