Does inherent flammability of grass and litter fuels contribute to continental patterns of landscape fire activity?

Journal of Biogeography

Volumn 44, Issue 6, 2017, Pages 1225-1238

  Prior, Lynda D ^a   Murphy, Brett P ^b   Williamson, Grant J ^a   Cochrane, Mark A ^c   Jolly, W Matt ^d   Bowman, David M J S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA   (Australia)

^b CHARLES DARWIN UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

^c SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^d ROCKY MOUNTAIN RESEARCH STATION   (United States)

Author keywords

Australia; biogeographical patterns; fire frequency; fire intensity; fire radiative power; grass fuels; litter fuels; MODIS active fire detections; pyrogeography

Indexed keywords

ABUNDANCE; BIOFUEL; BIOGEOGRAPHY; COMBUSTION; FIRE; GRASS; LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY; LITTER; MODIS; PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTY; PHYTOMASS; SATELLITE DATA; SUSTAINABILITY; TEMPERATE ENVIRONMENT; TRADE-OFF;

AUSTRALIA;

EID: 84991759041     PISSN: 03050270     EISSN: 13652699     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/jbi.12889     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Alessio, G.A., Penuelas, J., Llusia, J., Ogaya, R., Estiarte, M. & De Lillis, M. (2008) Influence of water and terpenes on flammability in some dominant Mediterranean species. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 17, 274–286.
2. Anderson, H.E. (1970) Forest fuel ignitibility. Fire Technology, 6, 312–319.
3. Asner, G.P., Elmore, A.J., Olander, L.P., Martin, R.E. & Harris, A.T. (2004) Grazing systems, ecosystem responses, and global change. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 29, 261–299.
4. Bell, T., Tolhurst, K. & Wouters, M. (2005) Effects of the fire retardant Phos-Chek on vegetation in eastern Australian heathlands. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 14, 199–211.
5. Bowman, D.M.J.S. & Wilson, B.A. (1988) Fuel characteristics of coastal monsoon forests, Northern Territory, Australia. Journal of Biogeography, 15, 807–817.
6. Bowman, D.M.J.S., French, B.J. & Prior, L.D. (2014a) Have plants evolved to self-immolate? Frontiers in Plant Science, 5, Article 590.
7. Bowman, D.M.J.S., MacDermott, H.J., Nichols, S.C. & Murphy, B.P. (2014b) A grass-fire cycle eliminates an obligate-seeding tree in a tropical savanna. Ecology and Evolution, 4, 4185–4194.
8. Bradstock, R.A. (2010) A biogeographic model of fire regimes in Australia: current and future implications. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19, 145–158.
9. Bradstock, R.A. & Auld, T.D. (1995) Soil temperatures during experimental bushfires in relation to fire intensity – consequences for legume germination and fire management in south-eastern Australia. Journal of Applied Ecology, 32, 76–84.
10. Burnham, K.P. & Anderson, D.R. (2002) Model selection and multimodel inference. A practical information-theoretic approach, 2nd edn. Springer, New York.
11. Burrows, N.D. & Ward, B. (2009) Fuel dynamics and fire spread in spinifex grasslands of the Western Desert. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland, 115, 69–76.
12. Clarke, P.J., Prior, L.D., French, B.J., Vincent, B., Knox, K.J.E. & Bowman, D.M.J.S. (2014) Using a rainforest-flame forest mosaic to test the hypothesis that leaf and litter fuel flammability is under natural selection. Oecologia, 176, 1123–1133.
13. Collins, L., Penman, T.D., Price, O.F. & Bradstock, R.A. (2015) Adding fuel to the fire? Revegetation influences wildfire size and intensity. Journal of Environmental Management, 150, 196–205.
14. Cornwell, W.K., Elvira, A., van Kempen, L., van Logtestijn, R.S.P., Aptroot, A. & Cornelissen, J.H.C. (2015) Flammability across the gymnosperm phylogeny: the importance of litter particle size. New Phytologist, 206, 672–681.
15. Curt, T., Schaffhauser, A., Borgniet, L., Dumas, C., Esteve, R., Ganteaume, A., Jappiot, M., Martin, W., N'Diaye, A. & Poilvet, B. (2011) Litter flammability in oak woodlands and shrublands of southeastern France. Forest Ecology and Management, 261, 2214–2222.
16. D'Antonio, C.M. & Vitousek, P.M. (1992) Biological invasions by exotic grasses, the grass/fire cycle, and global change. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 23, 63–87.
17. De Lillis, M., Bianco, P.M. & Loreto, F. (2009) The influence of leaf water content and isoprenoids on flammability of some Mediterranean woody species. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 18, 203–212.
18. de Magalhães, R.M.Q. & Schwilk, D.W. (2012) Leaf traits and litter flammability: evidence for non-additive mixture effects in a temperate forest. Journal of Ecology, 100, 1153–1163.
19. Department of the Environment (2012) Australia – Present Major Vegetation Groups – NVIS Version 4.1. Australian Government, Canberra. Available at: http://www.environment.gov.au/land/native-vegetation/national-vegetation-information-system. Accessed 14 September 2016.
20. Dowdy, A.J., Mills, G.A., Finkele, K. & de Groot, W. (2009) Australian fire weather as represented by the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index and the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index. Technical Report No. 10. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Melbourne.
21. Frejaville, T., Curt, T. & Carcaillet, C. (2013) Bark flammability as a fire-response trait for subalpine trees. Frontiers in Plant Science, 4, article 466.
22. Ganteaume, A., Marielle, J., Corinne, L.M., Thomas, C. & Laurent, B. (2009) Fuel characterization and effects of wildfire recurrence on vegetation structure on limestone soils in southeastern France. Forest Ecology and Management, 258, S15–S23.
23. Ganteaume, A., Jappiot, M., Curt, T., Lampin, C. & Borgniet, L. (2014) Flammability of litter sampled according to two different methods: comparison of results in laboratory experiments. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 23, 1061–1075.
24. Gibson, R.K., Bradstock, R.A., Penman, T., Keith, D.A. & Driscoll, D.A. (2015) Climatic, vegetation and edaphic influences on the probability of fire across mediterranean woodlands of south-eastern Australia. Journal of Biogeography, 42, 1750–1760.
25. Giglio, L., Csiszar, I. & Justice, C.O. (2006) Global distribution and seasonality of active fires as observed with the Terra and Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 111, article G02016.
26. Gill, A.M. & Moore, P.H.R. (1996) Ignitability of leaves of Australian Plants. CSIRO, Canberra.
27. Gill, A.M. & Zylstra, P. (2005) Flammability of Australian forests. Australian Forestry, 68, 87–93.
28. Hijmans, R.J., Cameron, S.E., Parra, J.L., Jones, P.G. & Jarvis, A. (2005) Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology, 25, 1965–1978.
29. Hoffmann, W.A., Jaconis, S., McKinley, K.L., Geiger, E.L., Gotsch, S.G. & Franco, A.C. (2012) Fuels or microclimate? Understanding the drivers of fire feedbacks at savanna-forest boundaries. Austral Ecology, 37, 634–643.
30. Jaureguiberry, P., Bertone, G. & Diaz, S. (2011) Device for the standard measurement of shoot flammability in the field. Austral Ecology, 36, 821–829.
31. Kottek, M., Grieser, J., Beck, C., Rudolf, B. & Rubel, F. (2006) World map of the Koppen-Geiger climate classification updated. Meteorologische Zeitschrift, 15, 259–263.
32. Krawchuk, M.A. & Moritz, M.A. (2011) Constraints on global fire activity vary across a resource gradient. Ecology, 92, 121–132.
33. Kuo, S. (1996) Phosphorus. Soil analysis, part 3: chemical methods (ed. by D. Sparks, A. Page, P. Helmke and R. Loeppert), pp. 869–919. Soil Science Society of America, Madison, WI.
34. Murphy, B.P., Bradstock, R.A., Boer, M.M., Carter, J., Cary, G.J., Cochrane, M.A., Fensham, R.J., Russell-Smith, J., Williamson, G.J. & Bowman, D. (2013) Fire regimes of Australia: a pyrogeographic model system. Journal of Biogeography, 40, 1048–1058.
35. Mutch, R.W. (1970) Wildland fires and ecosystems – a hypothesis. Ecology, 51, 1046–1051.
36. Noble, I.R., Bary, G.A.V. & Gill, A.M. (1980) McArthur fire-danger meters expressed as equations. Australian Journal of Ecology, 5, 201–203.
37. Orians, G.H. & Milewski, A.V. (2007) Ecology of Australia: the effects of nutrient-poor soils and intense fires. Biological Reviews, 82, 393–423.
38. Ormeño, E., Cespedes, B., Sanchez, I.A., Velasco-Garcia, A., Moreno, J.M., Fernandez, C. & Baldy, V. (2009) The relationship between terpenes and flammability of leaf litter. Forest Ecology and Management, 257, 471–482.
39. Parisien, M.A., Parks, S.A., Krawchuk, M.A., Little, J.M., Flannigan, M.D., Gowman, L.M. & Moritz, M.A. (2014) An analysis of controls on fire activity in boreal Canada: comparing models built with different temporal resolutions. Ecological Applications, 24, 1341–1356.
40. Pausas, J.G. & Ribeiro, E. (2013) The global fire-productivity relationship. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 22, 728–736.
41. Pettinari, M.L. & Chuvieco, E. (2015) Generation of a global fuel dataset using the Fuel Characteristic Classification System. Biogeosciences Discussions, 12, 17245–17284.
42. Plucinski, M.P. & Anderson, W.R. (2008) Laboratory determination of factors influencing successful point ignition in the litter layer of shrubland vegetation. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 17, 328–637.
43. Quinn, G.P. & Keogh, M.J. (2002) Experimental design and data analysis for biologists. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
44. R Core Team (2015) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
45. Richards, S.A. (2005) Testing ecological theory using the information-theoretic approach: examples and cautionary results. Ecology, 86, 2805–2814.
46. Roy, D.P. & Boschetti, L. (2009) Southern Africa validation of the MODIS, L3JRC, and GlobCarbon burned-area products. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 47, 1032–1044.
47. Russell-Smith, J., Yates, C.P., Whitehead, P.J., Smith, R., Craig, R., Allan, G.E., Thackway, R., Frakes, I., Cridland, S., Meyer, M.C.P. & Gill, M. (2007) Bushfires ‘down under’: patterns and implications of contemporary Australian landscape burning. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 16, 361–377.
48. Scarff, F.R. & Westoby, M. (2006) Leaf litter flammability in some semi-arid Australian woodlands. Functional Ecology, 20, 745–752.
49. Scarff, F.R., Gray, B.F. & Westoby, M. (2012) Exploring phosphate effects on leaf flammability using a physical chemistry model. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 21, 1042–1051.
50. Schwilk, D.W. (2015) Dimensions of plant flammability. New Phytologist, 206, 486–488.
51. Simpson, K.J., Ripley, B.S., Christin, P.-A., Belcher, C.M., Lehmann, C.E.R., Thomas, G.H. & Osborne, C.P. (2016) Determinants of flammability in savanna grass species. Journal of Ecology, 104, 138–148.
52. Stoof, C.R., Moore, D., Fernandes, P.M., Stoorvogel, J.J., Fernandes, R.E.S., Ferreira, A.J.D. & Ritsema, C.J. (2013) Hot fire, cool soil. Geophysical Research Letters, 40, 1534–1539.
53. Varner, J.M., Kane, J.M., Kreye, J.K. & Engber, E. (2015) The flammability of forest and woodland litter: a synthesis. Current Forestry Reports, 1, 91–99.
54. White, R.H. & Zipperer, W.C. (2010) Testing and classification of individual plants for fire behaviour: plant selection for the wildland-urban interface. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 19, 213–227.
55. Williamson, G.J., Prior, L.D., Jolly, W.M., Cochrane, M.A., Murphy, B.P. & Bowman, D.M.J.S. (2016) Measurement of inter- and intra-annual variability of landscape fire activity at a continental scale: the Australian case. Environmental Research Letters, 11, 035003.
56. Woinarski, J.C.Z., Williams, R.J., Price, O. & Rankmore, B. (2005) Landscapes without boundaries: wildlife and their environments in northern Australia. Wildlife Research, 32, 377–388.
57. Wyse, S.V., Perry, G.L.W., O'Connell, D.M., Holland, P.S., Wright, M.J., Hosted, C.L., Whitelock, S.L., Geary, I.J., Maurin, K.J.L. & Curran, T.J. (2016) A quantitative assessment of shoot flammability for 60 tree and shrub species supports rankings based on expert opinion. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 25, 466–477.