Abstract
Disturbance regimes in much of the boreal forest have shifted from wildfire to clearcutting over the last century, resulting in concerns for biodiversity. Because the boreal forest has evolved under a natural fire regimes, we hypothesized that application of prescribed burning (PB) after clearcutting would result in plant communities more similar to wildfire than clearcut only. However, because clearcutting + PB involves multiple disturbances in a short interval, we proposed an alternate hypothesis that clearcutting + PB would result in a species composition and trait assemblage that differ from those that develop after a single wildfire or clearcutting event. We determined species composition, diversity, and trait composition of 17 clearcut, 17 clearcut + PB, and 15 wildfire sites of jack pine (Pinus banksiana) dominated forests in northwestern Ontario, Canada 15–37 years after disturbance. Contrary to our primary hypothesis we found that clearcut + PB formed communities different from wildfire and clearcut, the latter two being similar. Clearcut + PB harbored more early successional species associated with seed banking, wind dispersal, deciduous foliage, and alien origin than wildfire or clearcut sites, which showed no specific trait associations. Taxonomic and trait analysis of clearcut + PB sites exhibited effects of compound disturbances, as observed after short-interval fires, supporting our alternate hypothesis. We concluded that PB after clearcutting formed plant communities significantly different from those developed either after clearcutting or wildfire alone. We attribute this community divergence to the compounding effects associated with the addition of prescribed fire to these previously disturbed forests.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the Forest Ecosystem Science Cooperative and the National Science and Research Council of Canada. Technical Support was provided by the Northwest Science and Technology Branch of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. We thank Dr. Greg Pyle and Dr. Brian McLaren as well as two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript.
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Keri Pidgen conceived of and designed the study, performed research, analyzed data and wrote the paper first draft. Azim U. Mallik conceived of and designed the study, contributed methods, guided the research and revised the paper.
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Pidgen, K., Mallik, A.U. Ecology of Compounding Disturbances: The Effects of Prescribed Burning After Clearcutting. Ecosystems 16, 170–181 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-012-9607-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-012-9607-2