Vascular cambium necrosis in forest fires: using hyperbolic temperature regimes to estimate parameters of a tissue-response model
M. B. Dickinson A B , J. Jolliff A and A. S. Bova AA USDA Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station, Forestry Sciences Laboratory, 359 Main Road, Delaware, Ohio 43015-8640, USA.
B Corresponding author. Email: mbdickinson@fs.fed.us
Australian Journal of Botany 52(6) 757-763 https://doi.org/10.1071/BT03111
Submitted: 24 July 2003 Accepted: 20 July 2004 Published: 24 December 2004
Abstract
Hyperbolic temperature exposures (in which the rate of temperature rise increases with time) and an analytical solution to a rate-process model were used to characterise the impairment of respiration in samples containing both phloem (live bark) and vascular-cambium tissue during exposures to temperatures such as those experienced by the vascular cambium in tree stems heated by forest fires. Tissue impairment was characterised for red maple (Acer rubrum), chestnut oak (Quercus prinus), Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) samples. The estimated temperature dependence of the model’s rate parameter (described by the Arrhenius equation) was a function of the temperature regime to which tissues were exposed. Temperatures rising hyperbolically from near ambient (30°C) to 65°C produced rate parameters for the deciduous species that were similar at 60°C to those from the literature, estimated by using fixed temperature exposures. In contrast, samples from all species showed low rates of impairment, conifer samples more so than deciduous, after exposure to regimes in which temperatures rose hyperbolically between 50 and 60°C. A hypersensitive response could explain an early lag in tissue-impairment rates that apparently caused the differences among heating regimes. A simulation based on stem vascular-cambium temperature regimes measured during fires shows how temperature-dependent impairment rates can be used to predict tissue necrosis in fires. To our knowledge, hyperbolic temperature exposures have not been used to characterise plant tissue thermal tolerance and, given certain caveats, could provide more realistic data more efficiently than fixed-temperature exposures.
Acknowledgments
We thank Dan Jimenez and Bret Butler of the USFS Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory for providing conifer samples. MeadWestvaco and the USFS jointly manage the Vinton Furnace Experimental Forest (VFEF) where maple and oak samples were obtained. Thanks go to the VFEF staff (especially David Hosack and James Stockwell) and Robert Ford for field assistance. We benefited from discussions with Robert Essenhigh of The Ohio State University on rate process modelling. Useful comments on the manuscript were provided by USFS editorial staff and two anonymous reviewers.
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