Testing key tenets of pyro-ecophysiology: Indicators of drought response in relation to shoot flammability.

ABSTRACT:

Premise

Relationships between flammability and drought tolerance influence vegetation dynamics during fires. A goal of the emerging subdiscipline of pyro-ecophysiology is to identify ecophysiological traits that determine live fuel flammability, but empirical studies of these relationships are rare. Furthermore, drought tolerance has been suggested as a surrogate for low flammability when choosing species to plant near houses in fire-prone areas, but this hypothesis has not been tested.

Methods

We examined links between flammability and drought tolerance for 39 woody species, compiling existing data on shoot flammability and six drought-related variables: minimum leaf water potential (Ψ_min; N = 15 species), leaf turgor loss point (π_tlp; N = 20), root zo

SUBMITTER: Sultana N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12572700 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature