Does post fire regeneration change with elevation in a seasonaly dry forest?

VALFRE GIORELLO TATIANA ALEJANDRA; DANIEL RENISON; ROMINA CECILIA TORRES

Halle (Saale) Germany

Congreso; 30th Conference of the Plant Population Biology Section of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland - GfÖ; 2019

Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv).

Fires are a frequent disturbance in seasonally dry forest and could act like a big herbivore producing direct removal of aerial plant biomass, and so affecting forest structure. When fires have a low frequency, post-fire recovery of vegetation may occur, depending on its ability to regenerate from vegetative tissues that remained alive after fire, such as logs or roots, and regeneration by seed or recruitment, whose source may be the seed bank, reproductive structures of unburned vegetation or by seed dispersion. In mountain environments, temperature and humidity given by elevation gradient could influence tree regeneration through fire severity, growth and reproduction. We studied the effect of fire on the seedling and vegetative regeneration of Lithraea molleoides, a dominant tree species in the mountains of central Argentina, along its elevation distribution. In an elevation gradient of 800-1400 m asl, we selected two burned transects and two unburned transects. In 2016, we established seven 900 m2 plots at intervals of 100 m in altitude per gradient, we registered (a) number of resprouted individuals and (b) number of seedlings