Abstract
During 2008, under a region-wide drought, there were a large number of simultaneous fires in the Paraná River Delta region: the most affected vegetation was in marshes dominated by Schoenoplectus californicus (C.A.Mey.) Soják or Cyperus giganteus Vahl. The objective of this paper was to study fire severity in terms of fire effect on vegetation cover and soil properties, and the recovery of those properties after one growing season, using optical remote sensing techniques and fieldwork data. To this aim, we performed unsupervised classification of Landsat TM imagery and conducted vegetation censuses and soil sampling in November 2008 and May 2009. Our results show that we could identify three fire severity classes: low severity, medium severity, and high severity. These classes are characterized by a remnant vegetation cover of approximately 75 %, 25 %, and 5 %, respectively, and a diminution of soil organic carbon and nitrogen of 66 % and 59 % in the case of medium severity and high severity. Fire had almost no effect over pH and a slight effect on electrical conductivity. After one growing season, vegetation recovery is dependent on fire severity and hydrological condition, while soil properties did not show signs of recovery. This is one of the first studies of fire effects and recovery on fluvial herbaceous wetlands.
Highlights
The Paraná River wetlands usually store large amounts of carbon in aboveground plant biomass, and in soil layers, given the high productivity and low decomposition rates that occur when there is a sustained presence of a water table over the mineral soil surface (Mitra et al 2005, Ma and Lu 2008)
Flood dampening, and habitat for wildlife are among key wetland ecosystem services (Järvellä 2003, Baigun et al 2008, Kandus et al 2010, Vicari et al 2011) that are affected by varying fire severity (Lal 2007, Salvia et al 2009a)
Junco and pirí marshes were the most affected, having nearly 40 % of their area burned to some degree (Stamati et al 2009, Salvia 2010). Due to their ecological importance and the magnitude of the area affected, we focused the analysis in these marshes, setting our study area on the islands located northeast of the cities of San Pedro, Baradero, and Zárate, between 59o51’W 33o31’S and 59o5’W 34o2’S, which covers 114 290.82 ha (Figure 1)
Summary
Post-Fire eFFects in Wetland environments: landscaPe assessment oF Plant coverage and soil recovery in the Paraná river delta marshes, argentina. Achieving a detailed and rapid knowledge of the degree of environmental change caused by fire in terms of the level of damage and its spatial distribution is essential in order to quantify the impact of fires (van Wagtendonk et al 2004), select and prioritize treatments applied on any site (Patterson and Yool 1998, Bobbe et al 2001), plan and monitor activities of restoration and recovery, and provide baseline information for future monitoring (Brewer et al 2005) In this way, maps derived from remote sensing data are widely recognized as powerful tools in fire ecology studies at landscape scales, and in most fire-related land management programs, because they can describe spatial patterns of severity of fire events (Kremens et al 2010). Ing 2008 in wetlands of the Paraná River Delta and the recovery of its vegetation and soils after one growth season
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