RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Resilience of Mediterranean communities to fire depends on burn severity and type of ecosystem
A1 Huerta del Gallego, Sara
A1 Marcos Porras, Elena María
A1 Fernández García, Víctor
A1 Calvo Galván, María Leonor
A2 Ecologia
K1 Ecología. Medio ambiente
K1 Ingeniería forestal
K1 Burn severity
K1 Mediterranean ecosystems
K1 Recovery
K1 Vegetation resilience
K1 Wildfires
K1 2417.13 Ecología Vegetal
K1 3106.99 Otras (Incendios forestales)
K1 3106.01 Conservación
K1 3106.06 Protección
AB [EN] Background: Burn severity plays an important role in shaping vegetation recovery in Mediterranean ecosystems. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the influence of burn severity on short-term vegetation resilience in different ecosystems. We selected the Cabrera wildfire (northwest Iberian Peninsula), which affected shrubland, heathland,broomland, and oak woodland ecosystems in 2017. Immediately after the fire, we established 249 field plots within the burned area, in which burn severity was quantified by the application of the Composite Burn Index, differentiating three burn severity categories: low, moderate, and high. Moreover, we fixed 136 plots in unburned areas at two differentmaturity stages: young (unburned for the last 10 years) and old (unburned for the last 20 years) vegetation. Two years after the wildfire, we evaluated the total percentage cover of vegetation in four vertical strata ranging from 0 to > 4 m, as well as the cover of each woody species and total herbaceous vegetation in the lowest stratum (0–0.5 m).Resilience of the 2017 burned areas was interpreted in terms of the difference in vegetation cover and species composition in relation to the two different maturity stages.Results: The results showed that the lowest stratum was the most resilient in the short term. In fact, all ecosystems presented high resilience of this stratum in low-severity areas. In shrublands and heathlands, this was mainly the consequence of the regeneration of herbaceous vegetation, as the dominant woody species did not fully recover in any of the burned situations (at least 21% and 11% less cover in shrubland and heathland burned plots compared to areas of young vegetation). Specifically, the resilience of this stratum was higher in broomlands and oak woodlands, mainly under moderate and high severities. In these ecosystems, woody dominant species recovered with respect to young vegetation at the 0–0.5-m level. Despite this, burn severity had a negative impact on the short-term resilience of the uppermost strata in broomlands and oak woodlands (cover values close to 0%).Conclusions: The effects of burn severity on short-term vegetation resilience differed among type of ecosystems and vertical strata, so these results may constitute a starting point for the evaluation of the influence of burn severity and vegetation composition and structure on ecosystem resilience
PB SpringerOpen
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10612/19742
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10612/19742
NO Huerta, S., Marcos, E., Fernández-García, V., & Calvo, L. (2022). Resilience of Mediterranean communities to fire depends on burn severity and type of ecosystem. Fire Ecology, 18, Article e28. https://doi.org/10.1186/S42408-022-00156-1
DS BULERIA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de León
RD 26-may-2024