Article
Lessons from Four Decades of Monitoring Vegetation and Fire: Maintaining Diversity and Resilience in Florida's Uplands
Ecological Monographs
(2021)
Abstract
Worldwide, humans are altering the fire regimes (fire-return intervals, severity,
seasonality) of fire-prone ecosystems, fragmenting natural landscapes, and altering climates.
Efforts to restore fire regimes in natural areas are usually guided by fire management plans
(FMP) that rely on prescribed burning. Despite the common use of FMPs, limited efforts have
gone to assessing vegetative and faunal responses. While some insights into responses to fire
from short-term studies are available, there is less knowledge about FMP outcomes applied
over multiple decades. Peninsular Florida hosts many fire-prone communities including globally
threatened Florida scrub. We repeatedly sampled species composition and abundance during
a 38-yr period (1977–2015) at 11 upland stands including wet prairies, flatwoods, and
Florida scrub (i.e., oak scrub, rosemary scrub, hickory scrub). A total of 22 fires impacted the
stands with individual stands experiencing as few as 2 and up to 11 fires. There was no invasion
of non-native plants following fires and stands showed remarkable ecological resilience with
limited change in species composition and modest abundance shifts due to differential recovery
rates. Importantly, ecological resilience was not eroded with repeated fire. Species richness,
evenness, and diversity were significantly higher at the end vs. beginning of our study, suggesting
that current fire regimes are within the range of those with which species evolved. While
resprouting shrubs and trees persevered under a range of fire-return intervals, an obligate-seeding
shrub was adversely impacted by fires more frequent than FMP-recommended intervals.
Several lessons are apparent from our findings. Best practice should: use the full range of firereturn
variation at evolutionarily appropriate intervals; utilize natural fire seasons to the extent
possible; compare outcomes and modify prescriptions as necessary to meet FMP goals; give
special consideration to burn units with embedded associations of widely differing fire regimes
than principal associations in order to maintain diversity of both associations; and account for
climate change in FMPs since fire behavior, frequency, and community responses to fire will
likely change in the coming decades. Outcomes of FMPs must be carefully evaluated to ensure
prescriptions are evolutionarily appropriate and to ameliorate the impacts of altered climates.
Keywords
- climate change,
- fire management,
- fire regimes,
- flatwoods,
- Florida scrub,
- geoxyles,
- hickory scrub,
- oak scrub,
- ordination,
- prescription burning,
- rosemary scrub,
- sandhills
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring 2021
Publisher Statement
The Authors. Ecological Monographs published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Ecological Society of America
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and
distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Citation Information
Citation: Abrahamson, W. G., C. R. Abrahamson, and M. A. Keller. 2021. Lessons from four decades of
monitoring vegetation and fire: maintaining diversity and resilience in Florida’s uplands. Ecology 00(00):
e01444. 10.1002/ecm.1444