Table 1 Summary of four methods for mapping fire perimeters that appear frequently in fire history literature.
From: Spatially Heterogeneous Estimates of Fire Frequency in Ponderosa Pine Forests of Washington, USA
Method | Strengths | Weaknesses | Representative Studies |
|---|---|---|---|
Stand age | Accurate reconstruction of recent fires with stand boundaries. | Limited to stand replacing or mixed fire regimes. Older fires may not be captured. | Heinselman 1973 Hemstrom and Franklin 1982 Romme 1982 Agee et al. 1989 Duncan and Stewart 1991 Agee and Krusemark 2001 Baker and Kipfmueller 2001 Hessburg et al. 2005 |
Fire scar and topography (expert) | Based on expert knowledge. | May be very subjective. May not be reproducible in other ecosystems. | Cissell et al. 1999 Everett et al. 2000 Niklasson and Granstrom 2000 Beatty and Taylor 2001 Heyerdahl et al. 2001 |
Fire atlas remote sensing | Accurate reconstruction of recent fires. | Limited to recent fire history. Records may be inconsistent. | Turner et al. 1994 Rollins et al. 2001 Moritz 2003 Collins and Stephens 2007 Miller et al. 2007 Farris et al. 2008 Morgan et al. 2008 Wittkuhn and Hamilton 2010 |
GIS mapping | Objective and reproducible. | Requires large georeferenced datasets. | Heyerdahl et al. 2006 Hessl et al. 2007 Shapiro-Miller et al. 2007 Farris et al. 2010 |