Exploring fire adaptation in a land with little fire: serotiny in <i>Leptospermum scoparium</i> (Myrtaceae)

Battersby, Paul F.; Wilmshurst, Janet M.; Curran, Timothy J.; McGlone, Matthew S.; Perry, George L.

doi:10.1111/jbi.12950

Cited by 29 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…The persistence and spread of mānuka in these grassland landscapes may have been facilitated by frequent past burning that reduced the abundance of broadleaved forest trees and maintained a relatively open, mixed, tall and short tussock grassland. The long Holocene fire history in the study area is supported by the presence of both serotinous and non-serotinous individuals of mānuka (Battersby et al 2017a).…”

Section: Conversion From Grasslands To Shrub-dominated Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 83%

Biome transition in a changing world: from indigenous grasslands to shrub-dominated communities

Ropars¹,

Comeau²,

Lee³

et al. 2018

NZ J Ecol

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Shrub encroachment in grassland environments is observed in many regions worldwide. However, in New Zealand, there is no consensus on the trend and magnitude of this phenomenon, and we lack empirical data to determine what environmental variables may promote shrub invasion. Here, we present a comprehensive study evaluating shrub cover change in a tussock water catchment in eastern Otago, New Zealand. Specifically, we aim to quantify shrub cover change in the catchment between 1980 and 2015, to identify the shrub species involved and to determine the environmental variables that promote shrub cover change in the studied area. Using aerial photographic records over a 35-year period, we found a 29% increase in shrub cover (from 10.5% in 1980 to 39.5% in 2015-a 3.8-fold increase in 35 years). According to ground truthing, this shrub expansion was mainly associated with an increase in mānuka (Leptospermum scoparium) cover. Using model selection with Akaike Information Criterion, we found that the best model explaining shrub cover change in the studied tussock catchment included multiple environmental variables. Among these, initial shrub cover and elevation negatively impacted shrub cover increase within the study area, whereas slope had a positive influence, especially on the north-and east-facing aspects. Overall, shrub cover change was mostly observed in low-elevation gullies (< 500 metres elevation) with steep slopes, where mānuka is known to have optimal growth conditions. However, further shrub cover expansion may be slow as most of the available space is now restricted to poorly drained spurs at higher elevation (> 650 metres elevation).

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Section: Conversion From Grasslands To Shrub-dominated Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 83%

Biome transition in a changing world: from indigenous grasslands to shrub-dominated communities

Ropars¹,

Comeau²,

Lee³

et al. 2018

NZ J Ecol

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“…Interestingly, the early Māori fire disturbance seems to have only affected the wetland vegetation at this site; the surrounding beech forest was not cleared until much later in the European period. This may reflect the fact that the mix of shrubs on the wetland is likely to have been more flammable than the surrounding tall wet forest (Perry et al 2014;Battersby et al 2017). There is an indication that grasses were beginning to increase in dominance before zone 1 (i.e.…”

Section: Hallsbushmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two new Holocene vegetation records from the margins of the Canterbury Plains, South Island, New Zealand

Wood¹,

Wilmshurst²,

McGlone³

2018

NZ J Ecol

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Canterbury's gravelly outwash plains offer few of the natural deposits in which floral remains are typically preserved and hence represent a significant geographical gap in our knowledge about New Zealand's pre-settlement terrestrial ecosystems and their response to anthropogenic activities. We contribute new insights into the poorly known Holocene vegetation history of this region by reporting two new mid-late Holocene pollen records from the western (Hallsbush) and eastern (Travis Swamp) margins of the Canterbury Plains. Both records show local forest dominance prior to Polynesian settlement. Forest was cleared rapidly after human settlement at the eastern site, but despite local fires that burnt the wetland the forest was retained at the western site until after European settlement. Together with the few pollen records previously published from the margins of the Canterbury Plains, a clear pattern of beech forest dominance in the west and podocarp/hardwood forest dominance on the plains to the east at the time of human settlement emerges. However, additional sites on the Canterbury Plains are essential for a better understanding of the pre-settlement composition and heterogeneity of vegetation communities within this region.

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“…Fire occurred frequently on the large, raised restiad bogs of northern New Zealand (Newnham, 1992;Battersby et al, 2017;Haenfling et al, 2017) but elsewhere was sporadic. Along the rain-shadow regions in the ranges to the east of the Southern Alps fires burnt from time to time, inducing a patchy landscape of conifer low forest, shrubland and grassland (Burrows et al, 1993;Burrows, 1996;Wardle, 2001b;Pugh and Shulmeister, 2010).…”

Section: Late Holocene and Polynesian Firementioning

confidence: 99%

Palynology and the Ecology of the New Zealand Conifers

et al. 2017

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The New Zealand conifers (20 species of trees and shrubs in the Araucariaceae, Podocarpaceae, and Cupressaceae) are often regarded as ancient Gondwanan elements, but mostly originated much later. Often thought of as tall trees of humid, warm forests, they are present throughout in alpine shrublands, tree lines, bogs, swamps, and in dry, frost-prone regions. The tall conifers rarely form purely coniferous forest and mostly occur as an emergent stratum above evergreen angiosperm trees. During Maori settlement in the thirteenth century, fire-sensitive trees succumbed rapidly, most of the drier forests being lost. As these were also the more conifer-rich forests, ecological research has been skewed toward conifer dynamics of forests wetter and cooler than the pre-human norm. Conifers are well represented in the pollen record and we here we review their late Quaternary history in the light of what is known about their current ecology with the intention of countering this bias. During glacial episodes, all trees were scarce south of c. 40 • S, and extensive conifer-dominant forest was confined to the northern third of the North Island. Drought-and cold-resistant Halocarpus bidwillii and Phyllocladus alpinus formed widespread scrub in the south. During the deglacial, beginning 18,000 years ago, tall conifers underwent explosive spread to dominate the forest biomass throughout. Conifer dominance lessened in favor of angiosperms in the wetter western lowland forests over the Holocene but the dryland eastern forests persisted largely unchanged until settlement. Mid to late Holocene climate change favored the more rapidly growing Nothofagaceae which replaced the previous conifer-angiosperm low forest or shrubland in tree line ecotones and montane areas. The key to this dynamic conifer history appears to be their bimodal ability to withstand stress, and dominate on poor soils and in cool, dry regions but, in wetter, warmer locations, to slowly grow thorough competing broadleaves to occupy an exposed, emergent stratum where their inherent stress resistance ensures little effective angiosperm competition.

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Exploring fire adaptation in a land with little fire: serotiny in Leptospermum scoparium (Myrtaceae)

Cited by 29 publications

References 59 publications

Biome transition in a changing world: from indigenous grasslands to shrub-dominated communities

Biome transition in a changing world: from indigenous grasslands to shrub-dominated communities

Two new Holocene vegetation records from the margins of the Canterbury Plains, South Island, New Zealand

Palynology and the Ecology of the New Zealand Conifers

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