New Zealand Journal of Botany abstract
B97014
Received 5 March 1997; accepted 9 May 1997
New Zealand Journal of Botany, 1997, Vol. 35: 505-515
0028-825X/97/3504-0505 $7.00 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 1997
Mountain beech forest succession after a fire at Mount Thomas Forest,
Canterbury, New Zealand
SUSAN K. WISER
ROBERT B. ALLEN
KEVIN H. PLATT
Landcare Research
P. O. Box 69
Lincoln, New Zealand
Abstract The impact of fire on the resilience of tree and
shrub species populations, and the relationships between distance from the
unburnt forest margin and composition, were examined from data collected 1, 2,
4, 6, 10, and 15 years after a fire at Mount Thomas Forest in 1980. Although
some scorched mountain beech trees flushed, virtually all trees died within
five years. The few surviving mountain beech seedlings mostly occurred within
20 m of the forest margin and were less common on a north-facing transect
than a south-facing transect. Other woody species (e.g., of
Coprosma and
Pseudopanax) commonly sprouted from burnt stumps. Increased density over
time of saplings and seedlings >15 cm tall was primarily the result of
onward growth of fire survivors, rather than post-fire establishment. Between
1981 and 1995, some of the earliest colonisers disappeared and a few herbaceous
species gradually increased to become dominant. Current dominance by the exotic
Agrostis capillaris appears a consequence of recent changes in nearby
tussock grasslands and strongly limits beech seedling establishment. Partial
canonical correspondence analysis showed that time and distance alone explained
significant components of the compositional variation. Because little variation
was explained by the interplay between time and distance, there was no evidence
for mountain beech forest recovery as ongoing marginal spread within 15 years
of the fire.
Keywords Nothofagus; forest; disturbance; exotic
plants; fire; canonical correspondence analysis; detrended correspondence
analysis; partial ordination; variation partitioning
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