Perspectives on biotic responses to repeated wildfires from decades of long-term empirical studies

2022 ◽  
Vol preprint (2022) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lindenmayer ◽  
Elle Bowd ◽  
Chris MacGregor ◽  
Lachlan McBurney
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Fire Severity ◽  
Salvage Logging ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Ecosystem Condition ◽  
Long Term Monitoring ◽  
Term Monitoring ◽  
Long Term Studies

ABSTRACT Fire can have marked impacts on biodiversity and on ecosystem condition. However, it is the sequence of multiple fires over a prolonged period of time which can have the most marked effects on biodiversity and on ecosystem condition. A good understanding of these effects comes from long-term studies. In this article we outline some of the key perspectives on the effects of fire on ecosystems and biodiversity from two large-scale, long-term monitoring studies in south-eastern Australia. These are studies in the montane ash forests of the Central Highlands of Victoria and at Booderee National Park in the Jervis Bay Territory. These studies have shown that the effects of fires are strongly influenced by: (1) The condition of an ecosystem before a fire (e.g. the age of a forest at the time it is burnt). (2) Conditions after the fire such as the extent of herbivory in regenerating vegetation and whether the ecosystem is subject to post-fire (salvage) logging. (3) Fire history (e.g. the number of past fires and the time since the previous fire). And, (4) Interactions between fire and other ecosystem drivers such as logging. We discuss some of the key implications for conservation and resource management that arise from these studies including the need to: (a) Reduce the number of stressors in some ecosystems to facilitate post-fire recovery. (b) Recognize that pre-fire human disturbances can elevate fire severity in some forest ecosystems, with corresponding negative effects on elements of the biota, and, (c) Acknowledge the inherent patchiness of wildfires and the value of unburnt areas and places burnt at low severity as critical refugia for some species; it is critical that these locations are managed accordingly (e.g. by limited additional disturbances within them). Finally, many of the insights discussed in this article have emerged only through long-term studies. More long-term monitoring and research is needed to truly understand and better manage fire in Australian ecosystems.

Salvage harvesting – past lessons and future issues

2006 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lindenmayer
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Natural Disturbance ◽  
Forest Planning ◽  
Salvage Logging ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Natural Resource Managers ◽  
Salvage Harvesting

The increasing prevalence and/or increasing intensity of large-scale natural disturbance events in forests means that post-disturbance salvage logging is becoming more widespread. Salvage logging can have a wide range of environmental impacts, but some of these are not well known or not well understood by policy makers and natural resource managers. Some of these impacts are briefly summarized in this paper. Improved long-term forest planning needs to be embraced that takes into account the not only the environmental but also the social and environmental impacts of salvage harvesting. Past mistakes and future opportunities associated with salvage harvesting are illustrated by a case study from the Lower Cotter Catchment in south-eastern Australia. Key words: salvage harvesting, natural disturbance, environmental impacts, ecologically sustainable forestry, forest planning, long-term forest sustainability

Large-scale, long-term monitoring of Caribbean coral reefs: Simple, quick, inexpensive techniques

1994 ◽  
Vol 421 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Aronson ◽  
P. J. Edmunds ◽  
W. F. Precht ◽  
D. W. Swanson ◽  
D. R. Levitan
Keyword(s):  
Coral Reefs ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Caribbean Coral ◽  
Caribbean Coral Reefs ◽  
Long Term Monitoring ◽  
Term Monitoring

scholarly journals The Italian TREETALKER NETWORK (ITT-Net): continuous large scale monitoring of tree functional traits and vulnerabilities to climate change

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Castaldi ◽  
Serena Antonucci ◽  
Shahla Asgharina ◽  
Giovanna Battipaglia ◽  
Luca Belelli Marchesini ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Real Time ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Operation Mode ◽  
Cloud Services ◽  
Long Term Monitoring ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Term Monitoring

<p>The  <strong>Italian TREETALKER NETWORK (ITT-Net) </strong>aims to respond to one of the grand societal challenges: the impact of climate changes on forests ecosystem services and forest dieback. The comprehension of the link between these phenomena requires to complement the most classical approaches with a new monitoring paradigm based on large scale, single tree, high frequency and long-term monitoring tree physiology, which, at present, is limited by the still elevated costs of multi-sensor devices, their energy demand and maintenance not always suitable for monitoring in remote areas. The ITT-Net network will be a unique and unprecedented worldwide example of real time, large scale, high frequency and long-term monitoring of tree physiological parameters. By spring 2020, as part of a national funded project (PRIN) the network will have set 37 sites from the north-east Alps to Sicily where a new low cost, multisensor technology “the TreeTalker®” equipped to measure tree radial growth, sap flow, transmitted light spectral components related to foliage dieback and physiology and plant stability (developed by Nature 4.0), will monitor over 600 individual trees. A radio LoRa protocol for data transmission and access to cloud services will allow to transmit in real time high frequency data on the WEB cloud with a unique IoT identifier to a common database where big data analysis will be performed to explore the causal dependency of climate events and environmental disturbances with tree functionality and resilience.</p><p>With this new network, we aim to create a new knowledge, introducing a massive data observation and analysis, about the frequency, intensity and dynamical patterns of climate anomalies perturbation on plant physiological response dynamics in order to: 1) characterize the space of “normal or safe tree operation mode” during average climatic conditions; 2) identify the non-linear tree responses beyond the safe operation mode, induced by extreme events, and the tipping points; 3) test the possibility to use a high frequency continuous monitoring system to identify early warning signals of tree stress which might allow to follow tree dynamics under climate change in real time at a resolution and accuracy that cannot always be provided through forest inventories or remote sensing technologies.</p><p>To have an overview of the ITT Network you can visit www.globaltreetalker.org</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Evaluation of the Continuous Monitoring of Land Disturbance Algorithm for Large-Scale Mangrove Classification

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 3978
Author(s):  
Katie Awty-Carroll ◽  
Pete Bunting ◽  
Andy Hardy ◽  
Gemma Bell
Keyword(s):  
Continuous Monitoring ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Mangrove Forests ◽  
Mangrove Species ◽  
Land Disturbance ◽  
Long Term Monitoring ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Term Monitoring

Mangrove forests are of high biological, economic, and ecological importance globally. Growing within the intertidal zone, they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change in addition to being threatened on local scales by over-exploitation and aquaculture expansion. Long-term monitoring of global mangrove populations is therefore highly important to understanding the impact of these threats. However, data availability from satellites is often limited due to cloud cover. This problem can be mitigated using a season-trend modelling approach such as Continuous Monitoring of Land Disturbance (COLD). COLD operates by using every available observation on a pixel-wise basis, removing the need for whole cloud free images. The approach can be used to better classify land cover by taking into account the underlying seasonal variability, and can also be used to extrapolate between data points to obtain more accurate long term trends. To demonstrate the utility of COLD for global mangrove monitoring, we applied it to five study sites chosen to represent a range of mangrove species, forest types, and quantities of available data. The COLD classifier was trained on the Global Mangrove Watch 2010 dataset and applied to 30 years of Landsat data for each site. By increasing the period between model updates, COLD was successfully applied to all five sites (2253 scenes) in less than four days. The method achieved an overall accuracy of 92% with a User’s accuracy of 77% and a Dice score of 0.84 for the mangrove class. The lowest User’s accuracy was for North Kalimantan (49.9%) due to confusion with mangrove palms. However, the method performed extremely well for the Niger Delta from the 2000s onwards (93.6%) despite the absence of any Landsat 5 data. Observation of trends in mangrove extent over time suggests that the method was able to accurately capture changes in extent caused by the 2014/15 mangrove die-back event in the Gulf of Carpentaria and highlighted a net loss of mangroves in the Matang Forest Reserve over the last two decades, despite ongoing management. COLD is therefore a promising methodology for global, long-term monitoring of mangrove extent and trends.

scholarly journals The Be Phenomenon: Connections to B-supergiants

2000 ◽  
Vol 175 ◽  
pp. 37-47
Author(s):  
Andreas Kaufer
Keyword(s):  
Physical Properties ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Spectral Characteristics ◽  
Evolutionary Status ◽  
Circumstellar Envelopes ◽  
Rotational Modulation ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Long Term Monitoring ◽  
Term Monitoring

AbstractIn this contribution the spectral characteristics, physical properties, and the evolutionary status of B-type supergiants is reviewed with respect to the Be phenomenon. Long-term monitoring campaigns in the UV and the optical have recently revealed the distinct variability patterns of the photospheric and the emission-line spectra of this class. The various proposed scenarios for the spatially structured circumstellar envelopes and their rotational modulation are presented. The possibility of generating and maintaining large-scale wind structures by photospheric processes which structure the underlying stellar surfaces is discussed. Some open questions in connection with these hypotheses will be identified.

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