The impacts of large-scale, low-intensity fires on the forests of continental South-east Asia
Patrick J. Baker A D , Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin B and Andrew P. Robinson CA Australian Centre for Biodiversity and School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia.
B Research Office, National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department, Chatuchak, Bangkok 10900, Thailand.
C Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia.
D Corresponding author. Email: patrick.baker@sci.monash.edu.au
International Journal of Wildland Fire 17(6) 782-792 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF07147
Submitted: 15 October 2007 Accepted: 24 June 2008 Published: 12 December 2008
Abstract
South-east Asia’s tropical forests harbour high levels of species richness and endemism. In continental South-east Asia strong rainfall seasonality driven by the Asian monsoon lead to ground-fires during the dry season in most years. How these fires influence the region’s landscape mosaic of evergreen and deciduous forests and the biodiversity they support is poorly understood. In this paper we report on the impacts of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation-induced 1997–98 fires that burned across much of western Thailand. We compare fire effects in the three common regional forest types – seasonal evergreen (SEG); mixed deciduous (MDF); and deciduous dipterocarp – and use data from a 50-ha study plot to evaluate the impacts of fire on these forests. We found few differences among the forest types. The fires created more large gaps in MDF than the other forest types. The SEG experienced greater fire mortality in the smallest size classes, abundant resprouting, and showed some evidence of lagged mortality among larger trees. The resilience of the SEG to fire and lack of major differences in fire effects among the forest types suggest that infrequent landscape-scale fires may have little effect on biodiversity in the landscape mosaic of seasonal tropical forests of continental South-east Asia.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the National Research Council of Thailand, the Royal Forest Department and the staff of the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary for enabling us to conduct this research at HKK. We would also like to thank the National Science Foundation for support through grant DEB-0075334 to Peter Ashton and Stuart Davies, the USDA Forest Service through a grant to Chad Oliver, and Sigma Xi for a Grant-in-Aid-of-Resaerch to P. J. Baker. We would also like to thank Dick Williams, Ross Bradstock, and an anonymous reviewer for insightful comments on the manuscript. This is publication 182 of the Australian Centre for Biodiversity.
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