Material Legacies and Environmental Constraints Underlie Fire Resilience of a Dominant Boreal Forest Type.

ABSTRACT: Resilience of plant communities to disturbance is supported by multiple mechanisms, including ecological legacies affecting propagule availability, species' environmental tolerances, and biotic interactions. Understanding the relative importance of these mechanisms for plant community resilience supports predictions of where and how resilience will be altered with disturbance. We tested mechanisms underlying resilience of forests dominated by black spruce (Picea mariana) to fire disturbance across a heterogeneous forest landscape in the Northwest Territories, Canada. We combined surveys of naturally regenerating seedlings at 219 burned plots with experimental manipulations of ecological legacies via seed addition of four tree species and vertebrate exclosures to limit granivory and

SUBMITTER: Day NJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10167110 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature