Bend, OR: How important is fire (natural/prescribed) to maintenance of biodiversity in the interior Columbia Basin?
Fire is very important. Forests and rangelands of the Columbia Basin evolved with fire as an important component of all ecosystems. Historically, fire and other disturbance processes played a major role in maintaining biodiversity because they influenced the natural process of succession. In the absence of disturbance, ecosystems would move toward a climax condition, with the associated plants and animals of that community type, and remain in a climax type. Disturbance processes are what allow a landscape to have early-seral, mid-seral, and climax conditions over time and space, each bringing it’s own mix of species to the ecosystem.
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