South Coast bioregion

This chapter investigates the South Coast bioregion in Southern California. There are two broad ecological zones: the coastal valleys and foothill zone and the montane zone. Grasslands are resilient to a wide range of fire frequencies. Fire regimes in big-cone Douglas-fir forests vary spatially and temporally. Lodgepole pine forests are at the highest end of the elevational gradient for forests exposed to fire on any regular basis. Landscape scale prescription burning on a rotational basis is a questionable management strategy in this bioregion. A broader application of fuel manipulations may be warranted for managing fires that occur under mild weather conditions and are not wind-driven events. Regardless of how climate affects fuels, based on current patterns of burning it appears that throughout this region the primary threat to future fire regimes is more tied to future patterns of human demography than to climate.