TY - JOUR
T1 - Dendrochronology-based fire history of Pinus nigra forests in Mount Taygetos, Southern Greece
AU - Christopoulou, Anastasia
AU - Fulé, Peter Z.
AU - Andriopoulos, Pavlos
AU - Sarris, Dimitris
AU - Arianoutsou, Margarita
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was financed by the European project FUME (Grant agreement no. 7243888 ). Part of the laboratory analysis has been conducted in the NAU School of Forestry in Flagstaff with financial support from the Ecological Restoration Institute, Northern Arizona University. The authors would like to express their thanks to the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. Dr. Nikos Fyllas has helped with statistical analysis in R. The authors thank the staff of the Forest Service of Kalamata who helped in field work and provided available fire records. Additional thanks to George Seintis for assistance in samples preparation.
PY - 2013/4/1
Y1 - 2013/4/1
N2 - In the past few decades there is an increasing trend of both fire activity and area burned in many regions of the world. Moreover, there is a worldwide concern regarding the increasing presence of crown fires in forest types that were historically prone to surface fires. Among the recently affected mountainous forest ecosystems are those of Pinus nigra, an ecologically and economically important species that is widely distributed around the Mediterranean Basin. Mount Taygetos, a mountainous landscape in Peloponnese, Greece, that was severely burned in 2007, was selected to carry out the first landscape-scale fire history reconstruction in P. nigra of the eastern Mediterranean. The aims of the study were to investigate whether fire-regime attributes can be reconstructed from fire-scarred trees and also to examine the consistency of fire occurrence and spatial extent through time within the area selected. Partial cross-sections were sampled within the perimeters of the more recent known large fires in the region, those of 2007 and 1998. The overall mean fire interval between 1845 and 2007 was 4.9. years, while for the larger fires this time window was 16.2. years. Even at the individual-sample scale, with the sample mean fire interval equaling 29.5. years, the fire frequency still falls within the range of the ''predictable stand-thinning fire'' regime. The majority of fire scars recorded were dated to the warm and dry season of summer to fall. During the last 165. years of fire reconstruction, neither fire frequency nor percentage of trees scarred by fires varied significantly. Nevertheless, the size of the area burned as well as the type of fire seem to have changed, with the 2007 event being the most extended crown fire encountered so far. Our study has provided additional evidence that P. nigra is indeed a fire-resistant tree species provided that it is exposed to surface fires, even if they are recurrently occurring. Shifts from this pattern may lead to local extirpation of the species, as in the case of severe and extended crown fires.
AB - In the past few decades there is an increasing trend of both fire activity and area burned in many regions of the world. Moreover, there is a worldwide concern regarding the increasing presence of crown fires in forest types that were historically prone to surface fires. Among the recently affected mountainous forest ecosystems are those of Pinus nigra, an ecologically and economically important species that is widely distributed around the Mediterranean Basin. Mount Taygetos, a mountainous landscape in Peloponnese, Greece, that was severely burned in 2007, was selected to carry out the first landscape-scale fire history reconstruction in P. nigra of the eastern Mediterranean. The aims of the study were to investigate whether fire-regime attributes can be reconstructed from fire-scarred trees and also to examine the consistency of fire occurrence and spatial extent through time within the area selected. Partial cross-sections were sampled within the perimeters of the more recent known large fires in the region, those of 2007 and 1998. The overall mean fire interval between 1845 and 2007 was 4.9. years, while for the larger fires this time window was 16.2. years. Even at the individual-sample scale, with the sample mean fire interval equaling 29.5. years, the fire frequency still falls within the range of the ''predictable stand-thinning fire'' regime. The majority of fire scars recorded were dated to the warm and dry season of summer to fall. During the last 165. years of fire reconstruction, neither fire frequency nor percentage of trees scarred by fires varied significantly. Nevertheless, the size of the area burned as well as the type of fire seem to have changed, with the 2007 event being the most extended crown fire encountered so far. Our study has provided additional evidence that P. nigra is indeed a fire-resistant tree species provided that it is exposed to surface fires, even if they are recurrently occurring. Shifts from this pattern may lead to local extirpation of the species, as in the case of severe and extended crown fires.
KW - Black pine
KW - Dendrochronology
KW - Fire regime
KW - Mediterranean
KW - Pinus nigra
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U2 - 10.1016/j.foreco.2012.12.048
DO - 10.1016/j.foreco.2012.12.048
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84873102611
SN - 0378-1127
VL - 293
SP - 132
EP - 139
JO - Forest Ecology and Management
JF - Forest Ecology and Management
ER -