Effects of anthropogenic wildfire in low-elevation Pacific island vegetation communities in French Polynesia
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Sch Nat Resources & EnvironmUniv Arizona, Dept Ecol & Evolutionary Biol
Issue Date
2018-06-20Keywords
Post-fire landscapesSoutheastern Polynesia
Wildfire
Invasive plant species
Pacific islands
Conservation
Vegetation communities
Lantana camara
Paraserianthes falcataria
Disturbance ecology
Metadata
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PEERJ INCCitation
Newman EA, Winkler CA, Hembry DH. (2018) Effects of anthropogenic wildfire in low-elevation Pacific island vegetation communities in French Polynesia. PeerJ 6:e5114 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5114Journal
PEERJRights
This is an open access article, free of all copyright, made available under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Anthropogenic (or human-caused) wildfire is an increasingly important driver of ecological change on Pacific islands including southeastern Polynesia, but fire ecology studies are almost completely absent for this region. Where observations do exist, they mostly represent descriptions of fire effects on plant communities before the introduction of invasive species in the modern era. Understanding the effects of wildfire in southeastern Polynesian island vegetation communities can elucidate which species may become problematic invasives with continued wildfire activity. We investigate the effects of wildfire on vegetation in three low-elevation sites (45-379 m) on the island of Mo'orea in the Society Islands, French Polynesia, which are already heavily impacted by past human land use and invasive exotic plants, but retain some native flora. In six study areas (three burned and three unburned comparisons), we placed 30 transects across sites and collected species and abundance information at 390 points. We analyzed each local community of plants in three categories: natives, those introduced by Polynesians before European contact (1767 C.E.), and those introduced since European contact. Burned areas had the same or lower mean species richness than paired comparison sites. Although wildfire did not affect the proportions of native and introduced species, it may increase the abundance of introduced species on some sites. Non-metric multidimensional scaling indicates that (not recently modified) comparison plant communities are more distinct from one another than are those on burned sites. We discuss conservation concerns for particular native plants absent from burned sites, as well as invasive species (including Lantana camara and Paraserianthes falcataria ) that may be promoted by fire in the Pacific.ISSN
2167-8359PubMed ID
29942716Version
Final published versionSponsors
U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship; Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; NSF [OISE-1159509]Additional Links
https://peerj.com/articles/5114https://peerj.com/articles/5114/fig-1
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/fig-2
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/fig-3
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/fig-4
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/fig-5
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/table-1
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/table-2
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/table-3
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/table-4
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/table-5
https://peerj.com/articles/5114/supp-1
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.7717/peerj.5114
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as This is an open access article, free of all copyright, made available under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.
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