Fire Regime and the Abundance of Red Pine

Abstract

Red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) is a fire-dependent species. This study examines the relationship between the fire regime and the abundance of red pine. The fire regime is represented by components of the Canadian Fire Weather Index System and outputs from the Canadian Fire Behavior Prediction System as well as the average area burned and the percentage of conifers of each forest section. Extreme as well as averages values were used in this analysis as a large forest fire is a rare event that can occur on only a few days of the year under extreme fire weather conditions. Results from a forward-stepwise regression explained about 70% of die variance in red pine volume (abundance) data. Variables selected in the regression analysis included extreme headfire intensity, area burned and average drought code. These results suggest that abundance of red pine and other fire affected tree species is directly related to the aspects of the fire regime such as fire intensity.