Temporally-Explicit Models of Fire and Forest

Pollen and charcoal data from varved sediments of Lake Ahvenainen, southern Finland, were examined through ordination analyses to determine temporal groupings of vegetation. The ordination 'continually' changed throughout the pollen profile, indicating nonequilibrium system dynamics. Howev...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Plant ecology 2000-02, Vol.146 (2), p.145-168
Main Authors: Franklin, Scott B., Tolonen, Mirjami
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boreal forests
Chaos theory
Charcoal
Climate change
Correlation analysis
Ecological modeling
Finland
Forest ecology
Forest fires
Lakes
Ordination
Plant ecology
Pollen
Principal components analysis
Taxa
Vegetation
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Summary:Pollen and charcoal data from varved sediments of Lake Ahvenainen, southern Finland, were examined through ordination analyses to determine temporal groupings of vegetation. The ordination 'continually' changed throughout the pollen profile, indicating nonequilibrium system dynamics. However, temporal associations that were stationary existed during the history of vegetation change at Lake Ahvenainen, and these temporal associations were nested in a hierarchy. Weighted averaging regression and calibration were used to model the relationship between fire and vegetation within each temporal association. Fire was significantly related to the vegetation for nearly all temporal associations. Community dynamics within temporal associations were examined with cross-correlation analysis. Taxa were correlated with fire occurrence (charcoal fragments) within the temporal associations and classic successional recovery was confirmed. In addition, two temporal associations showed evidence of chaotic behavior. The long-term pollen-charcoal analysis supported three theories of system dynamics: (1) nonequilibrium long-term dynamics, (2) hierarchical structuring of temporally stationary associations, and (3) chaotic dynamics in stationary associations. These theories are not necessarily contradictory, but are scale dependent.
ISSN:1385-0237
1573-5052
DOI:10.1023/A:1009891610140