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1.
In seasonally dry environments such as the Zagros woodlands (Iran), severe drought stress and lack of appropriate management practices can cause failure of oak afforestation or reforestation. We investigated the effect of soil properties and burial depth on Persian oak (Quercus brantii Lindl.) establishment in different microhabitats resulting from traditional forest practices. Four microhabitats that were based on forest structure were considered for oak acorn seeding: (1) inside old sprout clumps (ISPC); (2) under the canopy of tall trees (UCTT); (3) outside the canopy of tall trees and sprout clumps; and (4) near recent stumps or sprout clumps. Acorns were seeded at two depths (2 and 5 cm), and seedling survival and growth variables were recorded for 4 years, together with soil chemical and biological attributes. Stepwise discriminant analysis showed that a combination of total soil nitrogen, cation exchange capacity, available phosphorus and potassium, litter depth, microbial quotient, metabolic coefficient, substrate-induced respiration and earthworm abundance was the best variables to characterise the microhabitats. With the exception of pH, bulk density and soil texture, these variables were higher in UCTT and ISPC than in the other microhabitats. Seedling emergence and survival were greater at a seed depth of 5 cm than at 2 cm. Seedling height and shoot, root and leaf biomasses were higher in the UCTT microhabitat compared to the other microhabitats and correlated positively with soil nutrients contents and most of the soil biological variables but negatively with soil bulk density. This study emphasised the role of microhabitats in creating a “canopy effect” producing favourable physical, chemical and biological soil conditions. In particular, large oak trees form islands of fertility and therefore are of key importance for successful seedling establishment in forests subjected to intense human activities.  相似文献   

2.
The effect of fires on Cerambycidae, Buprestidae and Lucanidae were studied at 23 sites within a chestnut forest in southern Switzerland. We compared six unburnt sites, two freshly burnt sites, eight sites which burned once at different times in the last 30 years, and seven sites where fires occurred repeatedly in the last 30 years. The diversity and the species composition of the three xylobiont families were related to various ecological variables at two levels of spatial scale, a small scale of 0.25 ha and a large scale of 6.25 ha. These variables were: fire frequency, time since the last fire, clear cutting after the fire, forest structure, amount of dead wood, and habitat mosaic. The fire does not have a direct effect on the xylobiont beetles community at small scale; however, fire has an indirect effect by maintaining a relatively open forest structure. The mosaic of forest areas burnt with different frequencies and at different times was an important factor influencing species richness and species composition at the large spatial scale.Data presented here supports the strategy to conserve the diversity and includes species composition of xylobiont fauna in deciduous forests: (i) at small spatial scale, to maintain highly structured and relatively open stands with large amounts of dead wood and big oak trees; (ii) at large spatial scale, to favour a mosaic of different forest habitats and successional stages. A forest offering a good structural diversity is important for maintaining landscape complexity and thus a high species richness of xylophagous beetles.  相似文献   

3.
This study evaluated the importance of burned habitat characteristics as well as the likely dispersal from specific habitats in the distribution of saproxylic beetles the same year as a fire occurred, in burned black spruce stands (Picea mariana [Mill] B.S.P.) in the northern boreal forest of Québec. The distribution of early post-fire saproxylic species was mainly driven by burned habitat attributes at the plot scale (0.04 ha), especially fire severity, suggesting that the effect of environment attributes can act at a relatively fine scale. Some xylophagous and most predaceous species were more abundant in severely burned stands whereas fire severity had the opposite effect on several common mycophagous species. The amount of newly fire-killed trees that could be used as breeding substrates in the burned stands had only a weak positive influence on these functional groups. The great majority of early saproxylic species were weakly associated with the distance from unburned forests or other recently burned patches that could act as potential “source habitats”. Indeed, these variables were of lesser importance than the attributes of the burned habitat. Woody debris that were already present in plots before the fire, potentially serving as local of source-populations for early colonizers, had virtually no influence on the local abundance of species. Many saproxylic species, including some true pyrophilous, clearly showed higher abundance as distance from unburned stands increased. This unexpected relation may reflect that dispersal of insects toward the burnt landscape very shortly after fire could be driven by the higher amount of volatiles released by severely burned forests, which are more likely as distance from unburned forest increased.  相似文献   

4.
On some landscapes periodic fire may be necessary to develop and maintain oak-dominated savannas. We studied the effects of two annual prescribed burns to determine their effect on microbial activity and soil and litter nutrients 1 year after the last burn. Surface litter and soil from the upper 0–5 cm soil layer in three developing savannas (oak-hickory, Quercus-Carya), oak-hickory-pine (Quercus-Carya-Pinus), and pine (Pinus) were collected one year after the second of two annual prescribed burns. Surface litter was analyzed for nutrients and soil was analyzed for phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs) and nutrients. Surface litter chemistry differed across the three savannas for potassium (K) and boron (B), being significantly (P < 0.05) higher for unburned forest than for burned forest. Among savannas, only sulfur (S) was higher for the pine savanna and B for the oak-hickory savanna, both were higher for unburned forest than for burned forest. For soil, calcium (Ca) and B differed across savannas, being higher for burned forest than for unburned forest. Among savannas, soil pH, Ca, and B concentrations were higher in soil from burned forest than from unburned forest. Total PLFA differed among savannas, but was not affected by burning treatments. However, the amounts of biomarkers for Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria were higher while the amount of biomarker for fungal PLFA was lower for burned forest than for unburned forest. Our results indicate that the two annual prescribed burns moderately affected PLFA microbial community structure and litter and soil nutrient concentrations. However, the long-term effects of fire on these study sites are not known and merit further study.  相似文献   

5.
To examine the relationship between forest succession following fire and the composition of bird communities, we investigated the vegetation structure, bird population density, foraging behavior and guild structure in bamboo grasslands (11 years since the last fire), pine savanna (41 years), pine woodland (58 years), old-growth hemlock forest (never burned), and old-growth spruce forest (never burned) in the Tatachia area of central Taiwan. Canopy height, total foliage cover, tree density, total basal area of tree, total basal area of snags, foliage height diversity, and tree species richness all increased with successional age. However, shrub cover peaked in intermediate successional stages. The vertical profile of foliage cover was more diverse in later successional forests, which had more breeding bird species and ecological guilds. All the breeding bird species recorded in early and intermediate stages were also found distributed in the late successional forests. Because Taiwan has high precipitation and humidity, and most forest fires in Taiwan are caused by human activities, forest fires and large areas of early successional vegetation were probably rare in the mountain areas of Taiwan prior to the arrival of humans. Therefore, bird species have not had enough time to adapt to areas with early or intermediate successional vegetation. Moreover, late successional forests host all the major plant species found in the early and intermediate stages and have higher foliage height diversity index, which was positively correlated with the bird species richness and bird species diversity index in this study. As a result, all breeding bird species and guilds in the area can be found in late successional forests. Efforts for conserving avian diversity in Taiwan should focus on protecting the remaining native old-growth forests.  相似文献   

6.
Timber harvesting, with and without prescribed slash fire, and wild fire are common disturbances in pine forests of western North America. These disturbances can alter soil nitrogen (N) pools and N supply to colonizing vegetation, but their influence remains poorly understood for many forests. We investigated the effects of clear cut harvesting and fire on KCl extractable N pools, net N mineralization rates, phosphorus (P) fractions, seedling N uptake, and seedling growth in mineral soils sampled from a lodgepole pine forest in southern Wyoming. At a site where wild fire burned through a harvested stand of lodgepole pine and the adjacent intact forest, we analyzed mineral soils from the following four treatments: unburned clear cut, burnt clear cut, unburned forest, and burnt forest. Soils from unburned and burnt clear cut treatments had higher concentrations of KCl extractable N and higher net N mineralization rates, and produced larger pine seedlings in bioassays than soils from unburned and burnt intact forest treatments. Further, while seedlings grown in soils from the unburned and burnt forest treatments responded strongly to N fertilization, seedlings grown in clear-cut soils did not respond to fertilization. Taken together, these results suggest that harvesting had increased soil N supply. In comparing clear cut treatments, soils from the unburned clear cut had smaller extractable N and P pools, and lower net N mineralization rates, but produced larger pine seedlings than soils from the burnt clear cut.  相似文献   

7.
【目的】通过地理加权回归(GWR)模型估算非干扰林龄,利用遥感数据和林火发生历史数据,获取过火区域信息,进而对林火烈度分级,讨论林火烈度与森林类型的交互作用,估算干扰林龄,最终获得黑龙江省森林年龄的空间分布。【方法】以黑龙江森林为研究区域,基于研究区域的多光谱数据结合地面森林资源清查数据,通过逐步回归方法提取了包括遥感因子绿度指数(Greeness)、湿度指数(Wetness)、林分平均胸径(ADBH)、林分平均树高(ASH)及海拔(Altitude)在内的5个显著因子作为自变量,采用GWR模型建立非干扰林龄估算模型。采用全局Moran I来描述模型残差的空间自相关性。绘制研究区非干扰林龄空间分布图并探究林龄的空间分布状态。[JP+1]结合林火位置与面积记录对多光谱数据目视解译提取过火区域,根据dNBR将过火区域火烈度分级。将火烈度图与植被类型图叠加分析,讨论不同森林类型在不同火烈度下的演替情况。定义干扰林龄时,未发生树种更替的森林林龄不变,树种发生更替的森林在林火发生年将其林龄归为0,并在新的优势树种萌发时从1开始累加,以此类推干扰后森林的林龄。【结果】黑龙江省非干扰森林平均林龄为48年,标准差为16年。GWR模型的 Radj^2 为0.68,RMSE为16.171 7。使用Moran I来检验模型的残差,发现GWR模型可很好地消除残差的空间自相关性。研究区林龄整体空间分布状态不均匀,大兴安岭地区林龄普遍高于黑龙江林区。黑龙江省2000―2010年林火主要发生在大兴安岭及小兴安岭地区,根据dNBR将已提取的过火区域林火烈度分为:未过火、轻度过火、中度过火和重度过火4类,总过火面积为527 932 hm^2,其中重度29 157 hm^2、中度180 268 hm^2、轻度318 507 hm^2。兴安落叶松林和蒙古栎林在整个研究区中过火面积最大,分别占总过火面积的28.63%和47.23%。根据不同森林类型在不同火烈度下的演替情况,估算干扰森林的林龄并绘制干扰林龄空间分布图。【结论】 GWR模型能较有效地估算黑龙江省非干扰林龄,成功地降低了残差的空间自相关性。在估算林龄的过程中加入林火干扰因素,以获取更真实的林龄空间分布数据,可为黑龙江地区森林NPP、NEP以及森林碳储量、森林生物量等相关研究提供数据支持。  相似文献   

8.
The forests of Nothofagus pumilio have historically been affected by forest fires. The effects of fire on certain above and belowground, biotic and abiotic components of these ecosystems have been previously documented, albeit belowground components have received much less attention. It has been suggested that the effects observed in the short-term after a fire usually differ from the longer-term effects. The long-term effects of fire (i.e. >5 years after burning) on belowground components in Nothofagus forests are currently unknown. In the present study we evaluated the long-term effect of fire on ectomycorrhiza (ECM) colonization and morphotype composition in N. pumilio roots, as well as soil chemical properties in temperate forests in Patagonia. Sampling was conducted in three mature monospecific forests. In each, nearby burned and unburned sites were selected. The time since the occurrence of fires differed between areas (i.e. 6-10 years). Within each site, 3 transects of 40 m were established randomly along which 5 samples of roots and soil were collected in spring and autumn. The main results were: (1) in comparison with the unburned site, ECM colonization was lower in the burned site in the area with the shorter time length since fire occurrence and no effects in the other two areas were observed; (2) richness and diversity were not significantly affected by fire but there was a significant effect of season for both parameters, being higher in spring; (3) ECM dominance was significantly higher in the unburned than in the burned site in Tronador, while in Challhuaco the opposite was observed, mainly in autumn; (4) in general carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous decreased while pH increased in the burned sites; (5) ECM colonization positively correlated with NH4+ and phosphorus and negatively with pH but was not significantly correlated with organic matter or any other soil variable. Altogether the results suggest that effects of fire on ectomycorrhiza and soil properties in N. pumilio forests are probably related to the time elapsed since fire occurrence combined with site characteristics. In addition, the direct and indirect effects of fire in these forest systems may persist for more than 10 years.  相似文献   

9.
【目的】通过地理加权回归(GWR)模型估算非干扰林龄,利用遥感数据和林火发生历史数据,获取过火区域信息,进而对林火烈度分级,讨论林火烈度与森林类型的交互作用,估算干扰林龄,最终获得黑龙江省森林年龄的空间分布。【方法】以黑龙江森林为研究区域,基于研究区域的多光谱数据结合地面森林资源清查数据,通过逐步回归方法提取了包括遥感因子绿度指数(Greeness)、湿度指数(Wetness)、林分平均胸径(ADBH)、林分平均树高(ASH)及海拔(Altitude)在内的5个显著因子作为自变量,采用GWR模型建立非干扰林龄估算模型。采用全局Moran I来描述模型残差的空间自相关性。绘制研究区非干扰林龄空间分布图并探究林龄的空间分布状态。[JP+1]结合林火位置与面积记录对多光谱数据目视解译提取过火区域,根据dNBR将过火区域火烈度分级。将火烈度图与植被类型图叠加分析,讨论不同森林类型在不同火烈度下的演替情况。定义干扰林龄时,未发生树种更替的森林林龄不变,树种发生更替的森林在林火发生年将其林龄归为0,并在新的优势树种萌发时从1开始累加,以此类推干扰后森林的林龄。【结果】黑龙江省非干扰森林平均林龄为48年,标准差为16年。GWR模型的 Radj^2 为0.68,RMSE为16.171 7。使用Moran I来检验模型的残差,发现GWR模型可很好地消除残差的空间自相关性。研究区林龄整体空间分布状态不均匀,大兴安岭地区林龄普遍高于黑龙江林区。黑龙江省2000―2010年林火主要发生在大兴安岭及小兴安岭地区,根据dNBR将已提取的过火区域林火烈度分为:未过火、轻度过火、中度过火和重度过火4类,总过火面积为527 932 hm^2,其中重度29 157 hm^2、中度180 268 hm^2、轻度318 507 hm^2。兴安落叶松林和蒙古栎林在整个研究区中过火面积最大,分别占总过火面积的28.63%和47.23%。根据不同森林类型在不同火烈度下的演替情况,估算干扰森林的林龄并绘制干扰林龄空间分布图。【结论】 GWR模型能较有效地估算黑龙江省非干扰林龄,成功地降低了残差的空间自相关性。在估算林龄的过程中加入林火干扰因素,以获取更真实的林龄空间分布数据,可为黑龙江地区森林NPP、NEP以及森林碳储量、森林生物量等相关研究提供数据支持。  相似文献   

10.
We assessed the effects of a prescribed fire on the phytochemical characteristics and vigor of overstory chestnut oak, scarlet oak, and red maple, and measured the impact of potential changes on herbivore fitness. We compared foliar carbohydrates, tannins, nutrients, and fiber concentrations in foliage from burned and non-burned forest canopies. There were significant differences in most foliar characteristics between tree species. Total non-structural carbohydrate concentrations in scarlet oak and red maple foliage, and calcium levels in red maple foliage, were significantly lower in burned plots, but other phytochemical characteristics were largely unaffected by burning. Tree growth also varied with species. Burning increased chestnut oak relative growth, decreased scarlet oak growth, and had no affect on red maple growth. Scarlet oak and red maple foliage from burned and non-burned forest canopies were assayed for gypsy moth performance. Caterpillars fed foliage from scarlet oak, the preferred host, grew larger and developed more rapidly than did those fed red maple foliage. There were no significant burn treatment differences in caterpillar development within either tree species, suggesting that managers using prescribed fire to promote oak regeneration need not worry about enhancing forest stand susceptibility to gypsy moth. However, the fire in this study was of low to moderate intensity; more intense fires may alter foliar palatability.  相似文献   

11.
Disturbance has long been a central issue in amphibian conservation, often regarding negative effects of logging or other forest management activities, but some amphibians seem to prefer disturbed habitats. After documenting increased use of recently burned forests by boreal toads (Bufo boreas), we hypothesized that burned habitats provided improved thermal opportunities in terrestrial habitats. We tested this hypothesis by conducting a radio telemetry study of habitat use (reported previously) and by using physical models that simulated the temperature of adult toads. We deployed 108 physical models in and adjacent to a 1-year old burn using a fully-replicated design with three burn severities (unburned, partial, high severity) and four microhabitats (open surface, under vegetation, under log, in burrow). Model temperatures were compared to a range of preferred temperatures in published studies. We found 70% more observations within the preferred temperature range of B. boreas in forests burned with high severity than in unburned areas. Burned forest was warmer than unburned forest across all microhabitats, but the largest relative difference was in burrows, which averaged 3 °C warmer in high-severity burn areas and remained warmer though the night. More than twice as many observations were within the preferred temperature range in high-severity burrows than in unburned burrows. Areas burned with high severity were still warmer than unburned forest 3 years after the fire. Habitat use of toads during the concurrent radio telemetry study matched that predicted by the physical models. These results suggest there are fitness-linked benefits to toads using burned habitats, such as increased growth, fertility, and possibly disease resistance. However, increased soil temperatures that result from wildfire may be detrimental to other amphibian species that prefer cooler temperatures and stable environments. More broadly, our data illustrate the use of physical models to measure and interpret changes that amphibians may experience from disturbance, and highlight the need for research linking vital rates such as growth and survival to disturbance.  相似文献   

12.
The Western Ghats in India is one of the 25 global hotspots of biodiversity, and it is the hotspot with the highest human density. This study considers variations in the regional fire regime that are related to vegetation type and past human disturbances in a landscape. Using a combination of remote sensing data and GIS techniques, burnt areas were delineated in three different vegetation types and various metrics of fire size were estimated. Belt transects were enumerated to assess the vegetation characteristics and fire effects in the landscape. Temporal trends suggest increasingly short fire-return intervals in the landscape. In the tropical dry deciduous forest, the mean fire-return interval is 6 years, in the tropical dry thorn forest mean fire-return interval is 10 years, and in the tropical moist deciduous forest mean fire-return interval is 20 years. Tropical dry deciduous forests burned more frequently and had the largest number of fires in any given year as well as the single largest fire (9900 ha). Seventy percent, 56%, and 30% of the tropical moist deciduous forests, tropical dry thorn forests, and tropical dry deciduous forests, respectively have not burned during the 7-year period of study. The model of fire-return interval as a function of distance from park boundary explained 63% of the spatial variation of fire-return interval in the landscape. Forest fires had significant impacts on species diversity and regeneration in the tropical dry deciduous forests. Species diversity declined by 50% and 60% in the moderate and high frequency classes, respectively compared to the low fire frequency class. Sapling density declined by ca. 30% in both moderate and high frequency classes compared to low frequency class. In tropical moist deciduous ecosystems, there were substantial declines in species diversity, tree density, seedling and sapling densities in burned forests compared to the unburned forests. In contrast forest fires in tropical dry thorn forests had a marginal positive effect on ecosystem diversity, structure, and regeneration.  相似文献   

13.
One of the arguments against using prescribed fire to regenerate oak (Quercus spp.) forests is that the improvement in species composition of the hardwood regeneration pool is temporary and multiple burns are necessary to achieve and maintain oak dominance. To explore this concern, I re-inventoried a prescribed fire study conducted in the mid-1990s to determine the longevity of the effects of a single prescribed fire on hardwood regeneration. The initial study was conducted in three oak shelterwood stands in central Virginia, USA. In 1994, each stand was divided into four treatments (spring, summer, and winter burns and a control) and the hardwood regeneration was inventoried before the fires. During the burns, fire intensity was measured and categorized in each regeneration sampling plot. Second-year postfire data showed marked differences in species mortality rates, depending on season-of-burn and fire intensity: oak and hickory (Carya spp.) regeneration dominated areas burned by medium- to high-intensity fire during the spring and summer while yellow-poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) and red maple (Acer rubrum) seedlings dominated unburned areas and all areas treated with low-intensity fire regardless of season-of-burn. The treatments were re-inventoried in 2006 and 2007 to determine whether these fire effects were still present. The new data show that the species distributions by season-of-burn and fire intensity found in 1996 still existed 11 years after the treatments. The fact that fire effects in oak shelterwood stands can last at least a decade has important management implications for resource professionals interested in sustaining oak forests in the eastern United States.  相似文献   

14.
The Angora Fire burned 1243 ha of Jeffrey pine and mixed conifer forest in the Lake Tahoe Basin between June 24 and July 2, 2007. The Angora Fire burned at unusually high severity due to heavy fuels; strong winds; warm, dry weather; and unseasonably low fuel moistures. The fire destroyed 254 homes, and final loss and suppression cost estimates of $160,000,000 make the Angora Fire one of the ten costliest wildfires in US history. The Angora Fire burned into 194 ha of fuel treatments intended to modify fire behavior and protect private and public assets in the Angora Creek watershed. The fire thus provides a unique opportunity to quantitatively assess the effects of fuel treatments on wildfire severity in an area of wildland–urban interface. We measured fire effects on vegetation in treated and adjacent untreated areas within the Angora Fire perimeter, immediately after and one year after the fire. Our measures of fire severity included tree mortality; height of bole char, crown scorch, and crown torch; and percent crown scorch and torch. Unlike most studies of fuel treatment effectiveness, our study design included replication and implicitly controlled for variation in topography and weather. Our results show that fuel treatments generally performed as designed and substantially changed fire behavior and subsequent fire effects to forest vegetation. Exceptions include two treatment units where slope steepness led to lower levels of fuels removal due to local standards for erosion prevention. Hand-piled fuels in one of these two units had also not yet been burned. Excepting these units, bole char height and fire effects to the forest canopy (measured by crown scorching and torching) were significantly lower, and tree survival significantly higher, within sampled treatments than outside them. In most cases, crown fire behavior changed to surface fire within 50 m of encountering a fuel treatment. The Angora Fire underlines the important role that properly implemented fuel treatments can play in protecting assets, reducing fire severity and increasing forest resilience.  相似文献   

15.
Fuel treatments for reducing fire risk are necessarily tied to the landscape structure including forest composition and configuration. Thus understanding the relationships between landscape structure and burn severity is important for developing guidelines and management strategies for fire-resilient forests. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between landscape structure as described by spatial pattern metrics and burn severity at the landscape and class levels. In 2000, a mostly severe fire burned 16,210 ha of dense forest located in Samchuck on the east coast of the Korean peninsula. Spatial pattern metrics including patch density, largest patch index, mean shape index, area-weighted mean shape index, Euclidean nearest neighborhood distance, and Shannon's diversity index, as well as topographic characteristics of slope and elevation, were correlated with burn severity based on delta Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) assessments. Regression tree analysis was also carried out with the same variables to avoid spatial autocorrelation and to reveal the relative importance of variables to burn severity. The results of this study strongly suggest that both composition and configuration of the forest cover patches are closely tied to burn severity. In particular, both the correlation analysis and regression tree analysis indicated that the area of red pine tree forest cover was the most significant factor in explaining the variance of burn severity. Topography and spatial configuration of forest cover patches were also significantly related to burn severity. The heterogeneity of forests also had a significant influence on burn severity. To reduce fire risk and increase the fire resilience of forests, forest managers and agencies need to consider enhancing the heterogeneity of forests when implementing fuel treatment schemes. However, such fuel treatments for landscape structure may only be effective under moderate weather conditions.  相似文献   

16.
An important goal of forest restoration is to increase native plant diversity and abundance. Thinning and burning treatments are a common method of reducing fire risk while simultaneously promoting understory production in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests. In this study we examine the magnitude and direction of understory plant community recovery after thinning and burning restoration treatments in a ponderosa pine forest. Our objective was to determine if the post-treatment community was a diverse, abundant, and persistent assemblage of native species or if ecological restoration treatments resulted in nonnative species invasion. This project was initiated at the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, Arizona, USA in 1997. We established four replicated blocks that spanned a gradient of soil types. Each block contained a control and a treated unit. Treated units were thinned to emulate pre-1870 forest stand conditions and prescribed-burned to reintroduce fire to a system that has not burned since ∼1870. We measured plant cover using the point-line intercept method and recorded species richness and composition on 0.05 ha belt transects. We examined the magnitude of treatment responses using Cohen's d effect size analysis. Changes in community composition were analyzed using nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMS). Native plant species cover and richness increased in the thinned and burned areas compared to the controls. By the last year of the study, annual species comprised nearly 60% of the understory cover in the treatment units. Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), a nonnative annual grass, spread into large areas of the treated units and became the dominant understory species on the study site. The ecological restoration treatments did promote a more diverse and abundant understory community in ponderosa pine forests. The disturbances generated by such treatments also promoted an invasion by an undesirable nonnative species. Our results demonstrate the need to minimize disturbances generated by restoration treatments and argue for the need to proactively facilitate the recovery of native species after treatment.  相似文献   

17.
To study how fire or herbicide use influences longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) overstory and understory vegetation, five treatments were initiated in a 5–6-year-old longleaf pine stand: check, biennial arborescent plant control by directed herbicide application, and biennial burning in March, May, or July. The herbicide or prescribed fire treatments were applied in 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005. All prescribed fires were intense and averaged 700 kJ/s/m of fire front across all 12 burns. Using pretreatment variables as covariates, longleaf pine survival and volume per hectare were significantly less on the three prescribed fire treatments than on checks. Least-square means in 2006 for survival were 70, 65, 64, 58, and 56% and volume per hectare was 129, 125, 65, 84, and 80 m3/ha on the check, herbicide, March-, May-, and July-burn treatments, respectively. A wildfire in March 2007 disproportionately killed pine trees on the study plots. In October 2007, pine volume per hectare was 85, 111, 68, 98, and 93 m3/ha and survival was 32, 41, 53, 57, and 55% on the check, herbicide, March-, May-, and July-burn treatments, respectively, after dropping trees that died through January 2009 from the database. Understory plant cover was also affected by treatment and the ensuing wildfire. In September 2006, herbaceous plant cover averaged 4% on the two unburned treatments and 42% on the three prescribed fire treatments. Seven months after the wildfire, herbaceous plant cover averaged 42% on the two previously unburned treatments and 50% on the three prescribed fire treatments. Before the wildfire, understory tree cover was significantly greater on checks (15%) than on the other four treatments (1.3%), but understory tree cover was similar across all five treatments 7 months after the wildfire averaging 1.1%. The greater apparent intensity of the wildfire on the previously unburned treatments most likely resulted from a greater accumulation of fuels on the check and herbicide plots that also collectively had a higher caloric content than fuels on the biennially prescribed burned plots. These results showed the destructive force of wildfire to overstory trees in unburned longleaf pine stands while also demonstrating the rejuvenating effects of wildfire within herbaceous plant communities. They caution for careful reintroduction of prescribed fire even if fire was excluded for less than a decade.  相似文献   

18.
Maintaining understory plant species diversity is an important management goal as forest restoration and fuel reduction treatments are applied extensively to dry coniferous forests of western North America. However, understory diversity is a function of both local species richness (number of species in a sample unit) and community heterogeneity (beta diversity) at multiple spatial scales, while studies of restoration treatment effects often only examine local species richness at one or two spatial scales. We studied experimental thinning and prescribed fire treatment effects on understory plant species richness and community heterogeneity at three spatial scales using additive diversity partitioning. We also evaluated treatment effects on understory plant species colonization and extirpation at two spatial scales. There was no evidence that active restoration treatments reduced species richness or increased local extirpation of species. Restoration treatments significantly increased herbaceous species richness at the treatment-unit level primarily by increasing community heterogeneity among sampling points within the units. The combination of thinning and burning produced the greatest increase in community heterogeneity, and increased colonization by species that were not sampled prior to treatment. These results suggest that restoration treatments designed primarily to reduce fire hazard and promote sustainable conditions in these fire-adapted ecosystems can also increase community heterogeneity and facilitate colonization by new understory species without significant local extirpation of extant species.  相似文献   

19.
Wildfires burned over 200,000 ha of forest lands in Florida from April to July 1998. This unique disturbance event provided a valuable opportunity to study the interactions of summer wildfires with the activity of pine feeding insects and their associates in the southeastern United States. We compared tree mortality with abundance of bark and ambrosia beetles, reproduction weevils and wood borers relative to fire severity. Over 27% of residual live trees in stands that experienced high fire severity died between October 1998 and May 1999. An additional 2–3% of trees that initially survived the fire died during the second year compared to <1% mortality in unburned stands. One year after the fire, more than 75% of the trees surviving in high fire severity stands had roots infected with one or more species of Leptographium and/or Graphium spp. and nearly 60% of the sampled roots were infected. No such fungi were recovered from roots of trees in unburned stands. Significantly, more root weevils, Hylobius pales and Pachylobius picovorus, were captured in unbaited pitfalls in the moderate and high fire severity stands than in the controls. Mean trap catches of Ips grandicollis, Dendroctonus terebrans and Hylastes salebrosus, three common bark beetles that feed on phloem tissue of pines, were lower in Lindgren traps in the fire-damaged areas than in the control stands. In contrast, catches of the ambrosia beetles, Xyleborus spp. and Monarthrum mali, were higher in burned stands than in control stands. The generalist predator, Temnochila virescens (Coleoptera: Trogositidae), showed a strong positive relationship between abundance and fire severity, while the flat bark beetle, Silvanus sp. (Coleoptera: Sylvanidae), exhibited the reverse trend. Our results show that most tree mortality occurred within 1 year of the fire. Ips or Dendroctonus bark beetle populations did not build up in dead and weakened trees and attack healthy trees in nearby areas. The prevalence of Leptographium spp. in roots may be a symptom of, or result in, weakened trees that may affect the trees’ susceptibility to bark beetles in the future.  相似文献   

20.
Wildfire severity and subsequent ecological effects may be influenced by prior land management, via modification of forest structure and lingering changes in fuels. In 2002, the Hayman wildfire burned as a low to moderate-severity surface fire through a 21-year pine regeneration experiment with two overstory harvest cuttings (shelterwood, seed-tree) and two site preparations (scarified, unscarified) that had been applied in a mature ponderosa pine forest in the montane zone of the Colorado Front Range in 1981. We used this event to examine how pre-fire fine fuels, surface-level burn severity and post-fire soil nitrogen-availability varied with pre-fire silvicultural treatments. Prior to the wildfire, litter cover was higher under both shelterwood and unscarified treatments than seed-tree and scarified treatments. Immediately after the fire in 2002, we assessed burn severity under 346 mature trees, around 502 planted saplings, and in 448 4 m2 microplots nested within the original experimental treatments. In one-fourth of the microplots, we measured resin-bound soil nitrate and ammonium accumulated over the second and third post-fire growing season. Microplots burned less severely than bases of trees and saplings with only 6.8% of microplot area burned down to mineral soil as compared to >28% of tree and sapling bases. Sapling burn severity was highest in unscarified treatments but did not differ by overstory harvest. Microplot burn severity was higher under the densest overstory (shelterwood) and in unscarified treatments and was positively related to pre-fire litter/duff cover and negatively associated with pre-fire total plant cover, grass cover and distance to tree. In both years, resin-bound nitrate and ammonium (NH4+-N) increased weakly with burn severity and NH4+-N availability was higher in unscarified than scarified plots. The lasting effects of soil scarification and overstory harvest regime on modern patterns of surface burn severity after two decades underscores the importance of historic landuse and silviculture on fire behavior and ecological response. Unraveling causes of these patterns in burn severity may lead to more sustainable fire and forest management in ponderosa pine ecosystems.  相似文献   

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