Initial Succession After Wildfire in Dry Boreal Forests of Northwestern North America
Abstract Wildfires in the boreal forest of North America are generally stand renewing, with the initial phase of vegetation recovery often governing the vegetation trajectory for decades. Here, we investigate post-fire vegetation changes in dry boreal forests of the Northwest Territories, Canada, during the first five years following the unusually severe 2014 wildfire season. We sampled post-fire tree regeneration and the overall plant community at one, three, and five years post-fire across different fire severities and stand types within fires that burned in 2014. Post-fire trajectories of tree recruitment, cover by plant functional types, and plant diversity varied widely among sampled stands, as well as among years post-fire. Tree seedling density reaches relative equilibrium by three years post-fire, whereas trends in understory plant cover and understory species assemblages suggest an ongoing change that will extend beyond five years of observation. In almost half of sampled stands, the composition of recruited trees differs from that of the pre-fire stand, suggesting a change in tree-species dominance. An analysis of regional climate reveals a significant, albeit spatially variable, warming and drying trend that will further accelerate forest-stand transformation through both climate drivers of plant community composition and indirectly through increasing fire activity. While the 2014 wildfires enhanced the structural and compositional heterogeneity of the region, they also triggered vegetation changes that are likely to be persistent. As such, this study exemplifies the speed and variability that characterizes post-fire stand development in a strongly moisture-limited part of North America.