Hydrology and Fire History Drive Patterns in Post-Fire Recovery in Everglades Wetland Ecosystem

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 compared to fire history. Increasing water-levels by 10% across Everglades either shortened (sawgrass marl prairie) or prolonged (cattail marsh, graminoid marsh, graminoid prairie, halophytic herbaceous prairie and sawgrass marsh) post-fire recovery estimates. Fire return intervals for Everglades were dynamic and fire-management must develop novel approaches to manage fire-regimes