Resilience assessment on Phillyrea angustifolia L. maquis undergone to experimental fire through a big-leaf modelling approach

Marcello Vitale, Francesca Capogna and Fausto Manes

Ecological Modelling, 2007, vol. 203, issue 3, 387-394

Abstract: In the Mediterranean area, plant response to summer constraints can be directly or indirectly affected by extensive fires, which have acted as modelling force for the actual Mediterranean habitat. The aim of this study is to evaluate the rate at which a Phillyrea angustifolia stand approaches to steady state after a prescribed fire, by calculation of the speed of return to re-constitution of the total standing biomass through the analysis of both physiological and structural parameters. Gas exchange and growth rates of the unburned and burned stands have been estimated by a deterministic model based on the big-leaf approach applied over a relatively short period of time. The model has been able to well simulate the gas exchange rates both for unburned and burned P. angustifolia stands. Further, resilience has been calculated by the slope of growth rate for each year of simulation. Burned stand showed higher physiological performance than unburned stand accordingly to measured data, and as a consequence it showed a high resilience, which allow to reconstitute the canopy structure in three years from the fire. At this regard, the simulated leaf area index had a tendency to reach values similar to those modelled for unburned stand. The model presented here may be useful to the decision makers for the setting up of plant reconstitution plans after a fire.

Keywords: Big-leaf approach; Deterministic model; Fire; Gas exchange; Leaf area index; Mediterranean vegetation; Phillyrea angustifolia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380006006272
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:203:y:2007:i:3:p:387-394

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2006.12.004

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().