Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m8s7h Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T19:45:06.640Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

14 - Climate, Fire and Geology in the Convergence of Mediterranean-type Climate Ecosystems

from Section III - Comparative Ecology, Evolution and Management

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2012

Jon E. Keeley
Affiliation:
United States Geological Survey, California
William J. Bond
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Ross A. Bradstock
Affiliation:
University of Wollongong, New South Wales
Juli G. Pausas
Affiliation:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Madrid
Philip W. Rundel
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Get access

Summary

Integrating Climate, Fire and Geology in a Fire-prone World

Fire challenges the long-standing hegemony of ecology, biogeography and paleoecology that climate and soils are sufficient to explain the origin and distribution of plant species. In a world where half of the land surface is fire-prone (Krawchuk et al. 2009), understanding the past and predicting the future requires a close integration of climate, fire and geology. The dogma that fire is an anthropogenic phenomenon of little use in understanding paleoecology (Axelrod 1980, 1989), or merely incidental to vegetation development (Hopper 2009), is rapidly being replaced with a better understanding of paleofire's impact on land plant evolution (Scott 2000; Pausas & Keeley 2009). Attempts to model future global vegetation patterns have been demonstrated to be inadequate without including both natural and anthropogenic fire regimes (Bond et al. 2005).

Bond and Keeley (2005) outlined the conundrum posed by alternative explanations for the present distribution of vegetation and assembly of communities. Classical explanations have invoked resource-based mechanisms that are driven by climate and soils. There are ecosystems where resource-based mechanisms may be sufficient, but on many seasonally dry landscapes ecosystem processes such as fire play a major role in the organization and evolution of vegetation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Fire in Mediterranean Ecosystems
Ecology, Evolution and Management
, pp. 388 - 397
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×