Local forest structure variability increases resilience to wildfire in dry western U.S. coniferous forests

A ‘resilient’ forest endures disturbance and is likely to persist. Resilience to wildfire may arise from feedback between fire behaviour and forest structure in dry forest systems. Frequent fire creates fine‐scale variability in forest structure, which may then interrupt fuel continuity and prevent...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters Vol. 23; no. 3; pp. 483 - 494
Main Authors: Koontz, Michael J., North, Malcolm P., Werner, Chhaya M., Fick, Stephen E., Latimer, Andrew M., Swenson, Nathan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.03.2020
Subjects:
California
Coniferous forests
disturbance
Dry forests
Ecosystem
fire behavior
Fire prevention
fire severity
fire suppression
Fires
forest
Forest ecosystems
Forest management
forest structure
Forests
homogenization
mountains
overstory
Resilience
severity
Sierra Nevada
Terrestrial ecosystems
texture analysis
Tracheophyta
tree mortality
Trees
wildfire
Wildfires
California
Western states
forest structure
severity
disturbance
forest
wildfire
Sierra Nevada
resilience
texture analysis
ISSN:1461-023X, 1461-0248, 1461-0248
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A ‘resilient’ forest endures disturbance and is likely to persist. Resilience to wildfire may arise from feedback between fire behaviour and forest structure in dry forest systems. Frequent fire creates fine‐scale variability in forest structure, which may then interrupt fuel continuity and prevent future fires from killing overstorey trees. Testing the generality and scale of this phenomenon is challenging for vast, long‐lived forest ecosystems. We quantify forest structural variability and fire severity across >30 years and >1000 wildfires in California's Sierra Nevada. We find that greater variability in forest structure increases resilience by reducing rates of fire‐induced tree mortality and that the scale of this effect is local, manifesting at the smallest spatial extent of forest structure tested (90 × 90 m). Resilience of these forests is likely compromised by structural homogenisation from a century of fire suppression, but could be restored with management that increases forest structural variability. Structurally variable forests may be more likely to persist in the face of wildfire disturbance, but demonstrating this phenomenon at an ecosystem‐scale is challenging. We linked local forest structural heterogeneity to wildfire severity for over 1000 fires across a 34‐year period in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and found that greater heterogeneity strongly reduced the probability of complete tree mortality. The local‐scale effect of forest structure on fire effects feeds back to maintain landscape heterogeneity, promoting forest resilience on an ecosystem‐scale.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
content type line 23
ObjectType-Correspondence-1
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.13447