Short‐Term Vegetation Recovery after a Grassland Fire in Lithuania: The Effects of Fire Severity, Slope Position and Aspect

Abstract

In Lithuania, fire is frequently used by farmers as a tool to remove dry grass, improve soil nutrient status and help soil tilling. However, little is known about the ecological impacts of these fires, including vegetation recovery. The objective of this work is to study the impacts of a spring grassland fire on vegetation recuperation on an east‐facing (A) and a west‐facing slope (B), considering fire severity and slope position, 10, 17, 31 and 46 days after the fire. Because of their effects on fire behaviour, aspect, steepness and heterogeneity of topography favoured higher fire severity on slope B than on slope A. Three different slope positions were identified on slope A – flat top, middle slope and flat bottom – and five on slope B – flat top, middle slope, flat middle slope, slope bottom slope and flat bottom. Fire severity was high in top slope positions. The recovery of vegetation was very fast. By the end of the study, vegetation covered nearly 100% of the study area, although fire severity, aspect and slope characteristics had implications on vegetation recovery. Plant cover recovered quickly on slope A. Ten and 17 days after the fire, plant cover was high in the bottom positions, where fire severity was relatively low. The major vegetation recuperation was observed between 17 and 31 days after the fire, in response to high rainfall. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Exacerbated grassland degradation and desertification in Central Asia during 2000–2014

“…It has attracted Manuscript received 6 February 2017; revised 11 September 2017; accepted 4 October 2017. The process of grassland degradation and desertification is complex in view of the diversity of factors influencing grassland degradation and desertification, including natural factors (e.g., climate, fire, and species invasion) and anthropogenic factors (e.g., overgrazing and reclamation; Gong et al 2015, Lin et al 2015, Hu et al 2016, Pereira et al 2016. 8 Corresponding author; e-mail: xiangming.xiao@ou.edu increasing attention on grassland degradation and desertification in Central Asia along with the enhanced warming and land cover and land use change due to human activities in the past several decades (Li et al 2013, Klein et al 2014, de Beurs et al 2015, Xi and Sokolik 2015.…”

Application of a new model using productivity coupled with hydrothermal factors (PCH) for evaluating net primary productivity of grassland in southern China

“…It is not only affected by climatic factors such as precipitation and temperature but also by the grassland vegetation's own inner physiological processes, fire severity, slope position and aspect, grazing, human activities, cutting frequency, and grassland ecotypes (Pereira et al, 2016;Shaw et al, 2016;Lu et al, 2015;Lin et al, 2015;Poeplau et al, 2016;Roosendaal et al, 2016).…”

Structural heterogeneity of vegetation fire ash

“…The material previously only referred to as black carbon (charcoal), described widely by Forbes, Raison, and Skjemstad () within the context of the global carbon budget, is now studied as pyrogenic carbon originating from burned vegetation (Santín et al, ). Bodí et al () defined wildland fire ash as ‘the particulate residue remaining, or deposited on the ground, from the burning of wildland fuels and consisting of mineral materials and charred organic components’ and generally referred as a black, gray, or white ash, subjected to the combustion completeness (Bodí et al, ; Pereira et al, ), This definition is particularly common among the land degradation scientific community (Thomaz, ). Therefore, the fire‐generated ash (viz., ash) generally consists of charred organic material, charcoal, and inorganic mineral of different shapes and sizes, wide ranging from fine‐size powder‐like to coarse‐sized grains (Lu et al, ).…”