RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Interactions between large high-severity fires and salvage logging on a short return interval reduce the regrowth of fire-prone serotinous forests
A1 Taboada Palomares, Ángela
A1 Fernández García, Víctor
A1 Marcos Porras, Elena María
A1 Calvo Galván, María Leonor
A2 Ecologia
K1 Ecología. Medio ambiente
K1 Disturbance interactions
K1 Disturbance legacies
K1 Ecosystem regeneration
K1 Fire recurrence
K1 Maritime pine
K1 Post-fire restoration
AB New fire disturbance regimes under accelerating global environmental change can have unprecedented consequences for ecosystem resilience, lessening ecosystem natural regeneration. In the Mediterranean Basin, fire-dependent obligate seeder forests that are prone to increasingly frequent stand-replacing fires and then salvaged logged repeatedly can be vulnerable to additional disturbances for decades. In this study, we investigated, for the first time, the cumulative and interactive effects of two large high-severity fires at a short (<15-year) return interval and the subsequent burned timber harvesting with biomass removal on the post-disturbance recovery of such forests. We further assessed the type and amount of the material legacies (deadwood) that persisted through the different post-disturbance successional trajectories, as well as the influence of these legacies on forest regeneration. The early recovery of the studied forests after two consecutive large fires and post-fire logging was, in the first place, driven by fire repetition, which led to reduced seedling recruitment and enhanced regrowth of resprouter shrubs. Despite no interactive effects between fire and logging were detected after a single large fire event, two repeated fires followed by salvage harvesting had a greater negative impact than two fires alone (synergistic effects) on seedling establishment; while a lower positive impact (subadditive effects) on the recovery of resprouter shrubs. There was also an interaction modification effect in which fire repetition worsened the per-unit impact of salvage logging on forest regeneration. Nonetheless, the residual legacies, i.e., fine and coarse woody debris (unburned needles, downed branches, pieces of deadwood, and burned pine cones) that remained after the manual harvesting of the burned trees, aided seedling re-establishment and hindered the regrowth of the shrubby understorey. These findings indicate that high-intensity salvage logging after two large high-severity fires at a short return interval is inadvisable in fire-prone serotinous pine forests, unless it explicitly retains the key material legacies that help tree natural regeneration and enhance ecosystem resilience to the next disturbance.
PB Elsevier
YR 2018
FD 2018-03-15
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10612/7480
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10612/7480
NO Forest ecology and management, 2018, vol. 414
NO P. 54-63
DS BULERIA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de León
RD 17-may-2024