Leef's Hill - USLFH001 Heyerdahl, Emily K.; Morgan, Penelope Dating method: crossdated Sample storage location: Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona Reference: Morgan; P.; Heyerdahl, E.K.; Strand, E.K.; Bunting, S.C.; Riser II, J.P.; Abatzoglou, J.T.; Nielsen-Pincus, M.; Johnson, M. in press. Fire and land cover change in the Palouse Prairie-forest ecotone, Washington and Idaho, USA. Fire Ecology. Abstract: Prairie-forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value. Our objective was to understand how historical and current fire occurrences and human development influenced the Palouse Prairie-forest ecotone. We used General Land Office survey field notes about the occurrence of bearing trees to locate historical (1870s to 1880s) prairie, pine savanna, and forest at the eastern edge of the bioregion. We combined LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation classes to contrast historical land cover with current land cover. We reconstructed historical fire occurrence (1650 to 1900) from fire-scarred trees. We used fire and lightning records from 1992 to 2015 to interpret the role of people and lightning. Historically, the ecotone was a matrix of prairie with some pine savanna and forest (72%, 16%, and 12% of GLO points, respectively). The prairie and pine savanna have been largely converted to agriculture, perennial vegetation under the Conservation Reserve Program, or residential development while the forest has not been converted. Fires were historically frequent, occurring on average every 5 to 8 years at most sites. Lightning was not frequent but could likely have been sufficient to ignite fires that could spread readily given the rolling terrain and long fire season. Fire was far more frequent historically than currently. Lightning and people may ignite fires that spread readily in the future as conservation, restoration, and other land-use changes result in more continuous vegetation and hence fuel for fires. Understanding the past and potential future of fire in the Palouse Prairie bioregion may help us live with fire while conserving ecological values here and in similar prairie-forest ecotones. Reference: Peterson, L. 2004. Climatic drivers of wildfire regimes in northern Idaho. Senior thesis. The Colorado College. 39 pp. Abstract: I investigated the climatic drivers of historical fire regimes in Northern Idaho. NOAA/IMPD web landing page for this fire history site is available at: https://ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/study/28042 NOAA/IMPD DIF and JSON metadata records for this fire history site are available at: https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/published/paleo/dif/xml/noaa-fire-28042.xml and https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/metadata/published/paleo/json/noaa-fire-28042.json FHX filename: https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/northamerica/uslfh001.fhx IMPD code: USLFH001 Name of site: Leef's Hill Site code: LFH Contributors: Heyerdahl, Emily K.; Morgan, Penelope Latitude: 46.86683 (WGS84) Longitude: -116.72934 (WGS84) Mean elevation: 890 (meters) Country: United States State: Idaho Region: Palouse First year: 1521 AD Last year: 1992 AD Species name: Pinus ponderosa [PIPO] Funding agency names and grant numbers: no funding Comments: This site was sampled as part of a project to reconstruct historical fire regimes on the eastern edge of the Palouse Prairie-forest ecotone in Idaho. Ring-boundary fire scars were assigned to the preceding calendar year. Several metadata files are provided with the FHX file. -999 in any file indicates no data. https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/northamerica/supplemental/uslfh001-lfh-tree-info.csv provides information about the fire-scarred trees, e.g., species and location. The samples from this site were collected by Liesl Peterson as part of her senior thesis which is provided in https://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/firehistory/firescar/northamerica/supplemental/usbsh001-uslfh001-peterson-thesis.pdf. Sampled in the University of Idaho Experimental Forest 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://www.fhaes.org for more information.