Interannual variation in climate contributes to contingency in post‐fire restoration outcomes in seeded sagebrush steppe

Applestein, Cara; Germino, Matthew J.

doi:10.1111/csp2.12737

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 66 publications

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“…We used a strong regularizing horseshoe prior with maximum local and global shrinkage that allowed for model convergence (df = 1, df global = 2), with the ratio of expected non-zero to zero coefficients set to 0.01 (Bürkner 2017;Piironen and Vehtari 2017;Simler-Williamson et al 2022). Similar sparse models have Vol:.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural heterogeneity predicts ecological resistance and resilience to wildfire in arid shrublands

Zaiats,

Cattau,

Pilliod

et al. 2024

Landsc Ecol

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Context Dynamic feedbacks between physical structure and ecological function drive ecosystem productivity, resilience, and biodiversity maintenance. Detailed maps of canopy structure enable comprehensive evaluations of structure–function relationships. However, these relationships are scale-dependent, and identifying relevant spatial scales to link structure to function remains challenging. Objectives We identified optimal scales to relate structure heterogeneity to ecological resistance, measured as the impacts of wildfire on canopy structure, and ecological resilience, measured as native shrub recruitment. We further investigated whether structural heterogeneity can aid spatial predictions of shrub recruitment. Methods Using high-resolution imagery from unoccupied aerial systems (UAS), we mapped structural heterogeneity across ten semi-arid landscapes, undergoing a disturbance-mediated regime shift from native shrubland to dominance by invasive annual grasses. We then applied wavelet analysis to decompose structural heterogeneity into discrete scales and related these scales to ecological metrics of resilience and resistance. Results We found strong indicators of scale dependence in the tested relationships. Wildfire effects were most prominent at a single scale of structural heterogeneity (2.34 m), while the abundance of shrub recruits was sensitive to structural heterogeneity at a range of scales, from 0.07 – 2.34 m. Structural heterogeneity enabled out-of-site predictions of shrub recruitment (R2 = 0.55). The best-performing predictive model included structural heterogeneity metrics across multiple scales. Conclusions Our results demonstrate that identifying structure–function relationships requires analyses that explicitly account for spatial scale. As high-resolution imagery enables spatially extensive maps of canopy heterogeneity, models for scale dependence will aid our understanding of resilience mechanisms in imperiled arid ecosystems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structural heterogeneity predicts ecological resistance and resilience to wildfire in arid shrublands

Zaiats,

Cattau,

Pilliod

et al. 2024

Landsc Ecol

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Earlier fall precipitation increases the competitive advantage of non-native plant communities in a desert ecosystem

Bishop,

Barnes,

Nusink

et al. 2023

Biol Invasions

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Climate change is likely to influence competitive interactions between native and non-native plant species by altering soil resource availability. The objective of this study was to characterize how shifts in fall precipitation timing due to climate change affect plant community assembly of native and non-native plant communities. We selected common non-native annuals and native perennial species from the Great Basin Desert in western North America and grew them in native, non-native, and native + non-native mixed communities. We tested the responses of these three community types to simulated earlier fall precipitation in a full factorial design. Early fall precipitation dramatically increased the height, density, biomass, seed production per unit biomass, and carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (C:N) of both native and non-native plant communities in comparison with the late precipitation treatment. However, competition with non-native species reduced the positive benefit of early precipitation for the native plant community. When grown in a native-only community, native plant species increased in height (twofold), density (threefold), biomass (13-fold), seed production per unit biomass (18-fold), and C:N (1.3-fold)but not tissue percent nitrogen as compared to a mixed community. In contrast, non-native plant species grown in mixed communities with natives showed little to no reduction in growth and reproduction. While all species benefitted from earlier fall precipitation our data suggest that increased earlier fall precipitation will likely magnify the exclusion of native vegetation by non-native annuals, particularly Bromus tectorum L., which is largely responsible for human-grass-fire cycles in this ecoregion.

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Variability in weather and site properties affect fuel and fire behavior following fuel treatments in semiarid sagebrush-steppe

Price,

Germino

2024

Journal of Environmental Management

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Interannual variation in climate contributes to contingency in post‐fire restoration outcomes in seeded sagebrush steppe

Cited by 4 publications

References 66 publications

Structural heterogeneity predicts ecological resistance and resilience to wildfire in arid shrublands

Structural heterogeneity predicts ecological resistance and resilience to wildfire in arid shrublands

Earlier fall precipitation increases the competitive advantage of non-native plant communities in a desert ecosystem

Variability in weather and site properties affect fuel and fire behavior following fuel treatments in semiarid sagebrush-steppe

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