Resilience of temperate peatland vegetation communities to wildfire depends upon burn severity and pre-fire species composition.
Resilience of temperate peatland vegetation communities to wildfire depends upon burn severity and pre-fire species composition.
复制标题
DOI：
10.1002/ece3.9912
复制
发表时间：
2023-04
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
泥炭地生态系统具有全球保护和环境重要性，在全球范围内储存了大量的古代碳，调节区域温度和水文状况，并支持独特的生物多样性。牲畜放牧、土地利用变化、排水、营养物和酸沉积以及野火威胁着许多泥炭地的组成和功能，包括英国高地的泥炭地。目前，人们对英国这些系统内野火的短期或长期影响知之甚少。我们的研究旨在评估植物群落如何应对一系列植被群落、土壤类型和燃烧严重程度的野火。我们使用适用于无树泥炭地的地面综合燃烧指数评估了野火燃烧的严重程度。使用成对的烧毁和未烧毁地块，我们量化了植物科和功能类群的丰度、植被多样性和群落组成的差异。烧毁和未烧毁区域之间成分的多元差异被用作社区对火灾的抵御能力的指标。有机土壤浅层的荒地群落中的土地燃烧最严重，植物多样性和丰富度下降幅度最大。随着烧伤严重程度的增加，地块范围内的物种丰富度和多样性显着下降。禾本科植物对火灾有抵抗力，而杜鹃花科植物则往往随着严重程度的增加而增加。苔藓植物的组成发生了显着变化——侧果植物种类减少，顶果植物种类随着烧伤严重程度的增加而增加。社区复原力与地面烧伤严重程度有关，烧伤严重程度越高，社区发生的变化就越大。野火对温带泥炭地的影响是火灾天气以及场地环境和生态特征的函数。管理政策应确保减轻严重野火的风险，以保护生态系统功能和生物多样性。这将需要针对泥炭地土壤和植被类型梯度的系统特定火灾管理方案。泥炭地野火预计将成为气候变化下一个日益严重的问题，但我们对温带系统如何应对不同火灾严重程度知之甚少。我们调查了英国五场不同严重程度的野火中成对燃烧和未燃烧区域的多样性和构成差异。植物群落多样性和恢复力与烧伤严重程度和群落类型显着相关，其中大多数差异发生在隐花之间。
Peatland ecosystems are of global conservation and environmental importance storing globally significant amounts of ancient carbon, regulating regional temperatures and hydrological regimes, and supporting unique biodiversity. Livestock grazing, land‐use change, drainage, nutrient and acid deposition, and wildfire threaten the composition and function of many peatlands including those in the uplands of the United Kingdom. Presently, little is known about either the short‐ or long‐term effects of wildfires within these systems in the UK. Our study aimed to evaluate how plant communities respond to wildfires across a range of vegetation communities, soil types, and burn severities. We evaluated wildfire burn severity using the ground‐based Composite Burn Index adapted for treeless peatlands. Using paired burned–unburned plots, we quantified differences in the abundance of plant families and functional groups, vegetation diversity, and community composition. Multivariate differences in composition between burned and unburned areas were used as an index of community resilience to fire. Plots in heathland communities with shallow organic soils burned at the highest severities and had the greatest reductions in plant diversity and richness. There were significant declines in plot‐scale species richness and diversity with increasing burn severity. Graminoids were resilient to fire whilst Ericaceae tended to increase with higher severity. Bryophyte composition was substantially altered—pleurocarpous species declined and acrocarpous species increased with greater burn severity. Community resilience was related to ground layer burn severity with higher burn severity driving greater changes in communities. Wildfire effects on temperate peatlands are a function of fire weather and site environmental and ecological characteristics. Management policy should ensure that the risk of severe wildfires is mitigated to protect ecosystem function and biodiversity. This will require system‐specific fire management prescriptions across the gradient of peatland soil and vegetation types. Peatland wildfires are expected to be a growing problem under climate change, but we have little knowledge of how temperate systems respond to varying fire severity. We investigated differences in the diversity and composition of paired burned and unburned areas across five wildfires in the United Kingdom that burned at differing severities. Plant community diversity and resilience were significantly associated with both burn severity and community type with most differences occurring among cryptogams.