Do logging, followed by burning, and wildfire differ in their decadal scale effects on tall open-forest bryophytes and vascular plants?

Abstract

There has been only one time-controlled study, in Canada, comparing the occurrence of bryophyte species in forests regenerating after wildfire with that in those regenerating after logging and regeneration burning. Previous work on vascular plants in Tasmanian tall open-forest dominated by Eucalyptus showed that filmy ferns were less common in areas that had been logged and regeneration burned than in areas burned by wildfire two decades after the events, which suggested that hygrophilous species, such as bryophytes, might be vulnerable to this silvicultural system. Bryophytes, vascular plants structural and environmental data were collected from 50 sites, which had been burned in wildfires or clearfelled and burned by prescribed fires 31–39 years previously. Eighteen percent of the vascular plant species for which it was possible to develop a multiple regression model had logging/wildfire as a component, whereas the equivalent figure for bryophytes was 17%. The negative effects of logging were concentrated on the more hygrophilous species, and the positive effects were concentrated on the basal area of tree species and some of the mosses dependent on them. We conclude that wildfire and logging followed by regeneration burning result in vegetation differences that last more than three decades after disturbance, that these differences are no more pronounced for bryophytes than for vascular plants, and that hygrophilous taxa are favoured more by wildfire than logging.