• DOI:10.1071/WF12071
• Corpus ID: 17371128

Fire history and forest structure of an endangered subtropical ecosystem in the Florida Keys, USA

@article{Harley2013FireHA,
  title={Fire history and forest structure of an endangered subtropical ecosystem in the Florida Keys, USA},
  author={Grant Logan Harley and Henri D. Grissino-Mayer and Sally P. Horn},
  journal={International Journal of Wildland Fire},
  year={2013},
  volume={22},
  pages={394-404}
}

• G. Harley, H. Grissino-Mayer, S. Horn
• Published 3 June 2013
• Environmental Science
• International Journal of Wildland Fire

We focussed on the influence of historical fire and varied fire management practices on the structure of globally endangered pine rockland ecosystems on two adjacent islands in the Florida Keys: Big Pine Key and No Name Key. We reconstructed fire history in two stands from fire scars on South Florida slash pines (Pinus elliottii Engelm. var. densa Little & Dor.) that were accurately dated using dendrochronology, and quantified stand structure to infer successional trajectories. Fire regimes on Big Pine Key and No Name Key over the past 150 years differed in fire return interval and spatial extent. Fire scar analysis indicated that fires burnt at intervals of 6 and 9 years (Weibull median probabilityinterval)onBigPineKeyandNoNameKeywiththemajorityoffiresoccurringlateinthegrowingseason.On BigPineKey,pinerecruitmentwaswidespread,likelyduetomultiple,widespreadprescribedburnsconductedsince2000. NoNameKey experiencedfewerfires thanBigPine Key,butpines recruitedat thesitefrom atleastthe 1890sthroughthe 1970s. Today, pine recruitment is nearly absent on No Name Key, where fire management practices since 1957 could result in loss of pine rockland habitat. Additional keywords: dendrochronology, National Key Deer Refuge, pine rocklands, Pinus elliottii var. densa, slash pine, subtropical.