Comparison of Post-fire Succession
Comparison of Post-fire Succession in Three Sclerophyll Communities at Ironbark Basin, Victoria
Abstract:
In Australia there is a limited number of studies that monitor the progress of post-fire regeneration continuously over long periods. Most studies of pyric succession involve the use of space-for-time substitution by stands of vegetation that have had different fire histories. While this has provided useful long term information about the nature of pyric succession, detailed examination of the relative importance that species with different regeneration strategies have in the recovery process is often masked by differences in environmental conditions between the stands used for substitution.
The Ash Wednesday fires of 1983 provided an opportunity to study the processes of regeneration in sclerophyll vegetation continuously over a period of nine years at Ironbark Basin, near Anglesea, south-west of Melbourne, that had been used for vegetation studies prior to the fire and for which some vegetation data was available. After the fire, vegetation descriptions were recorded each year from fixed quadrats along a transect that traversed coastal sclerophyll heath and woodlands. Although the transect represents a continuum of floristic and environmental variation, classification on the floristic data revealed three major community types.
In this study, multivariate analyses were used to examine both the temporal and spatial patterns in the defined communities and to compare the rates of change and the floristic nature of these changes. A significant part of the study is devoted to an examination of the part played by plants having different adaptive strategies for recovery and regeneration at different stages of the successional process and in the different communities. Most studies monitoring successional development after fire in Australia have been based on an examination changes occurring over all quadrats on a year-by-year basis. In this study a comparison has been made between this approach and an examination of changes occurring between the defined development stages within each community. Variations between the three major communities are also examined and explained in terms of their different floristic composition and environmental differences.The general patterns of development show an increase in species richness over the first few years followed by a steady decline although there are differences in the rates and progress of regeneration between communities. The relative proportions of taxa relying on different adaptive strategies for survival and regeneration differs at each stage of development and varies between communities. In the early years, there are more taxa reproducing vegetatively than by seed germination. In later years there are more taxa reproducing by seed germination than by vegetative means. These patterns are similar to those recorded in successional studies elsewhere in Australia when changes are examined on a year-by-year basis across all quadrats within each community but the relative proportions of each strategy varies between communities.Homogeneous groups defined from the classification of temporal data, however, may represent more ecologically significant stages in successional development than those defined contemporaneously across all quadrats on a year-to-year basis. When the data are examined on the basis of transitions between these classified groups, a different pattern of the relative significance of each strategy emerges. At Ironbark Basin, the relative proportion of Obligate Seed Reproducers (OSR), Facultative Regenerators (FR) and Obligate Vegetative Regenerators (OR) differs when evaluated by this means. Although most quadrat groups in each community are dominated by FR's, development, represented by the transition between groups, varies. For the Heath community most development occurs by increases in the numbers of OSR's, while in the communities dominated by taller shrubs and trees, developmental changes are dominated by increases in the number of FR's in the early stages of development, and OSR's in the later stages. These difference are most likely attributable to the differences in the initial floristic composition of each community and delayed germination of seed reproducers in the taller wooded communities.This study has revealed two significant aspects in the study of succession that require a re-evaluation of the approaches used. Firstly, differences in the patterns of significance between species of different regeneration strategies resulting from the alternative approaches used here raises questions about the validity of examining successional development on the basis of year-by-year changes across all quadrats when they may not truly represent homogeneous development stages. Secondly, it questions the appropriateness of using floristic compositional data rather than attributes more directly related to the disturbance phenomena. The use of quantitative estimates of floristic cover abundance as attributes to examine development trends may not be the most appropriate to the study of pyric succession. The quantification of functional attributes, such as regeneration strategy type in the case of pyric succession, in successional studies may provide a better means of demonstrating development patterns in sclerophyll vegetation that has been subjected to disturbance.Although elements of conventional successional models, such as the inhibition model of Connell and Slatyer (1977) and the initial floristic composition model of Egler (1954), are evident in some aspects of this study, the attributes of fire-adapted vegetation give rise to variations in successional patterns that are not dependent upon initial floristic composition alone. It is difficult, in the light of findings from this study, to postulate a single model for pyric succession in sclerophyll communities based solely on the regenerative capacities of fire-adapted taxa without accounting for other community characteristics, environmental conditions and the approach used to examine successional patterns.
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