Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, 5320 - 122 Street, Edmonton, Alberta, T6H 3S5, Canada.
Department of Renewable Resources, General Services Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E3, Canada.
Ecol Appl. 2021 Apr;31(3):e02281. doi: 10.1002/eap.2281. Epub 2021 Feb 14.
Exploration practices for oil sands developments in the boreal forest of western Canada create a network of thousands of kilometers of linear features, particularly seismic lines that dissect these forests posing significant environmental challenges. As wildfire is one of the prevalent stand-replacing natural disturbances in the Canadian boreal forest, it is an important driver of environmental change and stand development that may contribute to the mitigation of such linear industrial footprint. Here, we evaluate the short-term cumulative (also known as combined) effects of seismic lines and wildfire on biodiversity and site conditions. One year after the Horse River (Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada) fire event in the spring of 2016, we compared dissected and undisturbed forests in burned and unburned boreal peatlands, assessing changes in overall stand structure and the responses of a variety of organisms. Soil moisture was significantly higher on seismic lines than in the adjacent forest, suggesting why most of the study sites within the fire perimeter showed little evidence of burning at the line in relation to the adjacent forest. Low fire severity on seismic lines seemed an important driver of local species diversity for ants, beetles, spiders, and plants in disturbed peatlands, resulting in similar species composition on seismic lines both within and outside the burned area, but different assemblages in burned and unburned adjacent forests. Our results suggest that fire did not erase seismic lines; rather, wildfire might increase the influence of this footprint on the recovering adjacent forest. Longer-term monitoring will be necessary to understand how boreal treed peatlands respond to the cumulative effect of wildfire and linear disturbances.
在加拿大西部北方森林中开采油砂的勘探实践活动形成了数千公里长的线性特征网络，特别是这些森林中纵横交错的地震线，这给环境带来了巨大的挑战。由于野火是加拿大北方森林中普遍存在的取代天然林的自然干扰因素之一，它是环境变化和林分发育的重要驱动力，可能有助于减轻这种线性工业足迹的影响。在这里，我们评估了地震线和野火对生物多样性和立地条件的短期累积（也称为综合）影响。在 2016 年春季的 Horse River（阿尔伯塔省麦克默里堡）火灾事件一年后，我们比较了火烧和未火烧的北方泥炭地中被分割和未分割的森林，评估了整个林分结构的变化以及各种生物的响应。与相邻森林相比，地震线上的土壤湿度明显更高，这表明为什么火灾范围内的大多数研究地点在线路处几乎没有燃烧的迹象，而在相邻森林中却有燃烧的迹象。地震线上的低火烈度似乎是干扰泥炭地中蚂蚁、甲虫、蜘蛛和植物局部物种多样性的重要驱动因素，导致在火烧区内外的地震线上的物种组成相似，但在火烧和未火烧的相邻森林中的群落组成不同。我们的研究结果表明，野火并没有抹去地震线；相反，野火可能会增加这种足迹对恢复中的相邻森林的影响。需要进行长期监测，以了解北方森林泥炭地如何应对野火和线性干扰的累积影响。
