Chaparral growth-ring analysis as an indicator of stand biomass development
Kellie A. Uyeda A B E , Douglas A. Stow A , John F. O’Leary A , Christina Tague C and Philip J. Riggan D
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Department of Geography, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-4493, USA.
B Department of Geography, 1832 Ellison Hall, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060, USA.
C Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, 2400 Bren Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
D Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, 4955 Canyon Crest Drive, Riverside, CA 92507, USA.
E Corresponding author. Email: kellie.uyeda@gmail.com
International Journal of Wildland Fire 25(10) 1086-1092 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF16080
Submitted: 9 December 2015 Accepted: 24 May 2016 Published: 23 June 2016
Abstract
Chaparral wildfires typically create even-aged stands of vegetation that grow quickly in the first 2 decades following a fire. Patterns of this growth are important for understanding ecosystem productivity and re-establishment success, but are logistically challenging to measure over long time periods. We tested the utility of a novel method of using shrub growth rings to estimate stand-level biomass accumulation at an annual time scale in southern California chaparral. We examined how temporal variation in precipitation and spatial variation in solar irradiation influence that accumulation. Using field measurements and a relationship between stem basal area and aboveground biomass, we estimated current biomass levels in an 11-year-old chaparral stand, and used growth-ring diameters to estimate growth in each year from age 4 to 11 years. We found that annual growth as measured by shrub growth rings tracked closely with patterns of annual precipitation, but not with time since fire. Solar irradiation was not found to be a significant covariate with total biomass by plot, possibly due to sampling area limitations. The close relationship of annual biomass accumulation with annual precipitation indicates that shrub growth-ring measurements can provide a useful metric of stand-level recovery.
Additional keywords: basal area increment, biomass accumulation, California, Ceanothus, dendrochronology, fire ecology, fuel, productivity, San Dimas Experimental Forest, wildfire.
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