Fire Ecology Traits for Plants

A database for fire research and management

JR Ferrer-Paris
DA Keith
AY Sánchez-Mercado

Acknowledgement of country

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands where we work and live. UNSW is located on the unceded territory of the Bedegal (Kensington campus), Gadigal (City and Paddington campuses) and Ngunnawal peoples (Canberra).

We pay our respects to Elders past and present and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of NSW and other regions of Australia.

We also acknowledge and pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today.

Motivation

An understanding of fire-response traits is useful for:

  • predicting how fire regimes structure plant communities,
  • informing fire management strategies for biodiversity conservation.

Quantification of these traits is complex, encompassing several levels of data abstraction from field observations of individuals to population responses, to general categories of species responses.

Temporal & spatial variability

Species responses are affected by:

  • Genetic variability
  • Fire-events and -intervals
  • Environmental variability
  • Species interactions

Additional uncertainty due to observer error

Existing inventories

  • Plant fire response classification
    • (Gill 1975, 1981)
  • Vital attributes model
    • (Noble & Slatyer 1980, 1981)
  • Fire-related mechanisms of extinction
    • (Keith 1996)
  • Plant traits as quantitative indicators
    • (Falster et al. 2021)
  • Mechanisms of fire-related threat
    • (KTP listing, EPBC)

What can we improve?

  • Vocabularies: Trait definitions !
  • Multiple data streams !
  • Deal with uncertainty
  • Dynamic and interconnected

Plant-Fire ecology traits

  • 38 fire ecology traits
  • Classified in terms of:
    • life stage: seed, seedling or standing plant
    • life history process: survival, growth, reproduction, germination, recruitment, and dispersal
  • 14 priority traits to inform management

Plant-Fire ecology traits

Code Trait Classification
surv1 Resprouting - full canopy scorch Standing plant/Survival
surv4 Regenerative Organ Standing plant/Survival
surv5 Standing plant longevity (Max) Standing plant/Survival
surv6 Seedbank half-life Seed/Survival
surv7 Seed longevity Seed/Survival
repr2 Post-fire flowering response Standing plant/Reproduction
repr3 Age at first flower production (from seed) Standing plant/Reproduction
repr3a Time to first postfire reproduction (from resprouts) Standing plant/Reproduction
repr4 Maturation age Standing plant/Reproduction
rect2 Establishment pattern Seedling/Recruitment
grow1 Age to develop regenerative/resistance organs Standing plant/Growth
germ1 Seedbank Type Seed/Germination
germ8 Seed dormancy type Seed/Germination
disp1 Propagule dispersal mode Seed/Dispersal

Integrating data streams

%%{init: {'theme': 'base', 'themeVariables': { 'fontSize': '36px', 'fontFamily': 'Inter'}}}%%
flowchart LR
  A[Field work]:::DS1
  B["Legacy\ndata"]:::DS1
  PF{Proforma}:::DS1
  IS{Collection\nof scripts}:::DBS
  C1[Primary\nresearch\nliterature]:::DS2
  C2[Secondary\nResearch\nliterature]:::DS2
  D["Trait\ndatabases"]:::DS2
  V{Matching to \nvocabularies}:::DS2
  
  A --> PF ==> IS  
  A -.-> B -.-> PF
  PF --> V
  C1 & C2 -.-> V
  C1 -.-> C2
  C1 & C2 --> D --> V ==> IS
  
  IS ==> BD[(Fireveg\nDatabase)]:::DBS
  
  EXT[(External\nWeb\nservices)]:::EXT
  OutputReports[Output\nreports]:::OUT
  Repository:::OUT
  WebApp[Web App]:::OUT
  
  BD --> OutputReports & Repository & WebApp
  EXT -.->|static\nexports| BD
  EXT -.->|dynamic\nWS| WebApp
  
  classDef DS1 fill:none,stroke:red,color:red;
  classDef DS2 fill:none,stroke:orange,color:orange;
  classDef DBS fill:none,stroke:brown,color:brown,stroke-width:3;
  classDef OUT fill:none,stroke:black,color:black;

Field work data stream

Field work data stream

Pilot: 2019/2020 fire season

Field work data stream

Legacy data set

Literature data stream

  • Main sources:
    • New South Wales Flora Fire Response (v2.1; 2014)
    • Austraits (v3.0.2; Falster et al. 2021)
    • Selected references
  • Match names + taxon codes
  • Link to source references
  • Keep original values and annotations
  • Apply trait and methods vocabulary

Literature data stream

Sources per trait

Behind the curtain

  • Database structure
    • SQL entities and relationships, vocabularies
  • Import scripts
    • Multiple scripts for different tasks (modularity)
    • Optimised for (semi-)automatic import
    • Flexibility for customised imports
  • Integration with:
    • Web services, external/ancillary data

Species in the database

New South Wales flora (native species):

Total nr. of taxa 10231
Taxa with literature records 5589
Taxa with field records 874
Taxa with either 5687

Species in the database

Web App

Road ahead

  • Input streams:
    • More field work data !
    • Migration of additional primary data sources
  • Data verification and cleaning
  • Outputs:
    • Export reports
    • WebApp functionality
  • Coverage beyond NSW

Thanks !

j.ferrer@unsw.edu.au @jrfep

Funding and support: Australian Research Council / NESP TSR Hub / NSW Bushfire Research Hub / NSW DPE / (Saving our Species) / DAWE / DBCA / SA DEW

Lab Group Members: Tom Le Breton / Alex Thomsen / Ryan Tangney / Hannah Etchells / Chantelle Doyle / Annabel Murray

Honours students: Michi Sano / Mirima Goldman / Tricia Ong / Sophie Yang

UNSW colleagues: Mark Ooi / Tony Auld / Mitch Lyons / Will Cornwell / Dan Falster / Miriam Muñoz-Rojas / Casey Kirchhoff

Broader collaborations DPE: Berin Mackenzie, Mark Tozer, Dave Kelly, Justin Collette, Liz Tasker, Allen McIllwee, Andrew Denham, Chris Simpson, Rachael Melrose; Jedda Lemmon, Renee Woodward, Unis: Rachael Gallagher, Rachael Nolan, Stuart Allen (Macquarie); Stephen van Leeuwen (Curtin);

This presentation was prepared by José R. Ferrer-Paris : Attribution 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0)

All diagrams and plots generated with R and mermaid.js, see source code.

Photos by José R. Ferrer-Paris, shared under: Attribution 4.0 Internacional (CC BY 4.0)

R version 4.3.0 (2023-04-21)
Platform: aarch64-apple-darwin20 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Ventura 13.4.1

Matrix products: default
BLAS:   /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.3-arm64/Resources/lib/libRblas.0.dylib 
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.3-arm64/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib;  LAPACK version 3.11.0

locale:
[1] en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8

time zone: Australia/Darwin
tzcode source: internal

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] forcats_1.0.0    ggpubr_0.6.0     ggraph_2.1.0     igraph_1.5.0    
 [5] ggthemr_1.1.0    ggrepel_0.9.3    ozmaps_0.4.5     sf_1.0-13       
 [9] lubridate_1.9.2  ggplot2_3.4.2    treemapify_2.5.5 dplyr_1.1.2     

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
 [1] ggfittext_0.10.0   gtable_0.3.3       xfun_0.39          rstatix_0.7.2     
 [5] vctrs_0.6.3        tools_4.3.0        generics_0.1.3     tibble_3.2.1      
 [9] proxy_0.4-27       fansi_1.0.4        pkgconfig_2.0.3    KernSmooth_2.23-20
[13] lifecycle_1.0.3    compiler_4.3.0     farver_2.1.1       munsell_0.5.0     
[17] ggforce_0.4.1      graphlayouts_1.0.0 carData_3.0-5      htmltools_0.5.5   
[21] class_7.3-21       yaml_2.3.7         pillar_1.9.0       car_3.1-2         
[25] tidyr_1.3.0        MASS_7.3-58.4      classInt_0.4-9     wk_0.7.3          
[29] viridis_0.6.3      abind_1.4-5        tidyselect_1.2.0   digest_0.6.31     
[33] stringi_1.7.12     purrr_1.0.1        labeling_0.4.2     cowplot_1.1.1     
[37] rprojroot_2.0.3    polyclip_1.10-4    fastmap_1.1.1      grid_4.3.0        
[41] here_1.0.1         colorspace_2.1-0   cli_3.6.1          magrittr_2.0.3    
[45] tidygraph_1.2.3    utf8_1.2.3         broom_1.0.5        e1071_1.7-13      
[49] withr_2.5.0        scales_1.2.1       backports_1.4.1    timechange_0.2.0  
[53] rmarkdown_2.21     gridExtra_2.3      ggsignif_0.6.4     evaluate_0.21     
[57] knitr_1.42         viridisLite_0.4.2  s2_1.1.4           rlang_1.1.1       
[61] Rcpp_1.0.10        glue_1.6.2         DBI_1.1.3          tweenr_2.0.2      
[65] rstudioapi_0.14    jsonlite_1.8.4     R6_2.5.1           oz_1.0-22         
[69] units_0.8-2

Ecological Society of Australia / ESA 2023 / Darwin, June 2023 / JR Ferrer-Paris / Centre for Ecosystem Science @ UNSW Sydney