Disease, fuels and potential fire behavior: Impacts of Sudden Oak Death in two coastal California forest types

Forrestel, Alison; Ramage, Benjamin S.; Moody, Tadashi; Moritz, Max A.; Stephens, Scott L.

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2015.03.024

Cited by 18 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…According to data from 1964 to 2012, PRNS experiences a Mediterranean‐type climate, with mild winters and cool summers (with most of the ~100 cm annual rainfall occurring in winter, and a substantial amount of moisture received from fog drip in the summers; Dawson , Forrestel et al. ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disturbance macroecology: a comparative study of community structure metrics in a high‐severity disturbance regime

et al. 2020

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2020.Disturbance macroecology: a comparative study of community structure metrics in a high-severity disturbance regime.Abstract. Macroecological studies have established widespread patterns of species diversity and abundance in ecosystems but have generally restricted their scope to relatively steady-state systems. As a result, how macroecological metrics are expected to scale in ecosystems that experience natural disturbance regimes is unknown. We examine macroecological patterns in a fire-dependent forest of Bishop pine (Pinus muricata). We target two different-aged stands in a stand-replacing fire regime: a mature stand with a diverse understory and with no history of major disturbance for at least 40 yr, and one disturbed by a stand-replacing fire 17 yr prior to measurement. We compare properties of these stands with macroecological predictions from the Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology (METE), an information entropy-based theory that has proven highly successful in predicting macroecological metrics in multiple ecosystems and taxa. Ecological patterns in the mature stand more closely match METE predictions than do data from the more recently disturbed, mid-seral stage stand. This suggests METE's predictions are more robust in latesuccessional, slowly changing, or steady-state systems than those in rapid flux with respect to species composition, abundances, and organisms' sizes. Our findings highlight the need for a macroecological theory that incorporates natural disturbance, perturbations, and ecological dynamics into its predictive capabilities, because most natural systems are not in a steady state.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disturbance macroecology: a comparative study of community structure metrics in a high‐severity disturbance regime

et al. 2020

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“…In the mixed-evergreen oak woodlands of the San Francisco Bay Area, there were 5.7 times as many dead coast live oak stems in areas of SOD-related mortality compared to intact stands, resulting in 1 h, 10 h, and 100 h fuel masses that were nearly doubled in these plots while 1000 h fuels were nearly 20 times that of intact forests (Shaw et al 2017). Douglas-fir-and redwood-dominated forests invaded by P. ramorum in Point Reyes National Seashore, just north of the San Francisco Bay area, had roughly 2.5 times the 1 h, 10 h, and 100 h fuels as healthy forests (Forrestel et al 2015). Fuels continued to increase over the four year period of the study, such that the depth of the fuel bed in diseased stands was four times as deep as in healthy stands (Forrestel et al 2015).…”

Section: Tree Mortality Increases Aerial Crown and Downed Dead Woody mentioning

confidence: 92%

Implications of sudden oak death for wildland fire management

Metz

Varner²,

Simler

et al. 2017

For Phytophthoras

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2017. Implications of sudden oak death for wildland fire management. Forest Phytophthoras 7(1):30-44. AbstractHuman activities and climate change have altered historical disturbance regimes, introduced disturbances, and encouraged novel interactions between multiple disturbances. Ecosystems and the species that comprise them may be poorly equipped to withstand or recover from these altered disturbance regimes. In the fire-prone coastal forests of California and Oregon, sudden oak death (SOD), caused by the pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, is an emerging, non-native plant disease that causes widespread tree mortality and associated implications for fire regimes. Disease-related tree mortality alters fuel loads, with patterns of fuel accumulation varying depending on stand composition, disease severity, and time since pathogen invasion. Simulations and observational studies suggest these altered fuel profiles can impact subsequent fire behavior, and the extent of this interaction may depend on the severity and timing of disease impacts. Initial tree death can elevate the risk of crown ignition, while latter stages can increase surface fuel loading and have been linked to increased fire severity in wildfires. Further, disease history can also influence fire severity with cascading effects leading to unexpected increases in mortality of nonsusceptible tree species and changes in nutrient cycling. The longer-term impacts of SOD-fire interactions on system resilience and recovery remain to be seen, but increased fire severity, changed stand structure, and altered biogeochemical cycling may have important consequences for post-fire regeneration and future ecosystem function. Fuels management strategies that diminish crown fire hazards at early stages and mitigate surface fuel hazards at later stages offer some promise, but have yet to be tested in large landscapes. Given SOD-wildfire interactions, further integration of disease-and fire-related management plans will be essential to minimizing impacts of these compounded disturbances.

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“…Field sites were chosen within the boundaries of Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS), on the Pacific coast of California, USA, ~50 km northwest of San Francisco. According to data from 1964-2012, PRNS experiences a Mediterranean-type climate, with mild winters (monthly lows of 2-4 o C and highs of 15-17 o C) and cool summers (monthly lows of 6-9 o C to highs of 18-24 o C) with most of the ~100 cm annual rainfall occurring in winter, and a substantial amount of moisture received from fog drip in the summers (Dawson 1998;Forrestel et al 2015).…”

Section: Site Descriptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disturbance macroecology: integrating disturbance ecology and macroecology with different-age post-fire stands of a closed-cone pine forest

Newman

Wilber

Kopper

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Macroecological studies have generally restricted their scope to relatively steady-state systems, and as a result, how biodiversity and abundance metrics are expected to scale in disturbancedependent ecosystems is unknown. We examine macroecological patterns in a fire-dependent forest of Bishop pine (Pinus muricata). We target two different-aged stands in a stand-replacing fire regime, one a characteristically mature stand with a diverse understory, and one more recently disturbed by a stand-replacing fire (17 years prior to measurement). We compare the stands using macroecological metrics of species richness, abundance and spatial distributions that are predicted by the Maximum Entropy Theory of Ecology (METE), an information-entropy based theory that has proven highly successful in predicting macroecological metrics across a wide variety of systems and taxa. Ecological patterns in the mature stand more closely match METE predictions than do data from the recently disturbed stand. This suggests METE's predictions are more robust in late-successional, slowly changing, or steady-state systems than those in rapid flux with respect to species composition, abundances, and organisms' sizes. Our findings highlight the need for a macroecological theory that incorporates natural disturbance and other ecological perturbations into its predictive capabilities, because most natural systems are not in a steady state.

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Disease, fuels and potential fire behavior: Impacts of Sudden Oak Death in two coastal California forest types

Cited by 18 publications

References 49 publications

Disturbance macroecology: a comparative study of community structure metrics in a high‐severity disturbance regime

Disturbance macroecology: a comparative study of community structure metrics in a high‐severity disturbance regime

Implications of sudden oak death for wildland fire management

Disturbance macroecology: integrating disturbance ecology and macroecology with different-age post-fire stands of a closed-cone pine forest

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