RESPONSES OF COMMUNITY STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION TO WILDFIRE IN DRY AND SUBHUMID TROPICAL FORESTS IN BOLIVIA

Abstract

A comparison of plant communities within areas burned by wildfire five years previous to this study and adjacent unburned areas was conducted within a tropical subhumid and a tropical dry forest in eastern Bolivia. The objective
of the study was to compare the impacts of wildfire on plant species composition, species richness and structural attributes on the two forest types. The recently logged subhumid forest was damaged more by fire than was the dry forest and had a higher increase in post-fire liana, infestation. Burning altered the species composition, but to varying degrees depending on the strata or forest type. In the subhumid forest, tree species richness was lower and liana species richness higher in the burned compared to the unburned forest, whereas burning did not affect tree or liana richness in the dry forest. Conversely, shrub/sapling layer density was higher in the burned than unburned area of the dry forest but not in the subhumid forest type. For ground layer vegetation, grass and low shrub cover was greater in burned than unburned areas of both forest types. In the subhumid fores, liana cover was greater while forb and palm cover lower in the burned area. In the dry forest, tree and forb cover were higher but ground bromeliad cover lower in the burned area.