Amur Region in Far Eastern Russia: the Relationship between Species Specific Traits Against Fire and Recent Fire Regimes

The number of forest fires has been increasing dramatically in the mixed conifer broad-leaved forests in the southern part of Far Eastern Russia. We should analyze the effect of this new fire regime on the vegetation and carbon budget in the forest ecosystem of this region. As each woody species develops specific traits to adapt to certain fire regimes, a change of fire regime affects each species differently. This can result in the alteration of the species composition of forest ecosystems. In the present study, we reviewed those adaptive traits exhibited by species in the region, and hypothesized a possible mechanism for the changes of species composition and amount of biomass stock that would result from the new fire regime. The new fire regimes described were an increased frequency of both intense canopy fires and low intensity surface fires. Both kinds of increased fire result in an increase of Betula platyphylla forests, but with different mechanisms. We proposed that an increase of Betula platyphyll