Ecological integrity of remnant montane forests along an urban gradient in the Sierra Nevada

Heckmann, Kirsten E.; Manley, Patricia N.; Schlesinger, Matthew

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2008.01.005

Cited by 40 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 87 publications

(99 reference statements)

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“…Other factors that also influence exotic abundance, such as development within the wildland-urban interface, forest management activities, and climate change, further complicate predictions (Heckmann et al 2008;Keeley 2006;Thuiller et al 2007). That being said, our data suggest that the level of invasion in lightly burned areas of the Hayman Fire will remain relatively unchanged in the Fig.…”

Section: Impacts Of Fire Severity and Time Since Fire On Exotic Specimentioning

confidence: 82%

Impacts of mixed severity wildfire on exotic plants in a Colorado ponderosa pine–Douglas-fir forest

2010

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The 2002 Hayman Fire burned with mixed severity across 55,800 ha of montane Colorado forest, including pre-existing plots that were originally measured for understory plant composition and cover in 1997. We examined the influence of the Hayman Fire on exotic plants by remeasuring these plots annually from 2003 to 2007. We found that (1) exotic richness and cover generally increased as fire severity and time since fire increased; (2) the exotic species present in a plot before the fire were also largely present in the plot postfire, regardless of fire severity; (3) most of the new postfire species in a plot were present elsewhere in the study area before the fire, although some new species were truly new invaders that were not found in prefire surveys; (4) lightly burned riparian forests were not more susceptible to exotic invasion than surrounding uplands that burned with similar severity; and (5) native and exotic richness and cover were positively correlated or uncorrelated for all fire severities and years. Our findings indicate that exotics were stimulated by the Hayman Fire, especially in severely burned areas. However, exotic richness and cover remain low as of 2007, and correlations between native and exotic richness and cover suggest that exotics have not yet interfered with native understory development. Therefore, we conclude that exotic plants are not a major ecological threat at present, but recommend that monitoring be continued to evaluate if they will pose a threat in future years.

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Section: Impacts Of Fire Severity and Time Since Fire On Exotic Specimentioning

confidence: 82%

Impacts of mixed severity wildfire on exotic plants in a Colorado ponderosa pine–Douglas-fir forest

2010

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“…Cutting forest reduces the amount of habitat, isolates the remaining patches (habitat fragmentation) and alters the local or regional microclimate (Lawton et al 2001;Fahrig 2003). In remaining forest fragments, selective logging (Berry et al 2008;Ruger et al 2008) and the subsequent invasion of alien or early-successional species (Devlaeminck et al 2005;Heckmann et al 2008) further degrade habitat quality. Consequently, biological communities in fragmented forests are expected to differ from the original, pre-fragmentation situation (temporal effect).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Woody plant communities of isolated Afromontane cloud forests in Taita Hills, Kenya

et al. 2010

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In the Taita Hills in southern Kenya, remnants of the original Afromontane forest vegetation are restricted to isolated mountain peaks. To assess the level of degradation and the need for forest restoration, we examined how forest plant communities and their indicator species vary between and within remnant patches of cloud forest. We used ordinal abundance data to compare plant communities in eight forest fragments. We also analyzed data on the diversity and abundance of trees in 57 0.1 ha plots to compare tree communities within and between the largest two of these fragments, Ngangao (120 ha) and Mbololo (220 ha). The extant vegetation of the Taita Hills at landscape scale consists of secondary moist montane to intermediate montane forest. There was a high species dissimilarity between fragments (69%). Variation in species composition coincided with an abiotic gradient related to elevation. At plot level, secondary successional species and species of forest edges were most abundant and most frequent. Inferred clusters of plots almost entirely coincided with the two forest fragments. Indicator species associated with forest margins and gaps were more frequent in the smaller of the two forest fragments, while indicators for the larger fragment were more typical for less disturbed moist forest. Abiotic site variability but also different levels of disturbance determine site-specific variants of the montane forest. Conservation efforts should not only focus on maintaining forest quantity (size), but also on forest quality (species composition). Late-successional rainforest species are underrepresented in the woody plant communities of the Taita Hills and assisting restoration of viable populations of cloud forest climax tree species is urgently needed

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“…Urbanization directly transforms landscapes and affects biodiversity, ecosystem productivity, watershed discharge characteristics, and biogeochemical cycles (Pickett et al, 2001). Urbanization also indirectly influences ecosystems across various scales by altering abiotic environmental conditions, including atmospheric chemistry, climate, and soil properties (Lovett et al, 2000;Pataki et al, 2006) and biotic components, such as introduced exotic species (Heckmann et al, 2008). Yet, with a few exceptions (see Pickett et al, 2001) urban areas have been largely ignored in general ecological studies and are among the least understood of all ecosystems ; and this is especially true for urban areas in tropical, less-developed regions of the world.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Key nitrogen cycling processes in pine plantations along a short urban–rural gradient in Nanchang, China

Chen

Fahey

et al. 2010

Forest Ecology and Management

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Ecological integrity of remnant montane forests along an urban gradient in the Sierra Nevada

Cited by 40 publications

References 87 publications

Impacts of mixed severity wildfire on exotic plants in a Colorado ponderosa pine–Douglas-fir forest

Impacts of mixed severity wildfire on exotic plants in a Colorado ponderosa pine–Douglas-fir forest

Woody plant communities of isolated Afromontane cloud forests in Taita Hills, Kenya

Key nitrogen cycling processes in pine plantations along a short urban–rural gradient in Nanchang, China

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