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opencc-zeroApr 2022View details →

Data from: Irregular forest structures originating after fire: an opportunity to promote alternatives to even-aged management in boreal forests

1. Even-aged silviculture based on short-rotation clearcuts had severely altered boreal forests. Silvicultural alternatives (e.g., continuous cover or retention forestry) has the potential to restore and protect the habitats and functions of boreal forests. These alternatives are however often restricted to structurally complex old-growth forest, which are particularly threatened by anthropogenic disturbances. Increasing the use of alternatives to even-aged silviculture in early-successional stands could help recruit more structurally complex forests, with characteristics closer to the old-growth. In this article, we therefore evaluate the potential for silvicultural alternatives to even-aged management in boreal forests that burned less than a century ago. 2. We analyzed 1085 field plots in a 243000 km2 area situated in the boreal forest of eastern Canada. These plots burned 30 to 100 years before the survey and had not been subjected to previous or subsequent anthropogenic disturbance; they hence represent young primary forests. The main patterns of tree diameter distribution variation within the plots were identified using k-means clustering. Stand structure, tree species composition, and environmental variables that most explained the differences among the clusters were identified with a random forest model, and then compared using Kruskal-Wallis and Fisher's exact tests. 3. The majority (>75 %) of the plots presented an irregular structure of stem diameters (i.e., non-normally distributed, with many small diameter trees). The understorey was generally dominated by black spruce (Picea mariana [Mill.] BSP), a shade-tolerant species. Irregular structures were observed in both forests of high and low productivity, implying that different processes (e.g., early regeneration, variable tree growth) can lead to observed early irregular structure. Regular structures were generally characterized by a higher productivity and abundance in hardwood species compared to the irregular structures. 4. Synthesis and application: Many boreal forests of eastern Canada progress towards an irregular structure in the decades following the last stand-replacing fire. A substantial part of these early-successional forests may be suitable for alternatives to even-aged silviculture that better maintains habitats and functions of preindustrial boreal forests.

opennotspecifiedJul 2016View details →

On following pages: 265. Small Sun Squirrel (Heliosciurus punctatus); 266. Ruwenzori Sun Squirrel (Heliosciurus 269. Forest Giant Squirrel (Protoxerus stangeri); 270. Slender-tailed Squirrel (Protoxerus aubinnii); 271. Western Palm (Funisciurus substriatus); 274. Red-cheeked Rope Squirrel (Funisciurus leucogenys); 275. Thomas's Rope Squirrel ruwenzoril); 267. Zanj Sun Squirrel (Heliosciurus undulatus); 268. Mutable Sun Squirrel (Heliosciurus mutabilis), Squirrel (Epixerus ebii); 272. Fire-footed Rope Squirrel (Funisciurus pyrropus); 273. Kintampo Rope Squirrel (Funisciurus anerythrus); 276. Lady Burton's Rope Squirrel (Funisciurus isabella). in Sciuridae

On following pages: 265. Small Sun Squirrel (Heliosciurus punctatus); 266. Ruwenzori Sun Squirrel (Heliosciurus 269. Forest Giant Squirrel (Protoxerus stangeri); 270. Slender-tailed Squirrel (Protoxerus aubinnii); 271. Western Palm (Funisciurus substriatus); 274. Red-cheeked Rope Squirrel (Funisciurus leucogenys); 275. Thomas's Rope Squirrel ruwenzoril); 267. Zanj Sun Squirrel (Heliosciurus undulatus); 268. Mutable Sun Squirrel (Heliosciurus mutabilis), Squirrel (Epixerus ebii); 272. Fire-footed Rope Squirrel (Funisciurus pyrropus); 273. Kintampo Rope Squirrel (Funisciurus anerythrus); 276. Lady Burton's Rope Squirrel (Funisciurus isabella).

opencc-by-4.0Jul 2024View details →

Data used in "Fire Weather Compromises Forestation-reliant Climate Mitigation Pathways" (Jaeger et al. 2024a)

Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

Data from: Severe fire weather and intensive forest management increase fire severity in a multi-ownership landscape

Many studies have examined how fuels, topography, climate, and fire weather influence fire severity. Less is known about how different forest management practices influence fire severity in multi-owner landscapes, despite costly and controversial suppression of wildfires that do not acknowledge ownership boundaries. In 2013, the Douglas Complex burned over 19,000 ha of Oregon & California Railroad (O&C) lands in Southwestern Oregon, USA. O&C lands are comprised of a checkerboard of private industrial and federal forestland (Bureau of Land Management, BLM) with contrasting management objectives, providing a unique experimental landscape to understand how different management practices influence wildfire severity. Leveraging Landsat based estimates of fire severity (Relative differenced Normalized Burn Ratio, RdNBR) and geospatial data on fire progression, weather, topography, pre-fire forest conditions, and land ownership, we asked 1) what is the relative importance of different variables driving fire severity, and 2) is intensive plantation forestry associated with higher fire severity? Using Random Forest ensemble machine learning, we found daily fire weather was the most important predictor of fire severity, followed by stand age and ownership, followed by topographic features. Estimates of pre-fire forest biomass were not an important predictor of fire severity. Adjusting for all other predictor variables in a general least squares model incorporating spatial autocorrelation, mean predicted RdNBR was higher on private industrial forests (RdNBR 521.85 ± 18.67 SE) versus BLM forests (398.87 ± 18.23 SE) with a much greater proportion of older forests. Our findings suggest intensive plantation forestry characterized by young forests and spatially homogenized fuels, rather than pre-fire biomass, were significant drivers of wildfire severity. This has implications for perceptions of wildfire risk, shared fire management responsibilities, and developing fire resilience for multiple objectives in multi-owner landscapes.

opencc-zeroJun 2021View details →

Data and R code from: Fire-induced loss of the world's most biodiverse forests in Latin America

Fire plays a dominant role in deforestation, particularly in the tropics, but the relative extent of transformations and influence of fire frequency on eventual forest loss remain unclear. Here we analyze the frequency of fire and its influence on post-fire forest trajectories between 2001-2018. We account for ~1.1% of Latin American forests burnt in 2002-2003 (8,465,850 ha). Although 40.1% of forests (3,393,250 ha) burned only once, by 2018~48% of the evergreen forests converted to other, primarily grass-dominated uses. While greater fire frequency yielded more transformation, our results reveal the staggering impact of even a single fire. Increasing fire frequency imposes greater risks of irreversible forest loss, transforming forests into ecosystems increasingly vulnerable to disturbance and degradation. Reversing this trend is indispensable to both mitigate and adapt to climate change globally. As climate change transforms fire regimes across the region, key actions are needed to conserve Latin American forests.

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: Regional variation in interior Alaskan boreal forests is driven by fire disturbance, topography, and climate

High latitude regions are warming rapidly with important ecological and societal consequences. Utilizing two landscape-scale datasets from interior Alaska, we compared patterns in forest structure in two regions with sharply differing fire disturbance, topography, and climate. Our goal was to evaluate a set of hypotheses concerning possible warming-driven changes in forest structure suggested by recent literature. We found essentially consistent habitat associations for the tree flora across two disparate study areas concomitant with considerable differences in observed patterns of forest structure and composition. Our results confirmed expected increases in broadleaved species occupancy and abundance in the warmer, more fire-affected study region along with considerably higher tree occupancy and abundance in high elevation areas there. However, contrary to our predictions, we found no evidence of expected reductions in conifer occupancy or increases in non-fire related tree mortality. Instead, both individual and combined tree species occupancy, density, abundance, and richness were considerably higher in the warmer, more fire-influenced region, except in the warmest, driest areas (steep and south-facing slopes at low elevation). Our comparison of two landscape-scale datasets suggests that changes in tree distribution and forest structure in interior Alaska will proceed unevenly, governed by a mosaic of site-dependent influences wherein forest community composition and species dominance will shift along different trajectories and at different rates according to variation in underlying landscape attributes. Although there were clear differences in forest structure between the two areas that were likely attributable to differences in growing season warmth and fire disturbance, we found scant support for the concept of an incipient, ongoing biome shift in interior Alaska resulting from impending diminution of boreal forest cover over the short to medium term. Indeed, we suggest that (depending on severity of disturbance dynamics and the rapidity of future warming) cooler areas of interior Alaska's forest may reasonably be expected to sustain marginal increases in forest cover with additional warming, at least in certain topographic positions (such as poorly drained basins and cool treeline sites) and/or geographic regions, prior to any landscape-scale diminution of forest cover due to warming.

opencc-by-4.0Aug 2021View details →

FTICR-MS Dataset for 'Playing with FiRE: A genome resolved view of the soil microbiome responses to high severity forest wildfire'

This dataset is the raw data for FTICR-MS used in Nelson et al.: 'Playing with FiRE: A genome resolved view of the soil microbiome responses to high severity forest wildfire'. The files correspond to the raw spectral files for each sample and can be opened with Bruker data analysis software. The numbers correspond to sample number (See Supplementary Data 1 in publication for sample metadata) and the r1 and r2 identifiers indicate if there were replicates of that sample.

opencc-zeroAug 2021View details →

Supplementary data: What drives grassland-forest boundaries? Assessing fire and frost effects on tree seedling survival and architecture

<ol> <li>Fire and frost represent two major hurdles for the persistence of trees in open grassy biomes and have both been proposed as drivers of grassland-forest boundaries in Africa.</li> <li>We assess the response of young tree seedlings, which represent a vulnerable stage in tree recruitment, to traumatic fire and frost disturbances.</li> <li>In a greenhouse experiment, we investigated how seedling traits predicted survival and resprouting ability in response to fire vs frost; we characterised survival strategies of seedlings in response to the two disturbances, and we documented how the architecture of surviving seedlings is affected by fire vs frost injury.</li> <li>Survival rates were similar under both treatments. However, different species displayed different levels of sensitivity to fire and frost. Seedling survival was higher for older seedlings and seedlings with more basal leaves. Survivors of a fire event lost more biomass than the survivors of a frost event. However, the architecture of recovered fire and frost treated seedlings were mostly similar. Seedlings that recovered from fire and frost treatments were often shorter than those that had not been exposed to any disturbance, with multiple thin branches, which may increase vulnerability to the next frost or fire event.</li> <li> Synthesis. Fire caused more severe aboveground damage compared to a single frost event, suggesting that fire is an important driver of tree distribution in these open grassland systems. However, the impact of repeated frost events may be equally severe, and needs to be investigated. Also, woody species composition may be influenced by phenomena that affect the timing and frequency of seedling exposure to damage, as mortality was found to be dependent on seedling age. Therefore, changes in fire regime and climate (esp. changes that bring about less frost and reduced fire intensity and frequency) are likely to result in changes in the composition and the structure of the woody components of these systems.</li> </ol>

opencc-zeroMar 2022View details →

Fire alters diversity, composition and structure of dry tropical forests in the Eastern Ghats

Fire is known to have dramatic consequences on forest ecosystems around the world, and on the livelihoods of forest-dependent people. While the Eastern Ghats of India have high abundances of fire-prone dry tropical forests, little is known about how fire influences the diversity, composition and structure of these communities. Our study aims to fill this knowledge gap by examining the effects of presence and absence of recent fire on tropical dry forest communities within Kadiri watershed, Eastern Ghats. We sampled plots with and without evidence of recent fire in the Eswaramala Reserve Forest in 2008 and 2018. Our results indicate that even though stem density increases in the recently burned areas, species richness is lower because communities become dominated by a few species with fire resistance and tolerance traits, such as thick bark and clonal sprouting. Further, in the presence of fire, the size structure of these fire-tolerant species shifts towards smaller-sized, resprouting individuals. Our results demonstrate that conservation actions are needed to prevent further degradation of forests in this region and the ecosystem services they provide.

opencc-zeroOct 2021View details →

The trajectories of vegetative structure and soil microbial function diverged across a fire chronosequence of the boreal forests in Northeast China

The role of boreal forest to ameliorate the effect of global climate change largely depends on the regeneration of postfire forests in northeast China. The postfire recovery of boreal forest can be evaluated by the aboveground vegetative structure and soil microbial function. In present study, a 50-year fire chronosequence was established, and the biomass of forbs, shrub and woody plant was separately weighted to assess their contribution to the whole community with the year since fire (YSF). Simultaneously, soil biophysical properties were measured for stands in different time period after fire. Soil microbial functions, i.e., growth efficiency (GE) and carbon use efficiency (CUE), were calculated basing on ecoenzymatic and soil nutrient stoichiometry. In terms of vegetative structure, forbs' proportion decreased from 75% to 1.5%, but the proportion of woody plant increased from 0.04% to 70% across this fire chronosequence. In contrast, soil microbial function reached the highest value in 15 YSF and then began to decrease. As an important variable, soil metal content, particularly the calcium content, showed a positive correlation with woody plant biomass and a negative with soil microbial function. Furthermore, soil metal content was significantly increased in the late stage of this fire chronosequence. Overall, the present work highlighted that the time period of 15 YSF and 31 YSF was a hallmark stage for aboveground vegetative structure and soil microbial function to change in different trends, and the calcium content may partly account for these two divergent trajectories.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2023View details →

Climate data, burned areas and active fires predited in Guinea-Savannah and Forest-savannah mosaic zones in Ghana

Climate data, burned areas and active fires predited in Guinea-Savannah zone and Forest-savannah mosaic zone in Ghana

Fig. 5 in Effects of fire on small mammal communities in frequent-fire forests in California

Fig. 5.—Nonparametric multiplicative regression response curves (estimated by kernel functions) for the best model (highest cross-validated xR2) for describing Glaucomys sabrinus abundance given the habitat characteristics at 20 trapping sites in Yosemite National Park, California (2004–2005). The best model included a combination of fire severity (index), shrub species understory cover (%), and oak tree overstory cover (%). The values on the graph are not intended to suggest definitive thresholds or maximum values for any of the habitat variables (see "Materials and Methods").

Fig. 3.—Nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination for the 4 in Effects of fire on small mammal communities in frequent-fire forests in California

Fig. 3.—Nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination for the 4 habitat variables (overstory cover, oak tree cover, shrub cover, and fire severity index) and elevation and the 11 most commonly captured mammal species in 10 burned and 10 unburned sites from April to July 2004 and 2005 in Yosemite National Park, California. Only variables with a r ≥ 0.7 or the environmental variable with the highest r for that axis (i.e., fire severity r = −0.41 and oak tree cover r = 0.51) are listed on each axis. The R2 was 0.09 and 0.77 for axis 1 and 2, respectively, for a cumulative total of 0.86. The mammal species codes represent the following: CALA, Callospermophilus lateralis; GLSA, Glaucomys sabrinus (r = 0.73 on axis 1); MIXX, Microtus sp.; NEQU, Neotamias quadrimaculatus (r = −0.71 on axis 2); NESP, N. speciosus (r = −0.67 on axis 1); OTBE, Otospermophilus beecheyi; PEBO, Peromyscus boylii; PEMA; P. maniculatus (r = −0.88 on axis 2); SCGR, Sciurus griseus (r = 0.68 on axis 1); SOXX, Sorex sp.; TADO, Tamiasciurus douglasii.

Fig. 4 in Effects of fire on small mammal communities in frequent-fire forests in California

Fig. 4.—Nonparametric multiplicative regression response curves (estimated by kernel functions) for the best model (highest cross-validated xR2) describing Neotamias quadrimaculatus abundance given the habitat characteristics at 20 trapping sites in Yosemite National Park, California (2004–2005). The best model was the full model. The values on the graph are not intended to suggest definitive thresholds or maximum values for any of the habitat variables (see "Materials and Methods").

Fig. 2 in Effects of fire on small mammal communities in frequent-fire forests in California

Fig. 2.—Nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination results for overstory cover (%), oak tree cover (%), and shrub cover (%) at 10 burned and 10 unburned small mammal trapping sites in Yosemite National Park, California, 2004 and 2005. Only the variables with a Pearson correlation coefficient (r) ≥ 0.7 are listed on each axis with overstory canopy and oak tree cover on axis 1 (r = −0.90 and 0.82, respectively) and shrub cover (r = 0.85) on axis 2. The R2 was 0.58 and 0.38 for axis 1 and 2, respectively, for a cumulative total of 0.96.

Fig. 6 in Effects of fire on small mammal communities in frequent-fire forests in California

Fig. 6.—Nonparametric multiplicative regression response curves (estimated by kernel functions) for the best model (highest crossvalidated xR2) describing Neotamias speciosus abundance given the habitat characteristics at 20 trapping sites in Yosemite National Park, California (2004–2005). The best model included a combination of fire severity (index) and elevation (m). The values on the graph are not intended to suggest definitive thresholds or maximum values for any of the habitat variables (see "Materials and Methods").

Fig. 1 in Effects of fire on small mammal communities in frequent-fire forests in California

Fig. 1.—Locations of 10 burned and 10 unburned small mammal trapping sites (April to July, 2004 and 2005) in Yosemite National Park, California. Burned trapping areas were completely within the boundary of either wildfire or prescribed fire between 1990 and 2004.

opencc-zeroDec 2022View details →

Fish on fire: Shifts in Amazonian fish communities after floodplain forest fires

<ol> <li>Severe droughts can lead to fires that cause massive tree mortality in even the wettest and most isolated Amazonian forests. After repeated fires, blackwater floodplain forests can remain in an open vegetation state of arrested succession that facilitates a transition towards a white-sand "savanna-like" vegetation. These vegetation shifts from closed-canopy floodplain forests to open fire scars, and eventually white-sand savannas, may have profound implications for fish communities that depend on floodplain forests for food and recruitment. In turn, changes in fish communities may contribute to the arrested forest recovery after fires as fish are important seed dispersal agents for many floodplain tree species.</li> <li>To explore the impacts of floodplain forest fires on fish communities, we sampled fish in unburnt forests, fire scars, and white-sand savannas in the middle Rio Negro basin (Brazil) during two consecutive flooding seasons. We compared the abundance, species richness, and the taxonomic and trophic composition of fish assemblages across the three habitat types. </li> <li>We found significant shifts in fish assemblages in fire scars compared to unburnt floodplain forests. Also, as fire scars increased in size, total fish biomass decreased strongly. Fish communities in unburnt floodplain forests seem to be characterized by a higher proportion of smaller and omnivorous fish species than fish communities in burned floodplain forests and white sand savannas. Fish assemblages in fire scars and white-sand savanna were not significantly different.</li> <li> Synthesis and Applications. Amazonian fish communities change after floodplain forest fires. Unburnt forests have diverse fish communities, with a large proportion of unique and small omnivorous species. In contrast, carnivores and detritivores become more common in fire scars and white-sand savannas formed after forest fires. Less omnivore fish after forest fires can reduce tree seed dispersal and forest regeneration, affecting ecosystem functioning and the services provided by Amazonian forests. Fish are also a primary source of food and income for people living in Amazonian floodplains. Preventing forest fires is therefore of fundamental importance for the conservation of Amazonian aquatic and terrestrial ecological communities as well as for the livelihood of people. </li> </ol>

opencc-by-4.0May 2023View details →

Forest Types Show Divergent Biophysical Responses After Fire: Challenges to Ecological Modeling

Datasets and scripts (MATLAB and R) used to document patterns of post-fire biophysical dynamics in seven forest types and 21 Level III ecoregions of the western United States.