A Pantropical Analysis of Fire Impacts and Post-Fire Species Recovery of Plant Life Forms.

ABSTRACT: Fires are a key environmental driver that modify ecosystems and global biodiversity. Fires can negatively and positively impact biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, depending on how frequently fire occurs in the focal ecosystem, but factors influencing biodiversity responses to fire are inadequately understood. We conduct a pan-tropical analysis of systematically collated data spanning 5257 observations of 1705 plant species (trees and shrubs, forbs, graminoids and climbers) in burnt and unburnt plots from 28 studies. We use model averaging of mixed effect models assessing how plant species richness and turnover (comparing burnt and unburnt communities) vary with time since fire, fire type, protected area status and biome type (fire sensitive or fire adaptive). Our analyses bring three

SUBMITTER: Sapkota DP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11832907 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature