Life Sciences Commons^™

Hydrology And Fire History Drive Patterns In Post-Fire Recovery In Everglades Wetland Ecosystem, Jenisha Oli

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although fire-adapted ecosystems in Everglades require regular burning to maintain wetland ecosystems, land management and climate-change have altered natural fire-regime. Due to changes in climate and hydrology, historical fire-regimes may become irrelevant. To understand changing fire return intervals, I look at patterns in ecosystem recovery, where fast recovery is indicative of resilience and adaption with an objective of understanding post-fire recovery time in Everglades. I evaluated how post-fire recovery rates were influenced by hydrology and fire-history (1948-2019) by measuring changes in normalized difference vegetation index following fires that burned between 2005-2019 within Everglades. Hydrology had stronger effect on post-fire recovery …