Max A Moritz

Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist, Adjunct Assistant Professor
PhD  
  

325 Mulford
Berkeley, California 94720
mmoritz@nature.berkeley.edu
office: 510-642-7329   lab: 510-642-7329   fax:  510-643-5438

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A fire regime is a complex phenomenon, driven by a variety of biotic and abiotic factors at several spatio-temporal scales. Fire is also one of the clearest examples of the linkage between "pattern and process" on the landscape. Over short timescales, fires generate spatial patterns of age classes and affect vegetation stand structures, all of which feed back to alter the likelihood and behavior of future fires. Over very long timescales, fires affect patterns of species composition in ecosystems, which also feed back to influence the regional fire regime. Based on historical data, there is a clear relationship between fire occurence and vegetation types that can support fire.

Fire Controls It is often difficult to characterize the "natural" fire regime of an area, given multiple parameters of frequency, size, season, intensity, and types of fires and this involves mean values of parameters, their ranges of variation, and how they interact with each other statistically. In addition to vegetation type and other fuels-related factors, fire regimes are driven by characteristics of climate and the location and timing of ignitions.

Understanding how modern human activities have altered fire regimes is often crucial, because many vegetation types are adapted to certain fire regimes for their persistence. Although prescribed burning is an integral tool in restoring many fire regimes, burning in fire-dependent species of vegetation may be more complex than is currently understood.

Much of my research is focussed on understanding the dynamics of fire regimes at relatively broad scales and using this information in ecosystem management. I have employed quantitative analyses of fire history, examining the relative importance of different mechanisms that drive fire patterns on the landscape. I am also interested in simulation of fire dynamics, using spatially-explicit models of fire spread and vegetation regrowth.

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Moritz, M.A. and S.L. Stephens. 2006. Fire and sustainability: Considerations for California's altered future climate. California Energy Commission, Public Interest Energy Research Program, California Climate Change Center.

Moritz, M.A., M.E. Morais, L.A. Summerell, J.M. Carlson, and J. Doyle. 2005. Wildfires, complexity, and highly optimized tolerance. /Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA/ *102*: 17912-17917.

Cova, T.J., Dennison, P.E., Kim, T.H., and Moritz, M.A. 2005. Setting wildfire evacuation trigger points using fire spread modeling and GIS. /Transactions in GIS/ *9*: 603-617.

Moritz, M.A. and D.C. Odion. 2005. Examining the strength and possible causes of the relationship between fire history and Sudden Oak Death. /Oecologia/ *144*: 106-114.

Moritz, M.A. and D.C. Odion. 2004. Prescribed fire and natural disturbance. /Science/ *306*: 1680.

Keeley, J.E., C.J. Fotheringham, and M.A. Moritz. 2004. Lessons from the October 2003 wildfires in southern California. /Journal of Forestry/ *102*: 26-31.