Landscape‐scale modeling of reference period forest conditions and fire behavior on heavily logged lands

Forestconditions prior to extensive land clearing are often used as a point-of-reference by ecologists and resource managers for characterizing the historical range of variability in forestconditions shaped by intact disturbance regimes. Quantitative data on forestreference conditions can be developed from forestsurveys and reconstructions using dendroecology; however, these methods lack the spatial resolution needed for landscape management. In this paper, we combine predictive vegetation mapping methods with reference forestconditions inferred from early forestsurveys, dendroecology, and fire simulation models to develop landscape-scale reference conditions for foreststructure, forestfuels, fire frequency, and fire behavior using the Lake Tahoe Basin, California as an example. The dendroecological reconstruction method used for the Lake Tahoe Basin forestswas not sensitive to variation in decomposition rates suggesting that our method provided robust estimates of reference period forestcharact...