Bushfircs are common in Australia. They cau:oemuch damage and considerable loss annually. However. some use could be made of these wildfires fer forest mapping if developments in colour and false-colour (colour infrared) aerial photography were more fully exploited. The advantages that colour and false-colour aerial photography have over pan~ chromatic minus-blue aerial photography are analyzed...

Reconstructions of dry western US forests in the late 19th century in Arizona, Colorado and Oregon based on General Land Office records were used by Williams & Baker (2012; Global Ecology and Biogeography, 21, 1042–1052; hereafter W&B) to infer past fire regimes with substantial moderate and high-severity burning. The authors concluded that present-day large, high-severity fires are not disting...

Change in ecosystem disturbance regimes from human land-use poses a worldwide problem for management of rare species. Two important types of disturbance influencing the persistence of species in Australian ecosystems are habitat fragmentation and fire. In this study, seed dispersal and the germination ecology of Pomaderris vacciniifolia-a critically endangered, rare endemic Australian shrub-wer...

The origin of fire-adapted lineages is a long-standing question in ecology. Although phylogeny can provide a significant contribution to the ongoing debate, its use has been precluded by the lack of comprehensive DNA data. Here, we focus on the 'underground trees' (=geoxyles) of southern Africa, one of the most distinctive growth forms characteristic of fire-prone savannas. We placed geoxyles w...

Pyrogenic plants dominate many fire-prone ecosystems. Their prevalence suggests some advantage to their enhanced flammability, but researchers have had difficulty tying pyrogenicity to individual-level advantages. Based on our review, we propose that enhanced flammability in fire-prone ecosystems should protect the belowground organs and nearby propagules of certain individual plants during fir...

A STOCHASTIC SPATIAL MODEL FOR THE CONSUMPTION OF ORGANIC FOREST SOILS IN A SMOLDERING GROUND FIRE Benjamin Victor Holt A spatial model for the consumption of organic forest soil (duff) by smoldering combustion is developed. Smoldering ground fires have an enormous impact upon the ecology and management practice of forest lands throughout the temperate zone. It is the goal of this effort to pre...

Pyrogenic plants dominate many fire-prone ecosystems. Their prevalence suggests some advantage to their enhanced flammability, but researchers have had difficulty tying pyrogenicity to individual-level advantages. Based on our review, we propose that enhanced flammability in fire-prone ecosystems should protect the belowground organs and nearby propagules of certain individual plants during fir...

Building qualitative models is a difficult task . The construction of re-usable models, as well as the formalisation of the modelling process itself, are goals both to researchers in qualitative reasoning and ecology . This paper presents a library of model fragments for reasoning about the behaviour of ecological communities . «'e have developed a kernel of partial models that represents gener...

—Interpreting habitat quality requires an understanding of the consequences of habitat use because bird density alone may not reflect habitat quality. Although habitat use can be readily quantified, subsequent effects remain elusive for most species, especially for migrants on the wintering grounds. Wintering Henslow’s Sparrow (Ammodramus henslowii) densities in Longleaf Pine (Pinus palustris) ...

Seed-caching rodents have long been seen as important actors in dispersal ecology. Here, we focus on the interactions with plants in a fire-disturbance community, specifically Arctostaphylos species (Ericaceae) in California chaparral. Although mutualistic relationships between caching rodents and plants are well studied, little is known how this type of relationship functions in a disturbance-...