Data set: Demographic effects of severe fire in montane shrubland on Tasmania’s Central Plateau

Australian montane sclerophyll shrubland vegetation is widely
considered to be resilient to

infrequent severe
fire, but this may not be the case in Tasmania. Here, we report on
the vegetative and seedling regeneration response of a Tasmanian
non-coniferous woody montane shrubland following a severe fire, which
burned much of the Great Pine Tier in the Central Plateau
Conservation Area during the 2018–19 fire season when a
historically anomalously large area was burned in central Tasmania.
Our field survey of a representative area burned by severe crown fire
revealed that more than 99% of the shrubland plants were top-killed,
with only 5% of the burnt plants resprouting one year following the
fire. Such a low resprouting rate means the resilience of the
shrubland depends on seedling regeneration from aerial and soil
seedbanks or colonization from plants outside the burned area. Woody
species’ seedling densities were variable but generally low (25 m−2
). The low number of resprouters, and reliance on seedlings for
recovery, suggest the shrubland may not be as resilient to fire as
mainland Australian montane shrubland, particularly given a warming
climate and likely increase in fire frequency.

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