Repeated fires trap Amazonian blackwater floodplains in an open vegetation state

Journal of Applied Ecology

Volumn 53, Issue 5, 2016, Pages 1597-1603

  Flores, Bernardo M ^a,b   Fagoaga, Raquel ^a   Nelson, Bruce W ^c   Holmgren, Milena ^a  

^a WAGENINGEN UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

^b FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF RIO GRANDE DO NORTE   (Brazil)

^c INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE PESQUISAS DA AMAZÔNIA   (Brazil)

Author keywords

drought; ecological transition; ecosystem shift; El Ni o Southern Oscillation (ENSO); forest succession; igap ; recovery rates; resilience; tropical forests; wetlands

Indexed keywords

ABUNDANCE; BASAL AREA; BIOLOGICAL INVASION; ECOSYSTEM DYNAMICS; ECOSYSTEM RESILIENCE; EL NINO-SOUTHERN OSCILLATION; FIELD SURVEY; FIRE HISTORY; FLOODPLAIN FOREST; FOREST FIRE; HERB; LANDSAT; REGENERATION; SEED BANK; SPECIES DIVERSITY; SPECIES RICHNESS; STAND STRUCTURE; SUCCESSION; TROPICAL FOREST; WETLAND;

AMAZONIA;

EID: 84971283584     PISSN: 00218901     EISSN: 13652664     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12687     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. Acácio, V., Holmgren, M., Jansen, P.A. & Schrotter, O. (2007) Multiple recruitment limitation causes arrested succession in Mediterranean cork oak systems. Ecosystems, 10, 1220–1230.
2. Alencar, A.A., Brando, P.M., Asner, G.P. & Putz, F.E. (2015) Landscape fragmentation, severe drought and the new Amazon forest fire regime. Ecological Applications, 25, 1493–1505.
3. Aragão, L.E. & Shimabukuro, Y.E. (2010) The incidence of fire in Amazonian forests with implications for REDD. Science, 328, 1275–1278.
4. Aragao, L.E.O., Malhi, Y., Roman-Cuesta, R.M., Saatchi, S., Anderson, L.O. & Shimabukuro, Y.E. (2007) Spatial patterns and fire response of recent Amazonian droughts. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, 1–5.
5. Barlow, J. & Peres, C.A. (2004) Ecological responses to El Niño–induced surface fires in central Brazilian Amazonia: management implications for flammable tropical forests. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 359, 367–380.
6. Barlow, J. & Peres, C.A. (2008) Fire-mediated dieback and compositional cascade in an Amazonian forest. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363, 1787–1794.
7. Barlow, J., Parry, L., Gardner, T.A., Ferreira, J., Arãgao, L.E., Carmenta, R. et al. (2012) The critical importance of considering fire in REDD+ programs. Biological Conservation, 154, 1–8.
8. Bond, W.J. (2008) What limits trees in C4 grasslands and savannas? Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 39, 641–659.
9. Bond, W.J. & Midgley, J.J. (2001) Ecology of sprouting in woody plants: the persistence niche. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 16, 45–51.
10. Bond, W.J., Woodward, F.I. & Midgley, G.F. (2005) The global distribution of ecosystems in a world without fire. New Phytologist, 165, 525–538.
11. Brando, P.M., Nepstad, D.C., Balch, J.K., Bolker, B., Christman, M.C., Coe, M. & Putz, F.E. (2012) Fire-induced tree mortality in a neotropical forest: the roles of bark traits, tree size, wood density and fire behavior. Global Change Biology, 18, 630–641.
12. Brown, S. & Lugo, A.E. (1990) Tropical secondary forests. Journal of Tropical Ecology, 6, 1–32.
13. Cai, W., Borlace, S., Lengaigne, M., van Rensch, P., Collins, M., Vecchi, G. et al. (2014) Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming. Nature Climate Change, 4, 111–116.
14. Chazdon, R.L. (2014) Second Growth: The Promise of Tropical Forest Regeneration in an Age of Deforestation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
15. Chen, Y., Randerson, J.T., Morton, D.C., DeFries, R.S., Collatz, G.J., Kasibhatla, P.S., Giglio, G., Jin, Y. & Marlier, M.E. (2011) Forecasting fire season severity in South America using sea surface temperature anomalies. Science, 334, 787–791.
16. Dantas, V.D.L., Batalha, M.A. & Pausas, J.G. (2013) Fire drives functional thresholds on the savanna-forest transition. Ecology, 94, 2454–2463.
17. Dantas, V.D.L., Hirota, M., Oliveira, R.S. & Pausas, J.G. (2016) Disturbance maintains alternative biome states. Ecology Letters, 19, 12–19.
18. Fletcher, M.S., Wood, S.W. & Haberle, S.G. (2014) A fire-driven shift from forest to non-forest: evidence for alternative stable states? Ecology, 95, 2504–2513.
19. Flores, B.M., Piedade, M.T.F. & Nelson, B.W. (2014) Fire disturbance in Amazonian blackwater floodplain forests. Plant Ecology and Diversity, 7, 319–327.
20. Gehring, C., Denich, M. & Vlek, P.L. (2005) Resilience of secondary forest regrowth after slash-and-burn agriculture in central Amazonia. Journal of Tropical Ecology, 21, 519–527.
21. Grace, J., Mitchard, E. & Gloor, E. (2014) Perturbations in the carbon budget of the tropics. Global Change Biology, 20, 3238–3255.
22. Grady, J.M. & Hoffmann, W.A. (2012) Caught in a fire trap: recurring fire creates stable size equilibria in woody resprouters. Ecology, 93, 2052–2060.
23. Guariguata, M.R. & Ostertag, R. (2001) Neotropical secondary forest succession: changes in structural and functional characteristics. Forest Ecology and Management, 148, 185–206.
24. Henderson, P.A. (1990) Fish of the Amazonian Igapó: stability and conservation in a high diversity-low biomass system. Journal of Fish Biology, 37, 1–66.
25. Hoffmann, W.A. (1998) Post-burn reproduction of woody plants in a neotropical savanna: the relative importance of sexual and vegetative reproduction. Journal of Applied Ecology, 35, 422–433.
26. Hoffmann, W.A., Orthen, B. & Franco, A.C. (2004) Constraints to seedling success of savanna and forest trees across the savanna-forest boundary. Oecologia, 140, 252–260.
27. Hoffmann, W.A., Adasme, R., Haridasan, M., de Carvalho, M.T., Geiger, E.L., Pereira, M.A., Gotsch, S.G. & Franco, A.C. (2009) Tree topkill, not mortality, governs the dynamics of savanna-forest boundaries under frequent fire in central Brazil. Ecology, 90, 1326–1337.
28. Hoffmann, W.A., Geiger, E.L., Gotsch, S.G., Rossatto, D.R., Silva, L.C., Lau, O.L., Haridasan, M. & Franco, A.C. (2012) Ecological thresholds at the savanna-forest boundary: how plant traits, resources and fire govern the distribution of tropical biomes. Ecology Letters, 15, 759–768.
29. Holmgren, M., Scheffer, M., Ezcurra, E., Gutiérrez, J.R. & Mohren, G.M.J. (2001) El Niño effects on the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 16, 89–94.
30. Holmgren, M., Hirota, M., van Nes, E.H. & Scheffer, M. (2013) Effects of inter-annual climate variability on tropical tree cover. Nature Climate Change, 3, 755–758.
31. Jakovac, A.C.C., Peña-Claros, M., Kuyper, T.M. & Bongers, F. (2015) Loss of secondary-forest resilience by land-use intensification in the Amazon. Journal of Ecology, 103, 67–77.
32. Junk, W.J., Piedade, M.T.F., Schöngart, J., Cohn-Haft, M., Adeney, J.M. & Wittmann, F. (2011) A classification of major naturally-occurring Amazonian lowland wetlands. Wetlands, 31, 623–640.
33. Kauffman, J.B. (1991) Survival by sprouting following fire in tropical forests of the eastern Amazon. Biotropica, 23, 219–224.
34. Kauffman, J.B., Cummings, D.L., Ward, D.E. & Babbitt, R. (1995) Fire in the Brazilian Amazon: 1. Biomass, nutrient pools, and losses in slashed primary forests. Oecologia, 104, 397–408.
35. Kennard, D.K., Gould, K., Putz, F.E., Fredericksen, T.S. & Morales, F. (2002) Effect of disturbance intensity on regeneration mechanisms in a tropical dry forest. Forest Ecology and Management, 162, 197–208.
36. Kubitzki, K. & Ziburski, A. (1994) Seed dispersal in flood plain forests of Amazonia. Biotropica, 26, 30–43.
37. Lähteenoja, O., Flores, B.M. & Nelson, B.W. (2013) Tropical peat accumulation in central Amazonia. Wetlands, 33, 495–503.
38. Lehmann, C.E., Archibald, S.A., Hoffmann, W.A. & Bond, W.J. (2011) Deciphering the distribution of the savanna biome. New Phytologist, 191, 197–209.
39. Maracahipes, L., Marimon, B.S., Lenza, E., Marimon-Junior, B.H., de Oliveira, E.A., Mews, H.A., Gomes, L. & Feldpausch, T.R. (2014) Post-fire dynamics of woody vegetation in seasonally flooded forests (impucas) in the Cerrado-Amazonian Forest transition zone. Flora-Morphology, Distribution, Functional Ecology of Plants, 209, 260–270.
40. Mesquita, R.C., Ickes, K., Ganade, G. & Williamson, G.B. (2001) Alternative successional pathways in the Amazon Basin. Journal of Ecology, 89, 528–537.
41. Murphy, B.P. & Bowman, D.M. (2012) What controls the distribution of tropical forest and savanna? Ecology Letters, 15, 748–758.
42. Nepstad, D.C., Uhl, C., Pereira, C.A. & da Silva, J.M.C. (1996) A comparative study of tree establishment in abandoned pasture and mature forest of eastern Amazonia. Oikos, 76, 25–39.
43. Page, S.E., Siegert, F., Rieley, J.O., Boehm, H.D.V., Jaya, A. & Limin, S. (2002) The amount of carbon released from peat and forest fires in Indonesia during 1997. Nature, 420, 61–65.
44. Pausas, J.G. & Bradstock, R.A. (2007) Fire persistence traits of plants along a productivity and disturbance gradient in mediterranean shrublands of south-east Australia. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 16, 330–340.
45. Resende, A.F., Nelson, B.W., Flores, B.M. & Almeida, D.R. (2014) Fire damage in seasonally flooded and upland forests of the central Amazon. Biotropica, 46, 643–646.
46. Ritter, C.D., Andretti, C.B. & Nelson, B.W. (2012) Impact of past forest fires on bird populations in flooded forests of the Cuini River in the Lowland Amazon. Biotropica, 44, 449–453.
47. Saint-Paul, U., Zuanon, J., Correa, M.A.V., Garcia, M., Fabré, N.N., Berger, U. & Junk, W.J. (2000) Fish communities in central Amazonian white- and blackwater floodplains. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 57, 235–250.
48. Saldarriaga, J.G., West, D.C., Tharp, M.L. & Uhl, C. (1988) Long-term chronosequence of forest succession in the upper Rio Negro of Colombia and Venezuela. Journal of Ecology, 76, 938–958.
49. Sankaran, M., Ratnam, J. & Hanan, N.P. (2004) Tree–grass coexistence in savannas revisited–insights from an examination of assumptions and mechanisms invoked in existing models. Ecology Letters, 7, 480–490.
50. Sankaran, M., Hanan, N.P., Scholes, R.J., Ratnam, J., Augustine, D.J., Cade, B.S., et al. (2005) Determinants of woody cover in African savannas. Nature, 438, 846–849.
51. dos Santos, A.R. & Nelson, B.W. (2013) Leaf decomposition and fine fuels in floodplain forests of the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon. Journal of Tropical Ecology, 29, 455–458.
52. Schöngart, J. & Wittmann, F. (2010) Biomass and net primary production of Central Amazonian floodplain forests. Amazonian Floodplain Forests: Ecophysiology, Biodiversity and Sustainable Management (eds W.J. Junk, M.T.F. Piedade, F. Wittmann, J. Schöngart & P. Parolin), pp. 347–388, Ecological Studies 210. Springer Science & Business Media, Dordrecht, the Netherlands.
53. Shakesby, R.A. & Doerr, S.H. (2006) Wildfire as a hydrological and geomorphological agent. Earth-Science Reviews, 74, 269–307.
54. Silva, L.C., Hoffmann, W.A., Rossatto, D.R., Haridasan, M., Franco, A.C. & Horwath, W.R. (2013) Can savannas become forests? A coupled analysis of nutrient stocks and fire thresholds in central Brazil. Plant and Soil, 373, 829–842.
55. Singer, R. & Araujo-Aguiar, I. (1986) Litter decomposing and ectomycorrhizal Basidiomycetes in an igapó forest. Plant Systematics and Evolution, 153, 107–117.
56. Staal, A., Flores, B.M. Sharp ecotones spark sharp ideas: comment on “Structural, physiognomic and above-ground biomass variation in savanna–forest transition zones on three continents – how different are co-occurring savanna and forest formations?” by Veenendaal, et al. (2015) 2015. Biogeosciences, 12, 5563-5566.
57. Stark, N. & Jordan, C.F. (1978) Nutrient retention by the root mat of an Amazonian rain forest. Ecology, 59, 434–437.
58. Staver, C., Archibald, S. & Levin, S.A. (2011) The global extent and determinants of savanna and forest as alternative biome states. Science, 334, 230–232.
59. Uhl, C. (1987) Factors controlling succession following slash-and-burn agriculture in Amazonia. Journal of Ecology, 75, 377–407.
60. Uhl, C. & Kauffman, J.B. (1990) Deforestation, fire susceptibility, and potential tree responses to fire in the eastern Amazon. Ecology, 71, 437–449.
61. Vargas, R., Allen, M.F. & Allen, E.B. (2008) Biomass and carbon accumulation in a fire chronosequence of a seasonally dry tropical forest. Global Change Biology, 14, 109–124.
62. Veldman, J.W. & Putz, F.E. (2011) Grass-dominated vegetation, not species-diverse natural savanna, replaces degraded tropical forests on the southern edge of the Amazon Basin. Biological Conservation, 144, 1419–1429.
63. Venables, W.N. & Smith, D.M. (2011) The R Development Core Team 2011. An Introduction to R, Version, 2, 4–13.
64. Williamson, G.B., Bentos, T.V., Longworth, J.B. & Mesquita, R.C. (2014) Convergence and divergence in alternative successional pathways in Central Amazonia. Plant Ecology & Diversity, 7, 341–348.
65. Young, K.R., Ewel, J.J. & Brown, B.J. (1987) Seed dynamics during forest succession in Costa Rica. Vegetatio, 71, 157–173.