Human influence on landscape pattern in the Pacific Region: impacts of burning by First Nations and early European settlers.

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1995
• Subjects: Pacific; First Nations
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.396.7027; http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/Docs/scv/SCV244.pdf

In coastal British Columbia and adjacent Washington state, the presence of charcoal fragments in sediments indicates a fire history dating back to 11,000 years before the present (Rigg and Richardson 1938). While climatic fluctuations have occurred and the dominant vegetation on the landscape has shifted, fire has been present in varying amounts throughout this period. In the southern interior of B.C. a similar pattern exists, with charcoal being detectable back to at least 700 years before the present at a site near the Similkameen River and just north of the border (Cawker 1983). Dendrochronological analysis of fire-scarred trees has shown that surface fires, which for the most part burn in the understorey of ponderosa pine and interior Douglas-fir forests, have been common for centuries. Fire scar dates from the 1600s to the early 1900s indicate that such fires burned at frequencies ranging from at least every 6 to at