Resource Catalog
Document
Temporal changes in community organization were examined in a 300+ year chronosequence of understorey vegetation data from lodgepole pine forests recovering from fire in central British Columbia. Changes between six age-classes of forest were quantified as shifts in the orientation of equal frequency ellipses depicting the main correlation structure of the vegetation in multivariate space. Different developmental trajectories were obtained for sites differing in soil moisture status. Mesic sites displayed sharp changes in community organization within the first 100 years following fire but only gradual changes thereafter. In contrast , xeric sites exhibited sharp organizational changes at the beginning and again toward the end of the chronosequence. The unanticipated behaviour of dry sites is interpreted as reflecting a lower degree of interation of such communities resulting from their particular species composition and susceptibility to biotic disturbance. Analyses of separate life-form strata indicated continuing organizational changes in shrubs, forbs, grasses, and lichens, but relative stability in bryophytes after 100 years. The movement through time of mexic sites towards increasing persistence is predicted from an interpretation of ecological succession as a process of self-organization, directed by principles of nonequilibrium thermodynamics.©NRC Canada
Cataloging Information
- age classes
- Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
- British Columbia
- bryophytes
- Bryoria
- Canada
- Cladonia
- coniferous forests
- crowns
- disturbance
- ecosystem dynamics
- Empetrum nigrum
- fire intensity
- fire regimes
- forbs
- forest management
- grasses
- Hylocomium splendens
- lichens
- mesic soils
- moisture
- overstory
- Peltigera aphthosa
- Picea engelmannii
- Picea glauca
- pine forests
- Pinus contorta
- plant communities
- Pleurozium schreberi
- post fire recovery
- shrubs
- sloping terrain
- soil moisture
- statistical analysis
- Stereocaulon
- succession
- understory vegetation
- Vaccinium scoparium
- vegetation surveys
- xeric soils
This bibliographic record was either created or modified by Tall Timbers and is provided without charge to promote research and education in Fire Ecology. The E.V. Komarek Fire Ecology Database is the intellectual property of Tall Timbers.