Mechanisms of Fire Seasonality Effects on Plant Populations

Miller, Russell G.; Tangney, Ryan; Enright, Neal J.; Fontaine, Joseph B.; Merritt, David J.; Ooi, Mark K. J.; Ruthrof, Katinka X.; Miller, Ben P.

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2019.07.009

Cited by 116 publications

(120 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Our results suggest potentially opposing implications of projected increases in the severity of fire weather under climate change (Clarke and Evans, 2019;Dowdy et al, 2019). In forests, increasing fire weather could lead to higher probability of large fires, although this does not factor in potential shifts in seasonality (Miller et al, 2019). In contrast, our results indicated that in grasslands, increased severity of fire weather could decrease the probability of large fires (potentially indirectly via reduced biomass), at least for areas experiencing extreme fire danger conditions for more than ∼5% of the fire season.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…in forests in the Australian Capital Territory, but that the same treatment rate would result in just a 20% decrease in burnt area for forests in the southeast of Tasmania. Further, there are limits to the risk reduction available through fuel management, due to cost and resource constraints, prevailing weather conditions, smoke effects on human health (e.g., Borchers Arriagada et al, 2019;Gazzard et al, 2019) and other factors such as potential negative impacts of unseasonal fire on plant populations via early or late season burning (Miller et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

et al. 2020

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Variations in global patterns of burning and fire regimes are relatively well measured, however, the degree of influence of the complex suite of biophysical and human drivers of fire remains controversial and incompletely understood. Such an understanding is required in order to support current fire management and to predict the future trajectory of global fire patterns in response to changes in these determinants. In this study we explore and compare the effects of four fundamental controls on fire, namely the production of biomass, its drying, the influence of weather on the spread of fire and sources of ignition. Our study area is southern Australia, where fire is currently limited by either fuel production or fuel dryness. As in most fire-prone environments, the majority of annual burned area is due to a relatively small number of large fires. We train and test an Artificial Neural Network's ability to predict spatial patterns in the probability of large fires (>1,250 ha) in forests and grasslands as a function of proxies of the four major controls on fire activity. Fuel load is represented by predicted forested biomass and remotely sensed grass biomass, drying is represented by fraction of the time monthly potential evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation, weather is represented by the frequency of severe fire weather conditions and ignitions are represented by the average annual density of reported ignitions. The response of fire to these drivers is often non-linear. Our results suggest that fuel management will have limited capacity to alter future fire occurrence unless it yields landscape-scale changes in fuel amount, and that shifts between, rather than within, vegetation community types may be more important. We also find that increased frequency of severe fire weather could increase the likelihood of large fires in forests but decrease it in grasslands. These results have the potential to support long-term strategic planning and risk assessment by fire management agencies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

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“…Future biodiversity studies could more explicitly examine the effects of fire across a broader range of biotic interactions and trophic levels. Further, there is a need to expand the focus from fire frequency and sometimes severity, to address how a broader range of fire regime attributes affect biodiversity (Miller et al., 2019).…”

Section: Effects Of Fire On Above‐ground Ecological Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People also exclude fires from fire‐adapted systems, with ecological consequences such as the disappearance of tropical and temperate savannas (Fill, Platt, Welch, Waldron, & Mousseau, 2015; Overbeck et al., 2015). Second, land use and ongoing climate change are altering characteristics of individual fires and changing fire regimes, in some cases pushing them outside the historical range of variability in terms of frequency, size, seasonality or severity (Abatzoglou & Williams, 2016; Balch et al., 2018; Kelly et al., 2013; Miller et al., 2019; Walker et al., 2018). Many recent fires have had negative consequences for natural ecosystems and humans (Balch et al., 2018; Stevens‐Rumann et al., 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers

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Fire is a powerful ecological and evolutionary force that regulates organismal traits, population sizes, species interactions, community composition, carbon and nutrient cycling and ecosystem function. It also presents a rapidly growing societal challenge, due to both increasingly destructive wildfires and fire exclusion in fire‐dependent ecosystems. As an ecological process, fire integrates complex feedbacks among biological, social and geophysical processes, requiring coordination across several fields and scales of study. Here, we describe the diversity of ways in which fire operates as a fundamental ecological and evolutionary process on Earth. We explore research priorities in six categories of fire ecology: (a) characteristics of fire regimes, (b) changing fire regimes, (c) fire effects on above‐ground ecology, (d) fire effects on below‐ground ecology, (e) fire behaviour and (f) fire ecology modelling. We identify three emergent themes: the need to study fire across temporal scales, to assess the mechanisms underlying a variety of ecological feedbacks involving fire and to improve representation of fire in a range of modelling contexts. Synthesis: As fire regimes and our relationships with fire continue to change, prioritizing these research areas will facilitate understanding of the ecological causes and consequences of future fires and rethinking fire management alternatives.

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“…The responses of plant species to fire may be impacted by changes in fire regimes, including changes in seasonality and severity (Miller et al, 2019). In this study we used experimental fires conducted under prescribed conditions to limit risk to adjacent bushland.…”

Section: Anigozanthos Manglesiimentioning

confidence: 99%

Seed traits determine species' responses to fire under varying soil heating scenarios

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Many plant species in fire‐prone environments maintain persistence through fire via soil seedbanks. However, seeds stored within the soil are at risk of mortality from elevated soil temperatures during fire. Seeds may be protected from fire‐temperature impacts by burial, however, those buried too deeply may germinate but fail to emerge. Thus, successful post‐fire seed regeneration is contingent upon a trade‐off between burial depth and survival through fire. We examined the relationships between seedling emergence behaviour, seed survival and soil temperatures during fire in 13 native and four non‐native woodland species in southwestern Australia. We assessed total seedling emergence per depth, maximum seedling emergence depth and seedling emergence speed from seeds planted at eight depths (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10 cm). Soil temperatures were quantified using distributed temperature sensing in optic fibre (DTS), measured continuously between 1 and 10 cm in depth (temperatures were subsequently categorized into 1 cm increments for analysis) during five experimental fires in beds with fine fuels manipulated between 8 and 20 t/ha. Using seed survival and emergence success relative to soil temperatures, we determined vulnerability of seedling emergence relative to soil temperatures generated by combustion of fuel quantities typically observed in woodlands. Maximum depth of emergence varied between species from 2 to >10 cm, with a positive linear correlation to seed mass. Maximum soil temperatures from the two highest fuel masses exceeded seed lethal thresholds (T50—representing temperatures lethal to 50% of seeds) of at least five species. Lethal temperatures were exceeded at all potential emergence depths for all three grass species, and all four non‐native species studied. Of the remaining 10 species, temperatures did not exceed the lethal thresholds under any of the fuel mass levels tested. We found no relationship between lethal temperature thresholds and maximum emergence depth. Our data demonstrate that seeds exhibit variation in their response to soil heating and capacity to emerge from depth, with three distinct functional responses amongst our study species, which enable persistence through, and recruitment following, fire. Such variation in species attributes and fuel mass may lead to heterogeneity (within fires) or divergent trajectories (among fires) in community response under changed fire regime. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

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Mechanisms of Fire Seasonality Effects on Plant Populations

Cited by 116 publications

References 91 publications

The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

The Proximal Drivers of Large Fires: A Pyrogeographic Study

Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers

Seed traits determine species' responses to fire under varying soil heating scenarios

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