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Post-Disturbance Plant Community Dynamics following a Rare Natural-Origin Fire in a Tsuga canadensis Forest

Opportunities to directly study infrequent forest disturbance events often lead to valuable information about vegetation dynamics. In mesic temperate forests of North America, stand-replacing crown fire occurs infrequently, with a return interval of 2000–3000 years. Rare chance events, however, may...

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Autores principales: Murray, Bryan D., Holmes, Stacie A., Webster, Christopher R., Witt, Jill C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3424231/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22928044
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043867
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author Murray, Bryan D.
Holmes, Stacie A.
Webster, Christopher R.
Witt, Jill C.
author_facet Murray, Bryan D.
Holmes, Stacie A.
Webster, Christopher R.
Witt, Jill C.
author_sort Murray, Bryan D.
collection PubMed
description Opportunities to directly study infrequent forest disturbance events often lead to valuable information about vegetation dynamics. In mesic temperate forests of North America, stand-replacing crown fire occurs infrequently, with a return interval of 2000–3000 years. Rare chance events, however, may have profound impacts on the developmental trajectories of forest ecosystems. For example, it has been postulated that stand-replacing fire may have been an important factor in the establishment of eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) stands in the northern Great Lakes region. Nevertheless, experimental evidence linking hemlock regeneration to non-anthropogenic fire is limited. To clarify this potential relationship, we monitored vegetation dynamics following a rare lightning-origin crown fire in a Wisconsin hemlock-hardwood forest. We also studied vegetation in bulldozer-created fire breaks and adjacent undisturbed forest. Our results indicate that hemlock establishment was rare in the burned area but moderately common in the scarified bulldozer lines compared to the reference area. Early-successional, non-arboreal species including Rubus spp., Vaccinium angustifolium, sedges (Carex spp.), grasses, Epilobium ciliatum, and Pteridium aquilinium were the most abundant post-fire species. Collectively, our results suggest that competing vegetation and moisture stress resulting from drought may reduce the efficacy of scarification treatments as well as the usefulness of fire for preparing a suitable seedbed for hemlock. The increasing prevalence of growing-season drought suggests that silvicultural strategies based on historic disturbance regimes may need to be reevaluated for mesic species.
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spelling pubmed-34242312012-08-27 Post-Disturbance Plant Community Dynamics following a Rare Natural-Origin Fire in a Tsuga canadensis Forest Murray, Bryan D. Holmes, Stacie A. Webster, Christopher R. Witt, Jill C. PLoS One Research Article Opportunities to directly study infrequent forest disturbance events often lead to valuable information about vegetation dynamics. In mesic temperate forests of North America, stand-replacing crown fire occurs infrequently, with a return interval of 2000–3000 years. Rare chance events, however, may have profound impacts on the developmental trajectories of forest ecosystems. For example, it has been postulated that stand-replacing fire may have been an important factor in the establishment of eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) stands in the northern Great Lakes region. Nevertheless, experimental evidence linking hemlock regeneration to non-anthropogenic fire is limited. To clarify this potential relationship, we monitored vegetation dynamics following a rare lightning-origin crown fire in a Wisconsin hemlock-hardwood forest. We also studied vegetation in bulldozer-created fire breaks and adjacent undisturbed forest. Our results indicate that hemlock establishment was rare in the burned area but moderately common in the scarified bulldozer lines compared to the reference area. Early-successional, non-arboreal species including Rubus spp., Vaccinium angustifolium, sedges (Carex spp.), grasses, Epilobium ciliatum, and Pteridium aquilinium were the most abundant post-fire species. Collectively, our results suggest that competing vegetation and moisture stress resulting from drought may reduce the efficacy of scarification treatments as well as the usefulness of fire for preparing a suitable seedbed for hemlock. The increasing prevalence of growing-season drought suggests that silvicultural strategies based on historic disturbance regimes may need to be reevaluated for mesic species. Public Library of Science 2012-08-21 /pmc/articles/PMC3424231/ /pubmed/22928044 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043867 Text en © 2012 Murray et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Murray, Bryan D.
Holmes, Stacie A.
Webster, Christopher R.
Witt, Jill C.
Post-Disturbance Plant Community Dynamics following a Rare Natural-Origin Fire in a Tsuga canadensis Forest
title Post-Disturbance Plant Community Dynamics following a Rare Natural-Origin Fire in a Tsuga canadensis Forest
title_full Post-Disturbance Plant Community Dynamics following a Rare Natural-Origin Fire in a Tsuga canadensis Forest
title_fullStr Post-Disturbance Plant Community Dynamics following a Rare Natural-Origin Fire in a Tsuga canadensis Forest
title_full_unstemmed Post-Disturbance Plant Community Dynamics following a Rare Natural-Origin Fire in a Tsuga canadensis Forest
title_short Post-Disturbance Plant Community Dynamics following a Rare Natural-Origin Fire in a Tsuga canadensis Forest
title_sort post-disturbance plant community dynamics following a rare natural-origin fire in a tsuga canadensis forest
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3424231/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22928044
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043867
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