Historical fire ecology and its effect on vegetation dynamics of the Lagunas de Montebello National Park, Chiapas, México

iForest: Biogeosciences and Forestry

article

Laura Patricia Ponce-Calderón¹  Dante Arturo Rodríguez-Trejo²  José Villanueva-Díaz³  Bibiana Alejandra Bilbao⁴  Guadalupe Del Carmen Álvarez-Gordillo¹  Gabriela Vera-Cortés¹ 

[1] El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Departamento de Sociedad y Cultura;División de Ciencias Forestales, Universidad Autónoma Chapingo. Estado de México;Laboratorio de Dendrocronología;Departamento de Estudios Ambientales, Universidad Simón Bolívar

关键词: Historical Ecology;    Dendrochronology;    Fire Ecology;    Ecological Succession;    Fuel Loads;   

DOI  :  10.3832/ifor3682-014

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Societa Italiana di Selvicoltura ed Ecologia Forestale (S I S E F)

【 摘 要 】

Historical information on wildfires and dendrochronological studies offer meaningful clues about fire and climate regimes, factors that affect forest structure and dynamics. This study aimed to determine the effect of fire history on vegetation dynamics and successional pathways of areas under different fire management policies in the Lagunas de Montebello National Park (LMNP), Chiapas, México. The selected study sites were El Parque area under fire exclusion policies since 1961; Tziscao-inhabited area under fire prohibition since 1984; and Antelá area with a traditional agricultural fire management history. A Pinus oocarpa ring-width chronology was used as a proxy for climate variability to which wildfire occurrence was mapped and to determine the establishment patterns of this dominant species. Current vegetation composition and structure and fuel loads were determined to characterise the study sites. Large wildfires, like those occurring in 1984 and 1998, were associated with periods of high humidity followed by intense droughts; they were linked to strong El Niño events and severely impacted the LMNP. Vegetation dynamics indicated simplification of mesophyll forest (climax) to pine-oak-sweetgum forests, with Pinus dominating the overstorey in all sampling sites. Pine, oak and sweetgum species were the dominant juvenile trees in Antelá, El Parque and Tziscao, respectively. Late-successional seedlings (i.e., Prunus) were present in Antelá and El Parque, while were absent from Tziscao where several wildfires had occurred. Fuel accumulation in sites within protected areas subject to fire exclusion policies was very high (40-68 t ha-1); in contrast, it was the lowest in rural Antelá (24 t ha-1). Considering vegetation vulnerability to wildfires associated with extreme humid-dry climate events, increased fire hazard due to fuel accumulation, and the socio-ecological impacts of these events, we recommend revising the fire exclusion policies currently implemented in the LMNP and applying an integrated fire management approach that incorporates local socio-ecological conditions.

【 授权许可】

Unknown