Dictionary:
chap·ar·ral (shăp'ə-răl')  |
[Spanish, from chaparro, evergreen oak, from Basque txapar, diminutive of saphar, thicket.]
| Wordsmith Words: chaparral |
(shap-uh-RAL, chap-)
noun
A dense, often impenetrable, growth of shrubs and thorny bushes.
Etymology
From Spanish chaparral, from chaparro (dwarf evergreen oak), from Basque txapar (thicket)
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: chaparral |
For more information on chaparral, visit Britannica.com.
| Sci-Tech Encyclopedia: Chaparral |
A vegetation formation characterized by woody plants of low stature (3.3–10 ft or 1–3 m tall), impenetrable because of tough, rigid, interlacing branches, with small, simple, waxy, evergreen, thick leaves. The term refers to evergreen oak, Spanish chapparo, and therefore is uniquely southwestern North American. This type of vegetation has its center in California and occurs continuously over wide areas of mountainous to sloping topography. The Old World Mediterranean equivalent is called maquis or macchie, with nomenclatural and ecological variants in the countries from Spain to the Balkans. Physiognomically similar vegetation occurs also in South Africa, Chile, and southwestern Australia in areas of Mediterranean climates, that is, with very warm, dry summers and maximum precipitation during the cool season. The floras of these five areas with Mediterranean climates are altogether different.
The characteristic species of the true chaparral of California include Adenostema fasciculatum, Ceanothus cuneatus, Quercus dumosa, Heteromeles arbutifolia, Rhamnus californica, R. crocea, and Cercocarpus betuloides, plus a host of endemic species of Arctostaphylos and Ceanothus and other Californian endemics, both shrubby and herbaceous. These plants determine the formation's physiognomy. It is a dense, uniform-appearing, evergreen, shrubby cover with sclerophyllous leaves and deep-penetrating roots.
Ecologically, chaparral occurs in a climate which is hot and dry in summer, cool but not much below freezing in winter, with little or no snow, and with excessive winter precipitation that leaches the soil of nutrients. The need for water and its supply are exactly out of phase.
Chaparral soils are generally rocky, often shallow, or of extreme chemistry such as those derived from serpentine, and are always low in fertility. In the very precipitous southern Californian mountains, soil erosion rates may be 0.04 in. (1 mm) per year over large watershed areas.
| US Military Dictionary: Chaparral |
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: chaparral |
| Gardener's Dictionary: chaparral |
A dense growth of mostly small-leaved evergreen shrubs, as found in the foothills of California. Because the leaves are rich in highly flammable resins and because these shrubs normally grow on steep slopes, these areas are subject to frequent wildfires.
| Wikipedia: Chaparral |
Chaparral is a shrubland or heathland plant community found primarily in the U.S. state of California and in the northern portion of the Baja California peninsula, Mexico. It is shaped by a Mediterranean climate (mild, wet winters and hot dry summers) and wildfire. Similar plant communities are found in the four other Mediterranean climate regions around the world, including the Mediterranean Basin (where it is known as maquis), central Chile (where it is called matorral), South African Cape Region (known there as fynbos), and in Western and Southern Australia.
The word chaparral is a loan word from Spanish. The Spanish word comes from the word chaparro, which means both small and dwarf evergreen oak, which itself comes from the Basque word txapar, with the same meaning.
A typical chaparral plant community consists of densely-growing evergreen scrub oaks and other drought-resistant shrubs. It often grows so densely that it is all but impenetrable to large animals and humans. This, and its generally arid condition, makes it notoriously prone to wildfires. Although many chaparral plant species require some fire cue (heat, smoke, or charred wood) for germination, chaparral plants are not "adapted" to fire per se. Rather, these species are adapted to particular fire regimes involving season, frequency, intensity and severity of the burn.
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In Central and Southern California chaparral forms a dominant habitat. Members of the chaparral biota native to California, all of which tend to regrow quickly after fires, include:
The complex ecology of chaparral habitats supports a very large number of animal species. Here is a short list of birds which are an integral part of the chaparral systems. These first few are essential to the health of the system.
These are very common inhabitants
Because of the hot, dry conditions that exist in the summer and fall, chaparral is one of the most fire-prone plant communities in North America. Some fires are caused by lightning, but these are usually during periods of high humidity and low winds and are easily controlled. Nearly all of the very large wildfires are human caused during periods of very hot, dry easterly Santa Ana winds. These human caused fires are generally due to power lines, arson, sparking machinery, or campfires.
There are two assumptions relating to California chaparral fire regimes that appear to have caused considerable confusion and controversy within the fields of wildfire and land management: first, older stands of chaparral become “senescent” or “decadent” implying they need fire to remain healthy (Hanes 1971), and second, wildfire suppression policies have allowed chaparral to accumulate unnatural levels of fuel leading to larger fires (Minnich 1983).
The perspective that older chaparral is unhealthy or unproductive may have originated during the 1940s when studies were conducted measuring the amount of forage available to deer populations in chaparral stands. However, according to recent studies, California chaparral is extraordinarily resilient to very long periods without fire (Keeley, Pfaff, and Safford 2005) and continues to maintain productive growth throughout pre-fire conditions (Hubbard 1986, Larigauderie et al. 1990). Seeds of many chaparral plants actually require 30 years or more worth of accumulated leaf litter before they will successfully germinate (e.g. scrub oak: Quercus berberidifolia, toyon: Heteromeles arbutifolia, holly-leafed cherry: Prunus ilicifolia). When intervals between fires drop below 10 to 15 years, many chaparral species are eliminated and the system is typically replaced by non-native, weedy grassland (Haidinger and Keeley 1993, Keeley 1995, Zedler 1995).
The idea that older chaparral is responsible for causing large fires was originally proposed in the 1980’s by comparing wildfires in Baja California and southern California. It was suggested that fire suppression activities in southern California allowed more fuel to accumulate which in turn led to larger fires (in Baja, fires often burn without active suppression efforts). This is similar to the argument that fire suppression in western United States has allowed Ponderosa Pine forests to become “overstocked.” In the past, surface-fires burned through these forests at intervals of anywhere between 4 and 36 years, clearing out the understory and creating a more ecologically balanced system. However, chaparral has a crown-fire regime, meaning fires consume the entire system whenever they burn. Detailed analysis of historical fire data has shown that fire suppression activities have failed to exclude fire from southern California chaparral as they have in Ponderosa Pine forests (Keeley et al. 1999). In addition, the number of fires is increasing in step with population growth. Overall, chaparral stand age does not have a significant correlation to its tendency to burn (Moritz et al. 2004). Low humidity, low fuel moisture, and high winds appear to be the primary factors in determining when a chaparral stand burns.
The Chaparral is a coastal biome with hot dry summers and mild, rainy winters. The Chaparral area gets about 38–100 cm (15–39 in) of precipitation a year. This makes the chaparral most vulnerable to fire in the late summer and fall.
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wordsmith Words. © 2009 Wordsmith.org. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Sci-Tech Encyclopedia. McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| US Military Dictionary. The Oxford Essential Dictionary of the U.S. Military. Copyright © 2001, 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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| Gardener's Dictionary. Taylor's Dictionary for Gardeners, by Frances Tenenbaum. Copyright © 1997 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Chaparral". Read more |
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