Short- and long-term effects of fire on the Collembola communities of a sub-alpine dwarf pine ecosystem in the Austrian Alps

Abstract

We compared the Collembola communities of three sub-alpine sites in the Limestone Alps to evaluate the short-and long-term effects of natural forest fires. SITE 1 was burned in August 2003, SITE 2 was burned 50 years ago and sampled to assess the long-term effects of fire and the recovery of soil animals. A reference site (REF) was sampled to represent the undisturbed dwarf pine community. All sites are close to each other on a steep slope between 1 400 and 1 650 m above sea level. We found a total of 41 species of Collembola, as well as clear differences in the species composition and abundance between the sites. Most species (29) were found on the REF site. The highest abundance was found on SITE 1 (48 960 individuals*m -2 , 22 species). We assume that some species survived the fire in deeper soil layers and others migrated or were passively dispersed from unburned patches and surrounding sites. The lowest abundance and species number (8 160 individuals*m -2 , 18 species) were found on the 50-year-old site. This site was covered with a typical community for moving substratum, consisting mainly of alpine grasses, yet the dwarf pine vegetation had not yet recovered. The soil layer was still very thin and we therefore assume that a recovery of the Collembola community will take much longer than 50 years. 29R e search eco.m o n t -Vo l u m e 2 , N u m b e r 2 , D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 0 ISSN 2 0 7 3 -1 0 6 X p r i n t v e r s i o n ISSN 2 0 7 3 -1 5 5 8 o n l i n e v e r s i o n : h t t p : / / e p u b . o e a w. a c . a t / e c o . m o n t

Fire, humans and landscape in the European Alpine region during the Holocene

“…Average burnt area was around 45 ha, much larger than the average burnt area for the entire region, equal to 7.5 ha. (Delarze et al, 1992;Tinner et al, 2000;Beghin et al, 2010;Ascoli et al, 2013a;Vacchiano et al, 2014a) and invertebrate community (Moretti et al, 2004;Querner et al, 2010;Wohlgemuth et al, 2010). In some cases fire favours the maintenance of habitats suitable for endangered communities (Borghesio, 2009) or rare species (Moretti et al, 2006;Wohlgemuth et al, 2010;Lonati et al, 2013).…”

Soil Functional Responses to Natural Ecosystem Restoration of a Pine Forest Peucedano-Pinetum after a Fire

“…The impact of a fire is manifold, being dependent on, among others: its intensity, the time of the year that it occurs, and the incidence rate/frequency [7,8]. The fire itself is controlled by many factors, such as the type and moisture content of the fuel, the temperature and humidity of the air, wind speed and the topography of the terrain [9].…”

High spatial turnover in springtails of the Cape Floristic Region

“…Owing to the range of collection methods used to sample Collembola, a quantitative comparison of sampling effort and completeness was not possible. Therefore, only studies where multiple samples were taken (minimum = 22 samples—Convey, Greenslade, Arnold, & Block, ), or a large number of individuals collected (minimum = 2,505—Querner, Bruckner, Weigand, & Prötsch, ) were included. We assumed, therefore, that species richness estimates were unlikely to be substantially inaccurate and that any noise introduced by this approach was also unlikely to be biased in any way.…”