Leaf Dry Matter Content Is Phylogenetically Conserved and Related to Environmental Conditions, Especially Wildfire Activity.

Leaf dry matter content (LDMC) is an important determinant of plant flammability. Investigating global patterns of LDMC could provide insights into worldwide plant flammability patterns, informing wildfire management. We characterised global patterns of LDMC across 4074 species from 216 families, revealing that phylogenetic and environmental constraints influence LDMC.

Measuring flammability of crops, pastures, fruit trees, and weeds: A novel tool to fight wildfires in agricultural landscapes.

Fires on agricultural land account for 8-11 % of the total number of fires that occur globally. These fires burn through various crops, pastures, and native vegetation on farms, causing economic and environmental losses. Fire management on farms will be aided by understanding the flammability of plant species as this would allow the design of low-flammability agricultural landscapes, but flammability data on large numbers of agricultural species are lacking.

Climatic conditions affect shoot flammability by influencing flammability-related functional traits in nonfire-prone habitats.

Plant flammability is an important driver of wildfires, and flammability itself is determined by several plant functional traits. While many plant traits are influenced by climatic conditions, the interaction between climatic conditions and plant flammability has rarely been investigated. Here, we explored the relationships among climatic conditions, shoot-level flammability components, and flammability-related functional traits for 186 plant species from fire-prone and nonfire-prone habitats.

Termite sensitivity to temperature affects global wood decay rates.

Deadwood is a large global carbon store with its store size partially determined by biotic decay. Microbial wood decay rates are known to respond to changing temperature and precipitation. Termites are also important decomposers in the tropics but are less well studied.

Limits to post-fire vegetation recovery under climate change.

Record-breaking fire seasons in many regions across the globe raise important questions about plant community responses to shifting fire regimes (i.e., changing fire frequency, severity and seasonality).

Shoot-level flammability across the Dracophyllum (Ericaceae) phylogeny: evidence for flammability being an emergent property in a land with little fire.

Plant flammability varies across species, but the evolutionary basis for this variation is not well understood. Phylogenetic analysis of interspecific variation in flammability can provide insights into the evolution of plant flammability. We measured four components of flammability (ignitability, sustainability, combustibility and consumability) to assess the shoot-level flammability of 21 species of Dracophyllum (Ericaceae).

Shoot flammability of vascular plants is phylogenetically conserved and related to habitat fire-proneness and growth form.

Terrestrial plants and fire have interacted for at least 420 million years. Whether recurrent fire drives plants to evolve higher flammability and what the evolutionary pattern of plant flammability is remain unclear. Here, we show that phylogeny, the susceptibility of a habitat to have recurrent fires (that is, fire-proneness) and growth form are important predictors of the shoot flammability of 194 indigenous and introduced vascular plant species (Tracheophyta) from New Zealand.

Green firebreaks as a management tool for wildfires: Lessons from China.

Wildfire is a widespread natural hazard that is expected to increase in areal extent, severity and frequency with ongoing changes in climate and land-use. One tool that has been used in an effort to reduce the damage caused by wildfires is green firebreaks: strips of low-flammability vegetation grown at strategic locations in the landscape. Green firebreaks are increasingly being recommended for wildfire management and have been implemented in many countries.

Functional and environmental determinants of bark thickness in fire-free temperate rain forest communities.

Premise Of The Study: In fire-prone ecosystems, variation in bark thickness among species and communities has been explained by fire frequency; thick bark is necessary to protect cambium from lethal temperatures. Elsewhere this investment is deemed unnecessary, and thin bark is thought to prevail. However, in rain forest ecosystems where fire is rare, bark thickness varies widely among species and communities, and the causes of this variation remain enigmatic.

Lack of quantitative training among early-career ecologists: a survey of the problem and potential solutions.

Proficiency in mathematics and statistics is essential to modern ecological science, yet few studies have assessed the level of quantitative training received by ecologists. To do so, we conducted an online survey. The 937 respondents were mostly early-career scientists who studied biology as undergraduates.