Unexpected redwood mortality from synergies between wildfire and an emerging infectious disease

An under-examined component of global change is the alteration of disturbance regimes due to warming climates, continued species invasions, and accelerated land-use change. These drivers of global change are themselves novel ecosystem disturbances that may interact with historically occurring distur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology (Durham) 2013-10, Vol.94 (10), p.2152-2159
Main Authors: Metz, Margaret R, Varner, J. Morgan, Frangioso, Kerri M, Meentemeyer, Ross K, Rizzo, David M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Applied ecology
Biological and medical sciences
biological invasions
California
climate
Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change
coasts
Coniferous forests
Conservation, protection and management of environment and wildlife
disease course
Disease models
Earth, ocean, space
ecological resilience
Ecosystems
emerging diseases
Exact sciences and technology
Experiments
External geophysics
fire behavior
Fire ecology
Fires
Forest & brush fires
Forest ecology
Forest ecosystems
Forest fires
forests
fuels (fire ecology)
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
Geologic Sediments
global change
Infectious diseases
interacting disturbances
land use change
Meteorology
Mortality
Parks, reserves, wildlife conservation. Endangered species: population survey and restocking
Pathogens
Phytophthora - physiology
Phytophthora ramorum
Plant Diseases
risk
Sequoia sempervirens
sudden oak death
synergy
Trees
Wildfires
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Summary:An under-examined component of global change is the alteration of disturbance regimes due to warming climates, continued species invasions, and accelerated land-use change. These drivers of global change are themselves novel ecosystem disturbances that may interact with historically occurring disturbances in complex ways. Here we use the natural experiment presented by wildfires in redwood forests impacted by an emerging infectious disease to demonstrate unexpected synergies of novel disturbance interactions. The dominant tree, coast redwood (fire resistant without negative disease impacts), experienced unexpected synergistic increases in mortality when fire and disease co-occurred. The increased mortality risk, more than fourfold at the peak of the effect, was not predictable from impacts of either disturbance alone. Changes in fire behavior associated with changes to forest fuels that occurred through disease progression overwhelmed redwood's usual resilience to wildfire. Our results demonstrate the potential for interacting disturbances to initiate novel successional trajectories and compromise ecosystem resilience.
ISSN:0012-9658
1939-9170
DOI:10.1890/13-0915.1