Dataset Information

Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21^st century.

ABSTRACT: The impacts of climatic changes on forests may appear gradually on time scales of years to centuries due to the long generation times of trees. Consequently, current forest extent may not reflect current climatic patterns. In contrast with these lagged responses, abrupt transitions in forests under climate change may occur in environments where alternative vegetation states are influenced by disturbances, such as fire. The Klamath forest landscape (northern California and southwest Oregon, USA) is currently dominated by high biomass, biodiverse temperate coniferous forests, but climate change could disrupt the mechanisms promoting forest stability (e.g. growth, regeneration and fire tolerance). Using a landscape simulation model, we estimate that about one-third of the Klamath forest landscape (500,000?ha) could transition from conifer-dominated forest to shrub/hardwood chaparral, triggered by increased fire activity coupled with lower post-fire conifer establishment. Such shifts were widespread under the warmer climate change scenarios (RCP 8.5) but were surprisingly prevalent under the climate of 1949-2010, reflecting the joint influences of recent warming trends and the legacy of fire suppression that may have enhanced conifer dominance. Our results demonstrate that major forest ecosystem shifts should be expected when climate change disrupts key stabilizing feedbacks that maintain the dominance of long-lived, slowly regenerating trees.

SUBMITTER: Serra-Diaz JM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5928035 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21<sup>st</sup> century.

Serra-Diaz Josep M JM Maxwell Charles C Lucash Melissa S MS Scheller Robert M RM Laflower Danelle M DM Miller Adam D AD Tepley Alan J AJ Epstein Howard E HE Anderson-Teixeira Kristina J KJ Thompson Jonathan R JR

Scientific reports 20180430 1

The impacts of climatic changes on forests may appear gradually on time scales of years to centuries due to the long generation times of trees. Consequently, current forest extent may not reflect current climatic patterns. In contrast with these lagged responses, abrupt transitions in forests under climate change may occur in environments where alternative vegetation states are influenced by disturbances, such as fire. The Klamath forest landscape (northern California and southwest Oregon, USA) ...[more]

PMID: 29712940

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Project description:Over the past several decades, the management of historically frequent-fire forests in the western United States has received significant attention due to the linked ecological and social risks posed by the increased occurrence of large, contiguous patches of high-severity fire. As a result, efforts are underway to simultaneously reduce potential fire and fuel hazards and restore characteristics indicative of historical forest structures and ecological processes that enhance the diversity and quality of wildlife habitat across landscapes. Despite widespread agreement on the need for action, there is a perceived tension among scientists concerning silvicultural treatments that modify stands to optimally reduce potential fire behavior (fuel hazard reduction) versus those that aim to emulate historical forest structures and create structurally complex stands (restoration). In this work, we evaluated thinning treatments in the Black Hills National Forest that exemplify the extremes of a treatment continuum that ranges from fuel hazard reduction to restoration. The goal of this work was to understand how the differing three-dimensional stand structures created by these treatment approaches altered potential fire behavior. Our results indicate that restoration treatments created higher levels of vertical and horizontal structural complexity than the fuel hazard reduction treatments but resulted in similar reductions to potential crown fire behavior. There were some trade-offs identified as the restoration treatments created larger openings, which generated faster mean rates of fire spread; however, these increased spread rates did not translate to higher levels of canopy consumption. Overall, our results suggest that treatments can create vertical and horizontal complexity desired for restoration and wildlife habitat management while reducing fire hazard and that they can be used in concert with traditional fuel hazard reduction treatments to reduce landscape scale fire risk. We also provide some suggestions to land managers seeking to design and implement prescriptions that emulate historical structures and enhance forest complexity.

Dataset Information

Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21^st century.

Publications

Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21<sup>st</sup> century.

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Dataset Information

Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21st century.

Publications

Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21<sup>st</sup> century.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets

Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21^st century.