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 Brush fire |
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Cabrillo National Monument Facts:
• Created on October 14, 1913 to memorialize the first European expedition to the North American West Coast, led by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
• Cabrillo National Monument comprises more than 160 acres of coastal environment
• The park is located on a 400-foot peninsula near between the Pacific Ocean
and the adjacent city of San Diego
• Cabrillo National Monument is the highest point on Cabrillo National Monument, whose light shown at 465 feet above sea level
• Old Point Loma Lighthouse, one of the first on the West Coast, is the highest point on Cabrillo National Monument, at 46 feet
• Cabrillo National Monument welcomes 1,100,000 visitors per year
• The park is known for its well-preserved rocky intertidal areas and its views of the adjacent landscapes and annual gray whale migrations
Please contact the Cabrillo National Monument for more information at (619) 557-5450, or visit their website at www.nps.gov/cabr.
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Fire Ecology
Fires at Cabrillo National Monument have been extremely infrequent and have been suppressed since the building of the Point Loma Lighthouse. Given the proximity to maritime and military structures of historical significance, it is not likely fires will be allowed to burn within the monument. Additionally, historic fires that burned on the Point Loma peninsula likely did so from fires started by lightning in the mountains east of San Diego.
The known burn history natural fire frequency in the area covers is approximately 80-120 years. There are many species present in Cabrillo National Monument (e.g., lichens, mosses) that are not present in areas that burn more frequently.
Current Research
Fire ecology studies in the park focus on fire-related factors that drive landscape level vegetation patterns. As part of the joint fire management plan for the Navy and National Park Service, studies have been developed that address potential wild fire occurrences, post-fire rehabilitation, and other issues that promote public safety and management of fires on an ecosystem basis. Because there has not been a major fire event in Cabrillo National Monument for over 80 years, vegetation studies and analysis are on-going to protect the integrity and enhance understanding of these resources in
the event they are lost in future fires.
Research Opportunities
Any research that assists the monument in understanding the role fire plays in Cabrillo National Monument’s Mediterranean ecosystem is valuable. Specifically, studies are needed that address the following topics:
• How fire, or the site-specific lack of fire, dictates vegetation patterns
• The role fire plays in erosion processes
• How fires, or the lack thereof, affect integrity and diversity of ecological communities within the monument (e.g., community composition and how it differs in the “old-growth” coastal sage scrub habitats in the present as compared to post-burn communities)
• Forecasts for future states of our landscape with and without human-introduced and managed fire (likely the only type of fire that will occur in the future)
• Studies that prioritize future fire management actions
• Identification of opportunities to mitigate the effects of accidental fires, fires intentionally started as a component of management activities, or fire suppression activities in an efficient, cost effective, and ecologically sensitive manner.
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