A large-scale fire suppression edge-effect on forest composition in the New Jersey Pinelands
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
A large-scale fire suppression edge-effect on forest composition in the New Jersey Pinelands Inga P. La Puma • Richard G. Lathrop Jr. Nicholas S. Keuler
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Received: 17 December 2012 / Accepted: 29 July 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract Broad scale ecological edge-effects are most likely common in urbanized landscapes prone to wildfire, but most edge-effect studies have focused on fine scale processes such as shade tolerance and seed dispersal. Evidence has suggested a shift from pine dominated to oak dominated forests at the interface of developed land and natural areas in the Pinelands of New Jersey with the presence of a large edge-effect due to fire suppression. The goal of this study was to assess the location, magnitude and mechanism of the shift from pine to oak cover focusing on distance to humanaltered land as the driver of fire suppression and forest composition changes. Overall, fire frequency and upland pine cover decreased sharply closer to humanaltered land and affected up to 420 m of adjacent
upland forest. Other factors, such as prescribed fire and wetlands configurations may play a role in the interior forest dynamics, but trends toward lower upland pine forest cover and higher upland oak cover near human altered were dominant. The areal summations of distance from altered land and the use of percent change thresholds for determining the scale and magnitude of large scale ecological edge-effects could be useful to managers attempting to maintain or restore forest types in areas of high wildland–urban interface. Keywords Edge-effect Wildfire Forest ecology Succession Wildland–urban interface New Jersey Pinelands
Introduction Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10980-013-9924-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. I. P. La Puma (&) Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA e-mail: [email protected] R. G. Lathrop Jr. Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis, Department of Environmental and Natural Resources, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA N. S. Keuler Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Human created edges between forested and nonforested land have long been acknowledged as drivers of ecosystem change along this interface (Murcia 1995). Edges are typically associated with variations in shade tolerance, seed dispersal, and animal browsing (Cadenasso and Pickett 2001; Alverson et al. 2005). Thresholds of change in forests from human created edge-effects on adjacent natural areas and ecosystems have typically been measured on the order of meters along transects (Harper and Macdonald 2011). Measurement and determination of larger types of edges at relevant scales has not been the central focus of edge-effect research, although such research
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Landscape Ecol
has been called for (Sih et al. 2000; Cumming et al. 2013). Insects, soil composition, land
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