fire

Black beech (Fuscospora solandri) seedlings were planted in randomly located plots on Motuareronui (Adele Island) to assess whether survival was sufficient for applied nucleation to be used as a restoration method on parts of the adjacent mainland. The long-term goal of this project is to re-establish black beech as a keystone canopy species on ridges and headlands that lost their primary forest cover as a result of fires by the middle of last century. One hundred and sixty-four of 199 beech seedlings (82%) planted in 2014 survived to 2019.

Aotearoa New Zealand's conservation management has had a strong focus on offshore islands, though this investment is at risk from human-influenced factors such as biosecurity incursions and wildfire. During the last century several wildfires have occurred on Moutohorā (Whale Island), Bay of Plenty, which is a location for six threatened plant and three threatened animal species.

Fires regularly occur in New Zealand wetlands, affecting ecological indicators and conservation values such as native plant species richness. Following a small fire at the Kaituna Wetland, Bay of Plenty, foliage cover was measured and biodiversity indices determined on eight occasions over 48 months.

Canterbury’s gravelly outwash plains offer few of the natural deposits in which floral remains are typically preserved and hence represent a significant geographical gap in our knowledge about New Zealand’s pre-settlement terrestrial ecosystems and their response to anthropogenic activities. We contribute new insights into the poorly known Holocene vegetation history of this region by reporting two new mid-late Holocene pollen records from the western (Hallsbush) and eastern (Travis Swamp) margins of the Canterbury Plains.

Cyathea medullaris (Cyatheaceae) is a frequent pioneer of disturbed areas (e.g. landslides) or edge environments, sometimes forming near continuous canopies. We test the hypothesis that colonisation by this species as a pioneer alters the seedling assemblage to favour more shade-tolerant broadleaved trees than that beneath another common native pioneer (Kunzea robusta, Myrtaceae) in the same landscapes. We compared vegetation and abiotic characteristics of 166 sites across the Auckland region where C. medullaris or K.

Mid to late 20th century expansion of Dracophyllum scrub into tussock grassland on subantarctic Campbell Island has been attributed to the collective effects of global warming, cessation of farming in 1931, and continued grazing by feral sheep. To determine the importance of these, we dated the timing of scrub expansion by aging 241 Dracophyllum plants in 17 plots chosen to sample the range of environments this shrub/ small tree occupies on Campbell Island.

New Zealand bracken (Pteridium esculentum) belongs to a group of closely related fern species of near global extent. Pteridium species worldwide are aggressive, highly productive, seral plants, functionally more akin to shrubs than ferns. Their deeply buried starch-rich rhizomes allow them to survive repeated fire and their efficient nutrient uptake permits exploitation of a wide range of soils. They are limited by cool annual temperatures, frost, wind, and shallow, poorly drained and acidic soils.

Fire occurs relatively frequently in beech (Nothofagus) forest in drought prone eastern areas of the South Island, New Zealand. Because beech is poorly adapted to fire, and is slow to regenerate, forest is normally replaced by scrub or grassland. Seeding was investigated as a means of restoring mountain beech (N. solandri var. cliffortioides) forest after fire destroyed 300 ha of forest at Mt. Thomas, Canterbury, in 1980.

Immediately before human settlement, dense tall podocarp- angiosperm forest dominated the moist Southland and southern coastal Otago districts. Open, discontinuous podocarp-angiosperm forest bordered the central Otago dry interior, extending along the north Otago coast. Grassland was mostly patchy within these woody ecosystems, occurring on limited areas of droughty or low-nutrient soils and wetlands, or temporarily after infrequent fire or other disturbance.

The intermediate disturbance hypothesis has been the focus of considerable analysis in terrestrial and aquatic systems. This model predicts that species diversity will be highest at intermediate frequencies of disturbance. Despite numerous theoretical and empirical analyses, the utility of the model is still the subject of intense debate.