Biodiversity and Forest structure one year following the 2016 Fort McMurray (Alberta) fire event ...
Exploration practices for oil sands developments in the boreal forest of western Canada create a network of thousands of kilometers of linear features, particularly seismic lines that dissect these forests posing significant environmental challenges. As wildfire is one of the prevalent stand-replaci...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | English |
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Dryad
2020
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6djh9w105 https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.6djh9w105 |
| Summary: | Exploration practices for oil sands developments in the boreal forest of western Canada create a network of thousands of kilometers of linear features, particularly seismic lines that dissect these forests posing significant environmental challenges. As wildfire is one of the prevalent stand-replacing natural disturbances in the Canadian boreal forest, it is an important driver of environmental change and stand development that may contribute to the mitigation of such linear industrial footprint. Here, we evaluate the short-term cumulative (also known as combined) effects of seismic lines and wildfire on biodiversity and site conditions. One year after the Horse River (Fort McMurray, Alberta) fire event in the spring of 2016, we compared dissected and undisturbed forests in burned and unburned boreal peatlands, assessing changes in overall stand structure and the responses of a variety of organisms. Soil moisture was significantly higher on seismic lines than in the adjacent forest, suggesting why most of ... : Data were collected south of Fort McMurray (Alberta, Canada) along the 2016 Horse River wildfire southwest perimeter (56°31'33" N, 111°18'10" W) at 15 sites in treed peatlands dominated by black spruce (Picea mariana), with nine sites within the fire and six sites outside the burned area. All sites were dissected by conventional seismic lines, were at least 200 m from roads, and were at least 2.4 km from each other to guarantee independent samples. At each site, three 50 m transects were run parallel to each other within each of three habitat types: one transect along the center of the seismic line (“Line”), one transect along the forest edge (10 m from the line edge; “Edge”), and one transect in the adjacent forest (50 m from the line edge; “Forest”). Both Edge and Forest transects were located on the same side of the seismic line, with side selected randomly, except for sites in the burned area where only one side was available. A sampling point was placed every 10 m along each transect, for a total of 15 ... |
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