Long-term disturbance ecology

Tinner, Willy (2023). Long-term disturbance ecology. In: Lang, Gerhard; Ammann, Brigitta; Behre, Karl-Ernst; Tinner, Willy (eds.) Quaternary Vegetation Dynamics of Europe (pp. 467-485). Bern: Haupt Verlag

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Study object and approaches
Disturbance is a short-lasting event or a series of distinct brief events (lasting hours to days) that alter vegetation or ecosystem conditions, potentially releasing ecological and environmental trajectories that may continue over decades to centuries. Natural disturbance agents might be fire, browsing, pests, wind, frost, heat, floods, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, landslides or rockfalls. Some disturbances such as fire and browsing might be prevalently caused by human impact. Climate-change impacts act at different temporal scales and are thus usually not considered as disturbances. Indeed climate change is defined by a series of weather conditions over decades (>30 years) and deals more with averages (e.g. mean July temperatures, mean annual temperatures) than extremes or singularities (IPCC, 2013), which are characteristic for disturbance. Palaeoecological climate-impact studies thus usually have multi-decadal temporal resolutions, while disturbance- impact studies should possess decadal resolutions, ideally 5-10 years (Birks, 1997b). The higher temporal resolution needed for the reconstruction of disturbance ecology from sedimentary records is explained by short-lived processes that might be overlooked if resolutions are coarser than c. 10 years. For instance, a fire event may release widespread successional trajectories involving intermediate community stages, as observed in Yellowstone National Park in 1988 (Whitlock and Millspaugh, 1996). In the case of non-contiguous sampling, missing the one sample or year containing the disturbance signal (e.g. fire) may mean failing to attribute the resulting vegetational pattern to the right forcing. Moreover, having resolutions coarser than 10 years may result in a dilution of the disturbance signal (and thus its gradual loss) and/or the non-recognition of short-lived terrestrial plants (e.g. expansions of Epilobium angustifolium, Anemone, Mentha, Urtica, Cichorioideae, Poaceae, Rosaceae) or fungi such as Sporormiella (Tinner et al., 1999, 2008; Gobet et al., 2003; Schwörer et al., 2015). Similarly, disturbance impacts may be quick and transient in aquatic ecosystems, as shown by expansions of macrophytes such as Typha latifolia and Nymphaea alba in response to fire-related nutrient input (Tinner et al., 1999) or of diatoms such as Achnanthes minutissima, Aulacoseira, Asterionella formosa and Fragilaria brevistriata after volcanic eruptions (Birks and Lotter, 1994).

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