Articles | Volume 15, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1173-2018
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-1173-2018
Research article
 | 
27 Feb 2018
Research article |  | 27 Feb 2018

Fire intensity impacts on post-fire temperate coniferous forest net primary productivity

Aaron M. Sparks, Crystal A. Kolden, Alistair M. S. Smith, Luigi Boschetti, Daniel M. Johnson, and Mark A. Cochrane

Abstract. Fire is a dynamic ecological process in forests and impacts the carbon (C) cycle through direct combustion emissions, tree mortality, and by impairing the ability of surviving trees to sequester carbon. While studies on young trees have demonstrated that fire intensity is a determinant of post-fire net primary productivity, wildland fires on landscape to regional scales have largely been assumed to either cause tree mortality, or conversely, cause no physiological impact, ignoring the impacted but surviving trees. Our objective was to understand how fire intensity affects post-fire net primary productivity in conifer-dominated forested ecosystems on the spatial scale of large wildland fires. We examined the relationships between fire radiative power (FRP), its temporal integral (fire radiative energy – FRE), and net primary productivity (NPP) using 16 years of data from the MOderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) for 15 large fires in western United States coniferous forests. The greatest NPP post-fire loss occurred 1 year post-fire and ranged from −67 to −312 g C m−2 yr−1 (−13 to −54 %) across all fires. Forests dominated by fire-resistant species (species that typically survive low-intensity fires) experienced the lowest relative NPP reductions compared to forests with less resistant species. Post-fire NPP in forests that were dominated by fire-susceptible species were not as sensitive to FRP or FRE, indicating that NPP in these forests may be reduced to similar levels regardless of fire intensity. Conversely, post-fire NPP in forests dominated by fire-resistant and mixed species decreased with increasing FRP or FRE. In some cases, this dose–response relationship persisted for more than a decade post-fire, highlighting a legacy effect of fire intensity on post-fire C dynamics in these forests.

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Short summary
Through landscape-scale satellite observations we demonstrate that fire intensity has a dose–response relationship with temperate forest net primary productivity. Increasing fire intensity resulted in persisting step-wise reductions in post-fire net primary productivity. Forests with higher proportions of fire-resistant species generally had lower reductions in post-fire net primary productivity. A conceptual framework for assessing spatiotemporal post-fire effects is presented.
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