Peatlands promote fire refugia in boreal forests of northern Alberta, Canada

Abstract

In the boreal forests of North America, large wildfires often leave residual patches of unburned vegetation, termed fire refugia, which can affect post-fire ecosystem processes. Although topographic complexity is a major driver of fire refugia in mountainous terrain, refugia in boreal plains are more likely driven by a combination of other bottom-up controls on fuel configuration as well as top-down climate controls. In this study, we investigated the role of hydrological, ecological, and topographic heterogeneity, as well as climate moisture patterns, on the presence of fire refugia in forested upland and peatland ecosystems within Alberta's subhumid boreal forests over a 33-year (1985–2018) period. Generalized linear models were used to model the probability of refugia in forested stands as a function of bottom-up (vegetation, topography, site moisture, and ecosystem) and top-down (normal and annual climate moisture deficit) controls. We then developed predictive maps of refugia probability for a range of normal and interannual climate moisture deficit values. We found that forested fens had a probability of refugia that was 64% higher than upland forests, while forested bogs did not differ from forested uplands in refugia likelihood. Climate and physical setting presented the strongest controls on fire refugia in uplands and peatlands, respectively. Increasing amounts of adjacent bogs, but not fens, produced a sixfold increase in refugia probability in uplands, while increasing amounts of adjacent bogs and fens produced roughly two times the refugia probability in forested peatlands. In these upland forest stands, fire refugia probability was negatively related to the interaction between regional climate moisture deficits and interannual deviations from these norms, thus increasing the probability of fire refugia during more severe drought conditions in areas with less arid climates, while decreasing refugia probabilities in drier climates. However, in peatlands themselves, neither regional climate moisture conditions nor the interannual deviations affected refugia. Fire size had a negative effect on fire refugia in all upland-based models and a positive effect in all peatland-based models. Our results suggest that large areas of intact peatlands may be capable of promoting fire refugia and thereby slowing climate-driven, fire-mediated vegetation transitions in surrounding forest ecosystems.