Time since fire shapes plant immaturity risk across fire severity classes

Abstract

Background When fire intervals are shorter than the time required for plants to reproduce, plant populations are threatened by “immaturity risk.” Therefore, understanding how the time between fires influences plants can inform ecosystem management. Quantifying periods of immaturity risk requires investigating the influence of fire intervals across plant life stages, but most studies are indiscriminate of maturity. As fire regimes are multidimensional, it is also important to consider other characteristics of fires such as severity. We conducted a field study in heathy woodland that investigated how fire severity and fire interval influence immaturity risk to serotinous resprouter species, by examining if fire severity interacts with the time since the fire to influence the occurrence of mature individuals and relative abundance of three species: silver banksia (Banksia marginata Cav.), prickly teatree (Leptospermum continentale Joy Thomps), and heath teatree (Leptospermum myrsinoides Schitdl). Results Regression modeling revealed a strong, positive influence of time since the last fire on the proportion of quadrats at a site with mature plants, for all three species. We only detected a small and uncertain influence of fire severity on the proportion of quadrats with mature heath and prickly teatree, and did not observe an effect of fire severity on the maturity of silver banksia. Interestingly, no relationships were observed between time since fire and the relative abundance of plants. That is, only when plant life stages were considered did we detect an effect of fire on plants. Populations of the three species were mostly immature in the first 7 years post-fire, suggesting if sites were uniformly burnt in this time frame, there could be increased risk of local extinctions. Conclusions Our study highlights the importance of examining population processes, such as reproduction, in addition to plant relative abundance. Surprisingly, we did not detect strong differences in plant maturation across fire severity classes; low occurrence of mature plants in recently burnt areas indicated that immaturity risk was high, regardless of fire severity. Ecological studies that distinguish between plant life stages will help to predict the impacts of fire on populations and enhance decision-making. We recommend fire intervals of ≥ 8 years to protect serotinous resprouter plants in heathy woodland vegetation of southern Australia.