Fire ecology
Fire ecology is a scientific discipline concerned with the effects of
Wildfire suppression campaigns in the United States have historically molded public opinion to believe that wildfires are harmful to nature. Ecological research has shown, however, that fire is an integral component in the function and biodiversity of many natural habitats, and that the organisms within these communities have adapted to withstand, and even to exploit, natural wildfire. More generally, fire is now regarded as a 'natural disturbance', similar to flooding, windstorms, and landslides, that has driven the evolution of species and controls the characteristics of ecosystems.[4]
Fire suppression, in combination with other human-caused environmental changes, may have resulted in
History
Fire has played a major role in shaping the world's vegetation. The biological process of photosynthesis began to concentrate the atmospheric oxygen needed for combustion during the Devonian approximately 350 million years ago. Then, approximately 125 million years ago, fire began to influence the habitat of land plants.
In the 20th century ecologist Charles Cooper made a plea for fire as an ecosystem process.
Fire components
A fire regime describes the characteristics of fire and how it interacts with a particular ecosystem.[7] Its "severity" is a term that ecologists use to refer to the impact that a fire has on an ecosystem. It is usually studied using tools such as remote sensing which can detect burned area estimates, severity and fire risk associated with an area.[8] Ecologists can define this in many ways, but one way is through an estimate of plant mortality.
Fires can burn at three elevation levels. Ground fires will burn through soil that is rich in organic matter. Surface fires will burn through living and dead plant material at ground level. Crown fires will burn through the tops of shrubs and trees. Ecosystems generally experience a mix of all three.[9]
Fires will often break out during a dry season, but in some areas wildfires also commonly occur during times of year when lightning is prevalent. The frequency over a span of years at which fire will occur at a particular location is a measure of how common wildfires are in a given ecosystem. It is either defined as the average interval between fires at a given site, or the average interval between fires in an equivalent specified area.[9]
Defined as the energy released per unit length of fireline (kW m−1), wildfire intensity can be estimated either as
- the product of
- the linear spread rate (m s−1),
- the low heat of combustion (kJ kg−1),
- and the combusted fuel mass per unit area,
- or it can be estimated from the flame length.[10]
Abiotic responses
Fires can affect soils through heating and combustion processes. Depending on the temperatures of the soils during the combustion process, different effects will happen- from evaporation of water at the lower temperature ranges, to the combustion of soil organic matter and the formation of pyrogenic organic matter, such as charcoal.[11]
Fires can cause changes in soil nutrients through a variety of mechanisms, which include oxidation, volatilization, erosion, and leaching by water, but the event must usually be of high temperatures for significant loss of nutrients to occur. However, the quantity of bioavailable nutrients in the soil usually increases due to the ash that is generated, as compared to the slow release of nutrients by decomposition.[12] Rock spalling (or thermal exfoliation) accelerates weathering of rock and potentially the release of some nutrients.
Increase in the pH of the soil following a fire is commonly observed, most likely due to the formation of calcium carbonate, and the subsequent decomposition of this calcium carbonate to calcium oxide when temperatures get even higher.[11] It could also be due to the increased cation content in the soil due to the ash, which temporarily increases soil pH. Microbial activity in the soil might also increase due to the heating of soil and increased nutrient content in the soil, though studies have also found complete loss of microbes on the top layer of soil after a fire.[12][13] Overall, soils become more basic (higher pH) following fires because of acid combustion. By driving novel chemical reactions at high temperatures, fire can even alter the texture and structure of soils by affecting the clay content and the soil's porosity.
Removal of vegetation following a fire can cause several effects on the soil, such as increasing the temperatures of the soil during the day due to increased solar radiation on the soil surface, and greater cooling due to loss of radiative heat at night. Less plant matter to intercept rain will allow more to reach the soil surface, and with fewer plants to absorb the water, the amount of water content in the soils might increase. However, ash can be water repellent when dry, and therefore water content and availability might not actually increase.[14]
Biotic responses and adaptations
Plants
Plants have evolved many adaptations to cope with fire. Of these adaptations, one of the best-known is likely pyriscence, where maturation and release of seeds is triggered, in whole or in part, by fire or smoke; this behaviour is often erroneously called serotiny, although this term truly denotes the much broader category of seed release activated by any stimulus. All pyriscent plants are serotinous, but not all serotinous plants are pyriscent (some are necriscent, hygriscent, xeriscent, soliscent, or some combination thereof). On the other hand, germination of seed activated by trigger is not to be confused with pyriscence; it is known as physiological dormancy.
In
Fire intolerance
Fire-intolerant plant species tend to be highly flammable and are destroyed completely by fire. Some of these plants and their seeds may simply fade from the community after a fire and not return; others have adapted to ensure that their offspring survives into the next generation. "Obligate seeders" are plants with large, fire-activated seed banks that germinate, grow, and mature rapidly following a fire, in order to reproduce and renew the seed bank before the next fire.[23][24] Seeds may contain the receptor protein KAI2, that is activated by the growth hormones karrikin released by the fire.[25]
Fire tolerance
Fire-tolerant species are able to withstand a degree of burning and continue growing despite damage from fire. These plants are sometimes referred to as "
Fire resistance
Fire-resistant plants suffer little damage during a characteristic fire regime. These include large trees whose flammable parts are high above surface fires. Mature
Animals, birds and microbes
Like plants, animals display a range of abilities to cope with fire, but they differ from most plants in that they must avoid the actual fire to survive. Although birds may be vulnerable when nesting, they are generally able to escape a fire; indeed they often profit from being able to take prey fleeing from a fire and to recolonize burned areas quickly afterwards. In fact, many wildlife species globally are dependent on recurring fires in fire-dependent ecosystems to create and maintain habitat.[27] Some anthropological and ethno-ornithological evidence suggests that certain species of fire-foraging raptors may engage in intentional fire propagation to flush out prey.[28][29] Mammals are often capable of fleeing a fire, or seeking cover if they can burrow. Amphibians and reptiles may avoid flames by burrowing into the ground or using the burrows of other animals. Amphibians in particular are able to take refuge in water or very wet mud.[23]
Some
Fire and ecological succession
Fire behavior is different in every ecosystem and the organisms in those ecosystems have adapted accordingly. One sweeping generality is that in all ecosystems, fire creates a mosaic of different
Different species of plants, animals, and microbes specialize in exploiting different stages in this process of succession, and by creating these different types of patches, fire allows a greater number of species to exist within a landscape. Soil characteristics will be a factor in determining the specific nature of a fire-adapted ecosystem, as will climate and topography. Different frequencies of fire also result in different successional pathways; short intervals between fires often eliminate tree species due to the time required to rebuild a seed bank, resulting in replacement by lighter seeded species like grasses and forbs. [38]
Examples of fire in different ecosystems
Forests
Mild to moderate fires burn in the
Forests in British Columbia
In Canada, forests cover about 10% of the land area and yet harbor 70% of the country’s bird and terrestrial mammal species. Natural fire regimes are important in maintaining a diverse assemblage of vertebrate species in up to twelve different forest types in British Columbia.[40] Different species have adapted to exploit the different stages of succession, regrowth and habitat change that occurs following an episode of burning, such as downed trees and debris. The characteristics of the initial fire, such as its size and intensity, cause the habitat to evolve differentially afterwards and influence how vertebrate species are able to use the burned areas.[40] The change in forest fire intensity over time has been studied for the period since 1600 in an area of central British Columbia and is consistent with fire suppression since regulation was introduced.[41]
Shrublands
California shrublands
California shrubland, commonly known as
South African Fynbos shrublands
Fynbos shrublands occur in a small belt across South Africa. The plant species in this ecosystem are highly diverse, yet the majority of these species are obligate seeders, that is, a fire will cause germination of the seeds and the plants will begin a new life-cycle because of it. These plants may have coevolved into obligate seeders as a response to fire and nutrient-poor soils.[43] Because fire is common in this ecosystem and the soil has limited nutrients, it is most efficient for plants to produce many seeds and then die in the next fire. Investing a lot of energy in roots to survive the next fire when those roots will be able to extract little extra benefit from the nutrient-poor soil would be less efficient. It is possible that the rapid generation time that these obligate seeders display has led to more rapid evolution and speciation in this ecosystem, resulting in its highly diverse plant community.[43]
Grasslands
North American grasslands
In North America fire-adapted invasive grasses such as Bromus tectorum contribute to increased fire frequency which exerts selective pressure against native species. This is a concern for grasslands in the Western United States.[45]
In less arid grassland presettlement fires worked in concert[46] with grazing to create a healthy grassland ecosystem[47] as indicated by the accumulation of soil organic matter significantly altered by fire.[48][49][50] The tallgrass prairie ecosystem in the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas and Oklahoma is responding positively to the current use of fire in combination with grazing.[51]
South African savanna
In the
Longleaf pine savannas
Much of the southeastern United States was once open
Fire in wetlands
Many kinds of wetlands are also influenced by fire. This usually occurs during periods of drought. In landscapes with peat soils, such as bogs, the peat substrate itself may burn, leaving holes that refill with water as new ponds. Fires that are less intense will remove accumulated litter and allow other wetland plants to regenerate from buried seeds, or from rhizomes. Wetlands that are influenced by fire include
Since wetlands can store large amounts of carbon in peat, the fire frequency of vast northern peatlands is linked to processes controlling the carbon dioxide levels of the atmosphere, and to the phenomenon of global warming.[56]Fire suppression
Fire serves many important functions within fire-adapted ecosystems. Fire plays an important role in nutrient cycling, diversity maintenance and habitat structure. The suppression of fire can lead to unforeseen changes in ecosystems that often adversely affect the plants, animals and humans that depend upon that habitat. Wildfires that deviate from a historical fire regime because of fire suppression are called "uncharacteristic fires".[citation needed]
Chaparral communities
In 2003, southern California witnessed powerful chaparral wildfires. Hundreds of homes and hundreds of thousands of acres of land went up in flames. Extreme fire weather (low humidity, low fuel moisture and high winds) and the accumulation of dead plant material from eight years of drought, contributed to a catastrophic outcome. Although some have maintained that fire suppression contributed to an unnatural buildup of fuel loads,[58] a detailed analysis of historical fire data has showed that this may not have been the case.[59] Fire suppression activities had failed to exclude fire from the southern California chaparral. Research showing differences in fire size and frequency between southern California and Baja has been used to imply that the larger fires north of the border are the result of fire suppression, but this opinion has been challenged by numerous investigators and ecologists.[60]
One consequence of the fires in 2003 has been the increased density of
Fish impacts
The
Fire as a management tool
The Great Plains shortgrass prairie
A combination of heavy livestock grazing and fire-suppression has drastically altered the structure, composition, and diversity of the shortgrass prairie ecosystem on the Great Plains, allowing woody species to dominate many areas and promoting fire-intolerant invasive species. In semi-arid ecosystems where the decomposition of woody material is slow, fire is crucial for returning nutrients to the soil and allowing the grasslands to maintain their high productivity.
Although fire can occur during the growing or the dormant seasons, managed fire during the dormant season is most effective at increasing the grass and
Mixed conifer forests in the US Sierra Nevada
Mixed
Finnish boreal forests
The decline of habitat area and quality has caused many species populations to be red-listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. According to a study on forest management of Finnish boreal forests, improving the habitat quality of areas outside reserves can help in conservation efforts of endangered deadwood-dependent beetles. These beetles and various types of fungi both need dead trees in order to survive. Old growth forests can provide this particular habitat. However, most Fennoscandian boreal forested areas are used for timber and therefore are unprotected. The use of controlled burning and tree retention of a forested area with deadwood was studied and its effect on the endangered beetles. The study found that after the first year of management the number of species increased in abundance and richness compared to pre-fire treatment. The abundance of beetles continued to increase the following year in sites where tree retention was high and deadwood was abundant. The correlation between forest fire management and increased beetle populations shows a key to conserving these red-listed species.[68]
Australian eucalypt forests
Much of the old growth eucalypt forest in Australia is designated for conservation. Management of these forests is important because species like Eucalyptus grandis rely on fire to survive. There are a few eucalypt species that do not have a lignotuber, a root swelling structure that contains buds where new shoots can then sprout. During a fire a lignotuber is helpful in the reestablishment of the plant. Because some eucalypts do not have this particular mechanism, forest fire management can be helpful by creating rich soil, killing competitors, and allowing seeds to be released.[69]
See also
- Crown sprouting
- Evolutionary history of plants
- Fire history
- Peat bog fire
- Pyrophyte
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External links
- US Forest Service: Fire Ecology
- Yellowstone National Park: Fire Ecology
- The Nature Conservancy's web site for fire practitioners- Fire Ecology
- The Nature Conservancy: Why We Work with Fire
- The International Journal of Wildland Fire
- Fire Ecology Journal
- Fire and Environmental Research Applications
- Word Spy - pyrogeography