Tanguro site was established in 2004, for the largest fire experiment in tropical rain forests to investigate the impacts of recurrent fire in southern Amazon. We established three adjacent plots of 50-ha each – an annually burnt (six times in 7 years), a triennial burnt (three times in 7 years) and an unburned control. All fires were conducted near the end of the dry season, when fires associated to land-use changes escape to adjacent forest more often. Before experimental burning, several vegetation (e.g. as species richness, relative abundance of the five most common species, Importance Value Index (IVI), adult composition, woody stem density and composition, stem regeneration density) and microclimate variables (e.g. vapor pressure deficit near the soil surface and litter moisture content) were measured in all three plots as a baseline. Also, we conducted several measurements before, during, and after the fire to capture the fuel and microclimate drivers of fire behavior (see Balch et al. 2015 for a full description and overall results). Since then, we have collected data ecological and climatological in the region.
After the establishment of the site for the long-term experimental fire project, several parallel projects have been conducted in the site, either complementing dataset regarding this experiment and others. These include studies investigating the roles of long-term fire in habitat conversion (Silvério et al. 2013), the interactions of extreme weather events with recurrent fires (Brando et al. 2014), and overall impacts of land-use change in aquatic ecosystems (e.g. Macedo et al. 2013; Neil et al. 2013), climate and feedbacks (e.g. Coe et al. 2013),
In 2013 we established another fire experiment in a nearby area within our research site, where we manipulated fine fuel loads to isolate the effects of fuel loads on fire behavior
and fire-induced changes in forest carbon cycling (Brando et al. 2016), and to investigate the impacts on associated fauna and their ecosystem functions (Paolucci et al. 2016). As for the first fire experiment, several measures were taken before, during and are still taken after fires. Moreover, we burned the same areas again in 2016, to investigate potential cumulative effects of fire and the interaction with fuel availability on variables we measured.
References:
Balch, J.K., Brando, P.M., Nepstad, D.C., Coe, M.T., Silvério, D., Massad, T.J., Davidson, E.A., Lefebvre, P., Oliveira-Santos, C., Rocha, W., 2015. The susceptibility of southeastern Amazon
forests to fire: insights from a large-scale burn experiment. Bioscience 65, 893-905.
Brando, P.M., Balch, J.K., Nepstad, D.C., Morton, D.C., Putz, F.E., Coe, M.T., Silvério, D., Macedo, M.N., Davidson, E.A., Nóbrega, C.C., Alencar, A., Soares-Filho, B.S., 2014. Abrupt increases
in Amazonian tree mortality due to drought-fire interactions. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 111, 6347-6352.
Brando, P.M., Oliveria-Santos, C., Rocha, W., Cury, R., Coe, M.T., 2016. Effects of experimental fuel additions on fire intensity and severity: unexpected carbon resilience of a neotropical forest.
Global Change Biol. 22, 2516–2525.
Macedo, M.N., Coe, M.T., DeFries, R., Uriarte, M., Brando, P.M., Neill, C., Walker, W.S., 2013. Land-use-driven stream warming in southeastern Amazonia. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 368, 20120153.
Neill, C., Coe, M.T., Riskin, S.H., Krusche, A.V., Elsenbeer, H., Macedo, M.N., McHorney, R., Lefebvre, P., Davidson, E.A., Scheffler, R., 2013. Watershed responses to Amazon soya bean
cropland expansion and intensification. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 368, 20120425.
Paolucci, L.N., Maia, M.L.B., Solar, R.R.C., Campos, R.I., Schoereder, J.H., Andersen, A.N., 2016. Fire in the Amazon: impact of experimental fuel addition on responses of ants and their
interactions with myrmecochorous seeds. Oecologia 182, 335-346.
Silvério, D.V., Brando, P.M., Balch, J.K., Putz, F.E., Nepstad, D.C., Oliveira-Santos, C., Bustamante, M.M.C., 2013. Testing the Amazon savannization hypothesis: fire effects on invasion of a
neotropical forest by native cerrado and exotic pasture grasses. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond., Ser. B: Biol. Sci. 368, 20120427.
