Multi-Millennial Fire History of the Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park, California, USA

Fire Ecology

Table 4 . Pearson and Spearman correlations between the giant sequoia fire frequency time series and the charcoal time series, Palmer Drought Severity Indices (from Cook et al. 1999, 2004), a regional bristle-cone pine ring-width chronology from the Great Basin (Salzer et al. 2009), and a summer temperature reconstruction from foxtail pine and western juniper tree-ring width chronologies from the Sierra Nevada (Graumlich 1993).

Series comparison	Time period	Bin size (yr)		Pearson		Spearman
Series comparison	Time period	Bin size (yr)	n	R	P	R	P
Giant Forest fire freq. vs. charcoal	975 B.C.E. to 1825 C.E.	25	113	0.55	<0.001	0.53	<0.001
five-sequoia grove fire freq. vs. charcoal	25 C.E. to 1825 C.E.	25	73	0.62	<0.001	0.65	<0.001
Giant Forest fire freq. vs. five-sequoia grove fire freq.	25 C.E. to 1825 C.E.	25	73	0.62	<0.001	0.59	<0.001
Giant Forest fire freq. vs. summer PDSI	50 C.E. to 1800 C.E.	50	36	−0.58	<0.001	−0.59	<0.001
Giant Forest fire freq. vs. summer PDSI	25 C.E. to 1825 C.E.	25	73	−0.47	<0.001	−0.48	<0.001
Giant Forest fire freq. vs. bristlecone pine ring widths (temperature)	50 C.E. to 1800 C.E.	50	36	0.14	0.42	0.14	0.42
	25 C.E. to 1825 C.E.	25	73	0.09	0.44	0.13	0.28
Giant Forest fire freq. vs. foxtail pine summer temp. reconstruction	825 C.E. to 1825 C.E.	25	41	0.46	0.002	0.45	0.003