Fire regimes in a warming world: the role of plant traits in the resilience to fire of Eurasian boreal forests

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Fire can have dramatically negative impacts on societies and environment. However, fire is an integral part of ecosystem dynamics that controls a range of evolutionary and ecological processes in many biomes. Boreal forests are predicted to experience more frequent and/or severe fires under future climate warming. This has critical relevance as boreal forests account for one third of the global forested area, most of this located in Russia (mainly Siberia). The Eurasian forest fire regime is categorised as low to medium in severity, but there is a strong variability within this region, most probably linked to the dominant tree species. However, a comprehensive understanding of how exactly vegetation composition and properties determine fire regimes is still lacking. A fundamental problem is the ecological processes occur over decades to millennia and therefore no direct observations exist. This and the fact that past fire history in boreal forest of Siberia is poorly documented resulted in large uncertainties in our understanding of: i) tolerance range of key Siberian boreal taxa to fire frequency and severity; ii) the most common plant functional traits that influence resistance to fire and post fire recovery potential and iii) the linkages and feedbacks that tie changes in fire regime to vegetation properties. In this project I will develop an innovative inter-disciplinary approach focusing on understanding how interactions between fire regime and plant traits control the distribution of Eurasian boreal forests. I will combine new fossil records of fire, vegetation and climate derived from charcoal morphologies, pollen, stable isotopes and testate amoebae from hitherto uncovered Siberian parts of boreal Eurasia with information on fire-related functional traits of key boreal tree species derived from databases. Statistical approaches will be used to combine the datasets to determine and understand drivers of shifts in fire regime and fire-vegetation feedbacks. Results from this project will provide: i) empirical estimates of tolerance ranges of key Eurasian boreal taxa with respect to fire frequency and severity; ii) set of plant traits associated with resistance to fire and recovery from fire, and whether these are common across time and space; and iii) determine how fire regime controls state changes in boreal forests. It will also provide recommendations for subject-specific specialists, but also fire modellers, stakeholders and environmental managers, on how to foster fire-resilient landscapes and manage potential fire impacts by considering fire-relevant plant functional traits.