Data to "Alpine treeline ecotone stasis in the face of recent climate change and disturbance by fire"

This files contain data to accompany "Alpine treeline ecotone stasis in the face of recent climate change and disturbance by fire". “Alpine treeline ecotone stasis in the face of recent climate change and disturbance by fire” takes a novel approach to understanding the potential for alpine treeline movement, by considering the recent disturbance regime, microsite climate factors and the regeneration opportunities of the tree species at the treeline. We undertook a re-visitation approach and re-surveyed the occurrence of seedlings at alpine treelines with various fire disturbance histories, in the Victorian Alps, Australia. Large trees that were burnt in recent fires were largely unharmed and able to re-sprout post-fire, while seedlings/saplings were vulnerable to successive fires. Establishment of new seedlings upslope was mostly restricted to unburnt areas. While climate warming may be the overall driver for treeline movement upslope, long-lag times and interactions between disturbance regimes and population dynamics must be considered when making general assumptions about alpine treeline movement.