Higher fire frequency impaired woody species regeneration in a south-eastern Amazonian forest

Autor: Rafael Barreto de Andrade, José Marcelo Domingues Torezan, Jennifer K. Balch, Roberta Thays dos Santos Cury, Paulo M. Brando, Renata Picolo Scervino
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Tropical Ecology. 36:190-198
ISSN: 1469-7831
0266-4674
DOI: 10.1017/s0266467420000176
Popis: Understorey wildfires harm tropical forests by affecting natural regeneration, but the trajectories of fire-disturbed forests after disturbance are poorly understood. To fill this gap, we conducted experimental burns in a transitional forest between the Amazon forests and the Brazilian Savanna (Cerrado) and investigated their effects on plant community diversity of regeneration. The experiment consisted of three 50-ha plots that between 2004 and 2010 were burned either annually (six times), every three years (thrice) or not at all (Control). To evaluate early post-fire recovery, we recorded grass occurrence and regenerating stems (≤1 cm in diameter at breast height). We noted that high fire-frequency plots had a reduction of species richness (62%) and abundance (84%) and were associated with floristic and structural changes, dominance of few species and increase of grass colonization when compared with low fire-frequency. We observed that resprouts were the main pathway for forest restoration in both burned regimes, particularly in low fire-frequency. However, the forest can recover from fires by means of resprouting, until a threshold in fire frequency is reached, when resprouts and seedlings declined for most of the species, with a few fire-tolerant species becoming dominant.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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