Grassland Resilience to Woody Encroachment in North America and the Effectiveness of Using Fire in National Parks

IF 3 Q2 METEOROLOGY & ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
Climate Pub Date : 2023-11-02 DOI:10.3390/cli11110219
Han Ling, Guangyu Wang, Wanli Wu, Anil Shrestha, John L. Innes
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The grasslands of North America are threatened by woody encroachment. Restoring historical fire regimes has been used to manage brush encroachment. However, fire management may be insufficient due to the nonlinear and hysteretic responses of vegetation recovery following encroachment and the social–political constraints affecting fire management. We synthesized the fire thresholds required to control woody encroachment by typical encroaching species in North America, especially the Great Plains region, and identified the social–political constraints facing fire management in selected grassland national parks. Our synthesis revealed the resistance, hysteresis, and irreversibility of encroached grasslands using fire and emphasized the need for a combination of brush management methods if the impacts of climate change are to be addressed. Frequent fires alone may maintain grassland states, reflecting resistance. However, high-intensity fires exceeding fire-mortality thresholds are required to exclude non-resprouting shrubs and trees, indicating hysteresis. Fire alone may be insufficient to reverse encroachment by resprouting species, exhibiting reversibility. In practice, appropriate fire management may restore resistant grassland states. However, social–political constraints have restricted the use of frequent and high-intensity fires, thereby reducing the effectiveness of management actions to control woody encroachment of grasslands in national parks. This research proposes a resilience-based framework to manage woody encroachment in grassland national parks and similar protected areas.
北美草原对木本入侵的恢复力及国家公园使用火的有效性
北美的草原正受到森林侵蚀的威胁。恢复历史上的火灾制度被用来管理灌木丛的入侵。然而,由于入侵后植被恢复的非线性和滞后响应以及影响火灾管理的社会政治约束,火灾管理可能不足。本文综合了北美地区(特别是大平原地区)典型入侵物种控制林地入侵所需的火灾阈值,并确定了特定草原国家公园火灾管理面临的社会政治制约因素。我们的综合揭示了利用火入侵草原的抵抗性、滞后性和不可逆性,并强调了如果要解决气候变化的影响,需要结合灌木管理方法。仅仅频繁的火灾就可以维持草原状态,反映出抵抗。然而,超过火灾死亡率阈值的高强度火灾需要排除非再生灌木和树木,这表明滞后性。单靠火可能不足以逆转再生物种的入侵,表现出可逆性。在实践中,适当的火灾管理可以恢复抵抗草原状态。然而,社会政治的制约限制了频繁和高强度的火灾的使用,从而降低了控制国家公园草原树木侵占的管理行动的有效性。本研究提出了一个基于弹性的框架来管理草原国家公园和类似保护区的树木侵占。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Climate
Climate Earth and Planetary Sciences-Atmospheric Science
CiteScore
5.50
自引率
5.40%
发文量
172
审稿时长
11 weeks
期刊介绍: Climate is an independent, international and multi-disciplinary open access journal focusing on climate processes of the earth, covering all scales and involving modelling and observation methods. The scope of Climate includes: Global climate Regional climate Urban climate Multiscale climate Polar climate Tropical climate Climate downscaling Climate process and sensitivity studies Climate dynamics Climate variability (Interseasonal, interannual to decadal) Feedbacks between local, regional, and global climate change Anthropogenic climate change Climate and monsoon Cloud and precipitation predictions Past, present, and projected climate change Hydroclimate.
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