Plant demography and fire I. Interval-dependent effects

Abstract

Plant populations respond in remarkably diverse ways to fire. Some remain essentially stable from one fire to the next. Others may fluctuate from explosive growth to local extinction (Figure 4.1). What accounts for stability in some populations and variability in others? How is fire implicated in regulating population size? Part of the variability among species responses can be explained by different fire life-histories — sprouting species should have more stable populations than non-sprouting species; non-sprouting species with persistent soil seedbanks should be more stable than, say, serotinous species with seedbanks exhausted after fire.