Peake Canyon - USPEA001
Additional Site Information

Peter M. Brown


Dating Method: Crossdated

Reference: Brown, P.M., M.W. Kaye, L. Huckaby, and C. Baisan. 2001. Fire 
history along environmental gradients in the Sacramento Mountains, New 
Mexico: Influences of local patterns and regional processes. Écoscience 
8:115-126.

Abstract: (Brown et al., 2001) Patterning in fire regimes occurs
at multiple spatiotemporal scales owing to differences in scaling of
local and regional influences. Local fire occurrence and behavior may be
controlled largely by site factors, while regional climate and changes
in human land use can synchronize fire timing across large areas. We
examined historical patterns in fires during the past five centuries
across gradients in forest types and physiography and in relation to
regional climate variability and land use change in the Sacramento
Mountains in southern New Mexico. Forest stand-level chronologies of
fires were reconstructed for 19 pinyon-juniper, ponderosa pine, and
mixed-conifer stands using fire-scar records in crossdated tree-ring
series. The fire history documents both local and regional factors
effected fire occurrences in stands. Lower-elevation stands recorded
more frequent fire than higher-elevation stands, although there were not
significant differences between means of fire frequencies from clusters of
ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer stands. Mean fire intervals ranged from
approximately 3 to 11 years in ponderosa pine sites to 4 to 14 years in
mixed-conifer sites. Sites on the steeper west side of the range, where
fire spread more readily between forest types, recorded significantly more
frequent fire than sites on the more physiographically heterogeneous east
side. Fires were also synchronized by regional factors. Fire occurrences
and fire-free years are related to variability in both annual Palmer
Drought Severity Indices and El Niño-Southern Oscillation events. Fire
regimes in the stands were also profoundly effected by changes in human
land use patterns, with fire cessation in all sites following intensive
Euro-American settlement beginning in the 1880s.

Comments: The "." and "|" symbols were not used in the standard manner as
described in the FHX2 users manual, in that they do not indicate whether or 
not a year is considered a "recorder" year. Rather, the "|" symbol is used 
to indicate that a dated ring was present, while the "." symbol is used
to indicate that no dated ring was present (typically before and after the
age range of the tree as well as between an estimated pith date and the 
earliest ring that was present). 

Fire History Graphs: Fire History Graphs illustrate specific years when 
fires occurred and how many trees were scarred. They are available in both 
PDF and PNG formats. The graphs consist of 2 parts, both of which show the 
X axis (time line) at the bottom with the earliest year of information on 
the left and the latest on the right.
The Fire Index Plot is the topmost plot, and shows two variables: sample 
depth (the number of recording trees in each year) as a blue line along 
the left Y axis, compared with the percent trees scarred shown as gray bars 
along the right Y axis.
Below, the Fire Chronology Plot consists of horizontal lines representing
injuries by year on individual sampled trees. Symbols are overlain that 
denote the years containing the dendrochronologically-dated fire scars or
injuries. The sample ID of each tree is displayed to the right of each
line. The Composite Axis below represents the composite information from
all individual series. The symbols used to represent the fire scars or
injuries, and the filters used to determine the composite information,
are shown in the legend.
These graphs were created using the Fire History Analysis and Exploration
System (FHAES). See http://frames.nbii.gov/fhaes/ for more information.