Post-fire vegetation succession in the Siberian subarctic tundra over 45 years ...

Wildfires are relatively rare in subarctic tundra ecosystems, but they can strongly change ecosystem properties. Short-term fire effects on subarctic tundra vegetation are well documented, but long-term vegetation recovery has been studied less. The frequency of tundra fires will increase with clima...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Heim, Ramona Julia, Bucharova, Anna, Brodt, Leya, Kamp, Johannes, Rieker, Daniel, Soromotin, Andrey, Yurtaev, Andrey, Hölzel, Norbert
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: Dryad 2020
Subjects:
SLA
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.sn02v6x2n
https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.sn02v6x2n
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Summary:Wildfires are relatively rare in subarctic tundra ecosystems, but they can strongly change ecosystem properties. Short-term fire effects on subarctic tundra vegetation are well documented, but long-term vegetation recovery has been studied less. The frequency of tundra fires will increase with climate warming. Understanding the long-term effects of fire is necessary to predict future ecosystem changes. We used a space-for-time approach to assess vegetation recovery after fire over more than four decades. We studied soil and vegetation patterns on three large fire scars (>44, 28 and 12 years old) in dry, lichen-dominated forest tundra in Western Siberia. On 60 plots, we determined soil temperature and permafrost thaw depth, sampled vegetation and measured plant functional traits. We assessed trends in NDVI to support the field-based results on vegetation recovery.Soil temperature, permafrost thaw depth and total vegetation cover had recovered to pre-fire levels after >44 years, as well as total ...