In August of 2013 the Morgan Fire burned approximately 3,000 acres of the slopes of Mount Diablo. For botanists the post-fire environment is an opportunity to explore places normally blanketed with impenetrable chaparral and see plant species that have not been seen in decades. We know that fire is a major driver of diversity dynamics and ecosystem structure in many California plant communities. In particular, there is a suite of annual or short lived perennial species that benefit from, or rely on, fire as a part of their life history cycle. This post-fire flora represents a fleeting diversity and abundance, typically spanning 3 to 5 years after a fire and disappearing back into the soil seed bank until the next fire event. Nomad Ecology botanists Heath Bartosh and Brian Peterson used this opportunity to design and implement a study aimed at capturing diversity and short-term successional dynamics of the fleeting abundance of fire following plants. This talk will present an overview of the Morgan fire, their research, and preliminary results following two years of sampling...and they still have one more to go! See an overview of the Morgan Fire as reported by Bay Nature writer Joan Hamilton.
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