Long-Term Effects of High Intensity Prescribed Fire on Vegetation Dynamics in the Wine Spring Creek Watershed, Western North Carolina, USA

Fire Ecology

Table 5 Herb-layer cover, diversity (H’_cover), and species richness (S) and average cover by growth form before the prescribed burn (1994), and the first (1995), second (1996), and tenth (2005) growing seasons after the prescribed burn for the ridge community at Wine Spring Creek, western North Carolina.

		Cover (%)	H’_cover	S per plot	S per site^a	S ^b_W	S ^c_H
1994	Pre-burn	35.57 (6.61) A^d	1.02 (0.22) A	18.2 (0.5) AB	28	21	7
1995	1 yr post	10.58 (2.56) B	1.97 (0.33) B	22.8 (1.7) A	53	24	29
1996	2 yr post	37.67 (2.57) A	2.01 (0.08) B	12.5 (1.0) C	46	22	24
2005	10 yr post	41.06 (6.19) A	2.25 (0.08) B	14.8 (0.4) BC	60	24	36
			Cover (%)
Growth form	All woody	Trees + Deciduous shrubs	Deciduous shrubs	Evergreen shrubs	Forbs	Gram inoids
1994	33.27 A	5.27 A	4.22 A	28.00 A	1.22 A	1.30 A
1994	(6.89)	(1.46)	(1.46)	(7.54)	(0.35)	(0.71)
1995	9.55 B	5.88 A	4.97 A	3.67 B	0.68 A	0.35 A
1995	(2.66)	(2.87)	(2.74)	(1.69)	(0.15)	(0.18)
1996	29.38 A	17.92 B	12.04 AB	11.46 B	5.65 B	5.38 B
1996	(1.37)	(1.80)	(1.90)	(2.15)	(0.68)	(1.96)
2005	28.98 A	21.24 B	15.91 B	8.00 B	9.10 C	2.72 AB
2005	(4.84)	(4.53)	(3.96)	(2.08)	(2.05)	(1.90)

^aS = total number of species for the site.
^bS_W = number of woody species.
^cS_H = number of herbaceous species. Ridge burn plots where herbs were measured in every year (n = 6 plots [average cover of five 1.0 m² quadrats per plot]). Values in columns followed by different letters are significantly different (p < 0.05) based on repeated measures analysis of variance (PROC MIXED 2002–2003), followed by a Tukey-Kramer adjusted t-test. Standard errors are in parentheses.
^dValues in rows followed by different letters are significantly different (p < 0.05) based on repeated measures analysis of variance, followed by a Tukey-Kramer adjusted t-test.