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• 1. [Article] Carbon dynamics following landscape fire: influence of burn severity, climate, and stand history in the Metolius Watershed, Oregon

  Fire is a fundamental disturbance that drives terrestrial and atmospheric carbon dynamics. Previous studies have quantified fire effects on carbon cycling from local to global scales but have focused ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Carbon dynamics following landscape fire: influence of burn severity, climate, and stand history in the Metolius Watershed, Oregon Author: Meigs, Garrett W. Fire is a fundamental disturbance that drives terrestrial and atmospheric carbon dynamics. Previous studies have quantified fire effects on carbon cycling from local to global scales but have focused nearly exclusively on high-severity, stand-replacement fire. Since 2002, variable-severity wildfires have burned more than 65 000 ha across the east slope of the Oregon Cascades, including 4 large fires that burned ca. 50% of the forested area within the Metolius Watershed in 2002 and 2003. This thesis integrates data from 64 field plots, remote-sensing, and an ecosystem process model to investigate the effects of low-, moderate-, and high-severity fire. The primary research objectives were to: (a) quantify combustion and mortality effects on carbon pools, postfire net ecosystem production (NEP), and potential regeneration trajectories at the stand scale; (b) introduce novel remote-sensing datasets into a modeling framework to assess the importance of low- and moderate-severity fire across the landscape and region. At the stand-scale, the 3 levels of burn severity (overstory tree mortality) resulted in profoundly different impacts on combustion, mortality, postfire carbon balance, and potential regeneration trajectories. Simulated combustion ranged from 16.6 to 32.3 Mg C ha-1, or 13% to 35% of prefire aboveground carbon. C transfers from fire-induced tree mortality were larger in magnitude than combustion, as live aboveground C decreased by >90% from low- to high-severity stands. Despite this decline, total net primary productivity (NPP) was only 40% lower in high- vs. low-severity stands, reflecting a compensatory effect of non-tree NPP. Dead wood respiratory losses were small relative to C uptake (range: 10-35% of total NPP), suggesting important decomposition lags in this seasonally-arid system. Although soil C, soil respiration, and fine root NPP were conserved across severity classes, NEP declined with increasing severity, driven by trends in aboveground NPP. Postfire conifer seedling density was generally abundant and varied over 5 orders of magnitude (study-wide median: 812, range: 0 – 62 134 seedlings ha-1). Seedling density was negatively correlated with overstory mortality, whereas shrub biomass showed the opposite response, indicating a wide range of potential successional trajectories. Despite substantial combustion and mortality effects on carbon pools and fluxes, the rapid response of postfire vegetation, coupled with conservation of belowground processes, may offset long-term declines in carbon storage, indicating a surprising degree of postfire stability. These stand-scale results describe a broad range of fire effects—a high degree of pyrodiversity—but because burn severity was not evenly distributed across space, the landscape-level fire effects depend on the severity mosaic. At the landscape-scale, moderate- and low-severity fire contributed 25% and 11% of total estimated pyrogenic carbon emission, respectively (0.66 Tg C total, or ca. 2.2% of statewide anthropogenic CO2 emissions equivalent from the same 2-year period). Moderate- and low-severity fire accounted for 23% and 5% of landscape-level tree mortality, respectively, which resulted in the transfer of 2.00 Tg C from live to dead pools. This carbon transfer was ca. 3-fold higher than the one-time pulse from pyrogenic emission, but it will likely take decades for this dead wood to decompose via heterotrophic respiration. The inclusion of moderate-severity fire reduced postfire (2004) mean annual NEP by 39% compared to the high-severity only scenario; low-severity fire influence on NEP was small (additional reduction of 11% in mean NEP), likely because of high tree survivorship and the relatively lower areal coverage of low-severity fire. One year postfire, burned areas were a strong C source (net C exchange across 53 000 ha: -0.065 Tg C y-1; mean ± SD: -123 ± 110 g C m-2 y-1) vs. a prefire mean near C neutral (1997-2001 mean NEP ± SD: -5 ± 51 g C m-2 y-1). The model has been known to underestimate carbon uptake in mature and old semi-arid forests, so the prefire value is likely underestimated. Despite the resurgence of wildfire across western North America, including a substantial increase in the proportion of high-severity fire in the ecoregions studied here, low- and moderate-severity wildfire accounts for the majority of burned area in the Pacific Northwest region. This non-stand-replacement fire has important consequences for carbon loss and uptake at landscape- and regional-scales. The results from this thesis suggest that by accounting for the full gradient of fire effects, carbon modelers can substantially reduce uncertainties in key components of regional and global carbon budgets, particularly pyrogenic emissions, mortality, and NEP. Understanding the effects of disturbance variability on terrestrial carbon cycling will become increasingly important in the context of emerging regional and global carbon policies. Title: Carbon dynamics following landscape fire: influence of burn severity, climate, and stand history in the Metolius Watershed, Oregon Author: Meigs, Garrett W. Fire is a fundamental disturbance that drives terrestrial and atmospheric carbon dynamics. Previous studies have quantified fire effects on carbon cycling from local to global scales but have focused nearly exclusively on high-severity, stand-replacement fire. Since 2002, variable-severity wildfires have burned more than 65 000 ha across the east slope of the Oregon Cascades, including 4 large fires that burned ca. 50% of the forested area within the Metolius Watershed in 2002 and 2003. This thesis integrates data from 64 field plots, remote-sensing, and an ecosystem process model to investigate the effects of low-, moderate-, and high-severity fire. The primary research objectives were to: (a) quantify combustion and mortality effects on carbon pools, postfire net ecosystem production (NEP), and potential regeneration trajectories at the stand scale; (b) introduce novel remote-sensing datasets into a modeling framework to assess the importance of low- and moderate-severity fire across the landscape and region. At the stand-scale, the 3 levels of burn severity (overstory tree mortality) resulted in profoundly different impacts on combustion, mortality, postfire carbon balance, and potential regeneration trajectories. Simulated combustion ranged from 16.6 to 32.3 Mg C ha-1, or 13% to 35% of prefire aboveground carbon. C transfers from fire-induced tree mortality were larger in magnitude than combustion, as live aboveground C decreased by >90% from low- to high-severity stands. Despite this decline, total net primary productivity (NPP) was only 40% lower in high- vs. low-severity stands, reflecting a compensatory effect of non-tree NPP. Dead wood respiratory losses were small relative to C uptake (range: 10-35% of total NPP), suggesting important decomposition lags in this seasonally-arid system. Although soil C, soil respiration, and fine root NPP were conserved across severity classes, NEP declined with increasing severity, driven by trends in aboveground NPP. Postfire conifer seedling density was generally abundant and varied over 5 orders of magnitude (study-wide median: 812, range: 0 – 62 134 seedlings ha-1). Seedling density was negatively correlated with overstory mortality, whereas shrub biomass showed the opposite response, indicating a wide range of potential successional trajectories. Despite substantial combustion and mortality effects on carbon pools and fluxes, the rapid response of postfire vegetation, coupled with conservation of belowground processes, may offset long-term declines in carbon storage, indicating a surprising degree of postfire stability. These stand-scale results describe a broad range of fire effects—a high degree of pyrodiversity—but because burn severity was not evenly distributed across space, the landscape-level fire effects depend on the severity mosaic. At the landscape-scale, moderate- and low-severity fire contributed 25% and 11% of total estimated pyrogenic carbon emission, respectively (0.66 Tg C total, or ca. 2.2% of statewide anthropogenic CO2 emissions equivalent from the same 2-year period). Moderate- and low-severity fire accounted for 23% and 5% of landscape-level tree mortality, respectively, which resulted in the transfer of 2.00 Tg C from live to dead pools. This carbon transfer was ca. 3-fold higher than the one-time pulse from pyrogenic emission, but it will likely take decades for this dead wood to decompose via heterotrophic respiration. The inclusion of moderate-severity fire reduced postfire (2004) mean annual NEP by 39% compared to the high-severity only scenario; low-severity fire influence on NEP was small (additional reduction of 11% in mean NEP), likely because of high tree survivorship and the relatively lower areal coverage of low-severity fire. One year postfire, burned areas were a strong C source (net C exchange across 53 000 ha: -0.065 Tg C y-1; mean ± SD: -123 ± 110 g C m-2 y-1) vs. a prefire mean near C neutral (1997-2001 mean NEP ± SD: -5 ± 51 g C m-2 y-1). The model has been known to underestimate carbon uptake in mature and old semi-arid forests, so the prefire value is likely underestimated. Despite the resurgence of wildfire across western North America, including a substantial increase in the proportion of high-severity fire in the ecoregions studied here, low- and moderate-severity wildfire accounts for the majority of burned area in the Pacific Northwest region. This non-stand-replacement fire has important consequences for carbon loss and uptake at landscape- and regional-scales. The results from this thesis suggest that by accounting for the full gradient of fire effects, carbon modelers can substantially reduce uncertainties in key components of regional and global carbon budgets, particularly pyrogenic emissions, mortality, and NEP. Understanding the effects of disturbance variability on terrestrial carbon cycling will become increasingly important in the context of emerging regional and global carbon policies. Close

• 2. [Article] Effects of wildfire on growth and demographics of coastal cutthroat trout in headwater streams

  Wildfire is a largely terrestrial perturbation broadly recognized as an agent of disturbance and ecological change in forested biomes. Effects of post-fire conditions on biotic components of aquatic systems ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Effects of wildfire on growth and demographics of coastal cutthroat trout in headwater streams Author: Heck, Michael P. Wildfire is a largely terrestrial perturbation broadly recognized as an agent of disturbance and ecological change in forested biomes. Effects of post-fire conditions on biotic components of aquatic systems have been less well-documented, although hypothetically, the two are strongly connected. In fact, the influence of wildfire may be most profound in headwater streams because of the tight linkage between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. We sought to understand the influence of post-fire conditions on fish in headwater streams by observing growth and demographics of coastal cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii clarkii) following wildfire. During the summer of 2002, wildfire burned portions of three headwater watersheds in the North Umpqua basin of western Oregon. Burn severities ranged from moderate to severe. A reference stream was selected from a nearby fourth watershed. All fish-bearing portions of the stream network in the four watersheds were surveyed for 3 years following the wildfire, and 1,295 scale samples were collected from coastal cutthroat trout for age and growth analysis. Stream temperatures in the burned watersheds changed significantly following the wildfire (p < 0.016), with increases of up to 23% in the most severely burned watershed. During summer electrofishing surveys in the burned watersheds, both young-of-the-year and fish ≥ age 1 were captured; in the unburned watershed, the vast majority of fish captured were ≥ age 1. Age-frequency analyses revealed that fish in older age classes (age ≥ 3) were more prevalent in the unburned watershed than in the burned watersheds. Relative growth rates and length at last annulus formation of coastal cutthroat trout were positively related to the number of degree days during the growing season, and Pearson correlation coefficients ranged from 0.60 (p < 0.07) to 0.90 (p < 0.01). Growth rates and size of fish were not significantly correlated with relative density of fish (p ≥ 0.14). Contrary to the commonly held assumption that wildfire is detrimental to biota in aquatic systems, these results suggest that in the short term (≤ 3 years), fish in the study streams adjusted to environmental change caused by wildfire. Title: Effects of wildfire on growth and demographics of coastal cutthroat trout in headwater streams Author: Heck, Michael P. Wildfire is a largely terrestrial perturbation broadly recognized as an agent of disturbance and ecological change in forested biomes. Effects of post-fire conditions on biotic components of aquatic systems have been less well-documented, although hypothetically, the two are strongly connected. In fact, the influence of wildfire may be most profound in headwater streams because of the tight linkage between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. We sought to understand the influence of post-fire conditions on fish in headwater streams by observing growth and demographics of coastal cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii clarkii) following wildfire. During the summer of 2002, wildfire burned portions of three headwater watersheds in the North Umpqua basin of western Oregon. Burn severities ranged from moderate to severe. A reference stream was selected from a nearby fourth watershed. All fish-bearing portions of the stream network in the four watersheds were surveyed for 3 years following the wildfire, and 1,295 scale samples were collected from coastal cutthroat trout for age and growth analysis. Stream temperatures in the burned watersheds changed significantly following the wildfire (p < 0.016), with increases of up to 23% in the most severely burned watershed. During summer electrofishing surveys in the burned watersheds, both young-of-the-year and fish ≥ age 1 were captured; in the unburned watershed, the vast majority of fish captured were ≥ age 1. Age-frequency analyses revealed that fish in older age classes (age ≥ 3) were more prevalent in the unburned watershed than in the burned watersheds. Relative growth rates and length at last annulus formation of coastal cutthroat trout were positively related to the number of degree days during the growing season, and Pearson correlation coefficients ranged from 0.60 (p < 0.07) to 0.90 (p < 0.01). Growth rates and size of fish were not significantly correlated with relative density of fish (p ≥ 0.14). Contrary to the commonly held assumption that wildfire is detrimental to biota in aquatic systems, these results suggest that in the short term (≤ 3 years), fish in the study streams adjusted to environmental change caused by wildfire. Close