DOI: 10.5061/dryad.mw6m905wm
title: Data from: Collapse, reorganization, and regime identity: breaking down past management paradigms in a forest-grassland ecotone

description: The identity of an ecological regime is central to modern resilience
 theory and our understanding of how systems collapse and reorganize
 following disturbance. However, resilience-based models used in ecosystem
 management have been criticized for their failure to integrate disturbance
 outcomes into regime identity. Assessments are needed to understand how
 well these classifications represent ecosystem responses that occur over
 management relevant time scales. We tracked post-wildfire forest and
 grassland dynamics 27 years after wildfire in eastern ponderosa pine
 savanna. We tested for differences between the assigned identity of a site
 (forest or grassland) versus classifications based on the site's
 disturbance history (burned/unburned and fire severity). Under current
 ecosystem models used to manage these forest-grassland ecotones, forests
 that experience high severity fire are expected to resemble an unburned
 grassland following fire, while forests and grasslands that experience low
 severity fire are expected to resemble unburned forests and grasslands,
 respectively. Twenty-seven years after wildfire, burned forests and
 grasslands displayed a high degree of departure from their expected regime
 identity. Plant and bird communities deviated significantly on sites that
 experienced low severity fire from undisturbed sites classified under the
 same ecological regime (grassland or forest). Forest sites that
 experienced high severity fire were the most unique of all disturbance
 history classes. Our results demonstrate that structures and communities
 predicted under resilience-based models used for eastern ponderosa pine
 management do not emerge over management relevant time scales following
 disturbance. Over 20% of variation in ecological structures and
 communities was explained by a single, 27-year-old disturbance.
 Integrating disturbance legacies will help improve applied models of
 ecosystem dynamics.
description: Data were measured across and adjacent to a mixed severity
 wildfire perimeter that occurred in 1989 in western Nebraska in a matrix
 of eastern ponderosa pine forest and grassland. Sampled sites included
 unburned grassland, burned grassland, unburned ponderosa pine forest,
 ponderosa pine forest that burned at low severity, and ponderosa pine
 forest that burned at high severity, indicated in the data set by the
 'Burn_Class' column. Sampling locations were distributed in a
 stratified-random design. A full and detailed description of sampling
 techniques and design can be found in the data's corresponding
 manuscript.
description: This data set contains: (1) Live ponderosa
 pine tree data (Live_PP_Data), including the number of trees per site and
 tree diameter at breast height (DBH) (2) Snag data,
 including the number of snags per site, snag decay class, and
 DBH (3) Bird community data (4)
 Shrub data, including species cover and height (5)
 Coarse Woody Debris (CWD) data recorded as the length of a transect line
 covered by CWD (6) Herbaceous Community data, including
 species cover