Fire and Invasive Plants on California Landscapes

Abstract

Throughout the world, the functioning of natural ecosystems is being altered by invasions from nonnative plants and animals. Disturbances that alter ecosystem processes often initiate species invasions. Increasingly it is evident that fire-prone ecosystems can be highly vulnerable both to invasion during the immediate postfire period and to alterations of fire regime by altered fuel bed properties after invasion. Here we explore how temporal and spatial patterns of burning affect invasion and the prevalence of nonnative species, and how fundamental variation in fire regime characteristics pose challenges for articulating unifying principles of the relation- ship between fire and the invasion process at the landscape scale.