Fire Severity and Plant Community Dynamics in the Australian Alps, Southeastern New South Wales
type: CreativeWork
description: The effects of fire on plant communities are a subset of a broader range of spatial and temporal influences on plant community dynamics. Widespread unplanned fires in the Australian Alps in 2003 provided a unique opportunity to investigate the response of vascular plant species to high severity fire and to test whether there was a differential response to variations in fire severity that may affect long term vegetation dynamics within and between subalpine, montane and tablelands plant communities. A series of pre-existing sites established in the late 1990s in the northern parts of the Australian Alps in Brindabella National Park, Bimberi Nature Reserve and Burrinjuck Nature Reserve were resurveyed and monitored from 2003-2012. Two research questions were posed: 1) what is the response to high severity fire of vascular plant species found in subalpine, montane and tablelands plant communities? 2) does high severity fire result in significant or permanent change to vascular plant species richness and plant community composition as compared to low severity fire in subalpine, montane and tablelands plant communities and does the recovery rate vary with severity? The fire responses of over 400 vascular plant species in 21 plant communities were documented. There was no loss of plant species from the study areas and all vascular plant species recovered rapidly post-fire, but some fire-killed species exhibited slow recovery rates. Although vegetation structure is affected by fire severity, it is fire severity interacting with fire frequency that has the potential to change vegetation structure in the long term, particularly via the loss of structurally dominant obligate seeder species. The overall trend in vascular plant species richness was an increase in species richness post-fire irrespective of fire severity, with a time since fire decline. Significantly for forest ecosystems, this peak and decline response of vascular plant species richness post-fire is modified and…
abstract: The effects of fire on plant communities are a subset of a broader range of spatial and temporal influences on plant community dynamics. Widespread unplanned fires in the Australian Alps in 2003 provided a unique opportunity to investigate the response of vascular plant species to high severity fire and to test whether there was a differential response to variations in fire severity that may affect long term vegetation dynamics within and between subalpine, montane and tablelands plant communities. A series of pre-existing sites established in the late 1990s in the northern parts of the Australian Alps in Brindabella National Park, Bimberi Nature Reserve and Burrinjuck Nature Reserve were resurveyed and monitored from 2003-2012. Two research questions were posed: 1) what is the response to high severity fire of vascular plant species found in subalpine, montane and tablelands plant communities? 2) does high severity fire result in significant or permanent change to vascular plant species richness and plant community composition as compared to low severity fire in subalpine, montane and tablelands plant communities and does the recovery rate vary with severity? The fire responses of over 400 vascular plant species in 21 plant communities were documented. There was no loss of plant species from the study areas and all vascular plant species recovered rapidly post-fire, but some fire-killed species exhibited slow recovery rates. Although vegetation structure is affected by fire severity, it is fire severity interacting with fire frequency that has the potential to change vegetation structure in the long term, particularly via the loss of structurally dominant obligate seeder species. The overall trend in vascular plant species richness was an increase in species richness post-fire irrespective of fire severity, with a time since fire decline. Significantly for forest ecosystems, this peak and decline response of vascular plant species richness post-fire is modified and…
author: Doherty, Michael
language: en_AU
date published: 2021
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:07:38Z
provider: Australian Catholic University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian Catholic University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/224564