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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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3424231 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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