Ecological Role of Fire

Module Description: The Fire Ecology and Management Series is provided by the Northwest Center for Sustainable Resources and includes six modules. The series "is designed to address both the general role of fire in ecosystems as well as specific wildfire management issues in forest ecosystems." The six modules include Ecological Role of Fire, Historical Fire Regimes and their Application to Forest Management, Anatomy of a Wildfire the B&B Complex Fires, Pre-Fire Intervention Thinning and Prescribed Burning, Post-Wildfire (Salvage) Logging the Controversy, and An Evaluation of Media Coverage of Wilderness Issues.

The Ecological Role of Fire module is the first of six and introduces students to the role of wildfire in a broad range of disciplines. It is intended for use in courses such as Environmental Science, General Biology and Introduction to Natural Resources. This is an introductory module that forms the foundation for the next four modules in this series. 

Module Contents: The PowerPoint Presentation includes lecture notes and covers "the role of wildfire in reducing the probability of catastrophic fire, nutrient input into soils, control of insect pests and tree pathogens and maintaining species diversity."

The 42-page document provides information about the module and includes three sections: Module Description, PowerPoint Slides with Instructors Notes, and Resources.