Abstract
Although widespread throughout the interior foothills of central and northern California, Pinus
sabiniana Dougl. has a disjunct distribution in the southern Sierra Nevada, where it is abundant in the
Kern River and Tule River watersheds, but is absent from the Kaweah River watershed between 36u
and 37uN. This gap in the pine’s distribution has long intrigued botanists and ecologists and has
elicited a number of hypotheses for this anomalous biogeographical pattern. Here we propose a new
hypothesis that couples unique features of the southern Sierra Nevada topography with unique
features of P. sabiniana’s response to fire. This low elevation pine is widely distributed in grassland
and chaparral, and where it occurs with the latter vegetation, it is extremely vulnerable to high
intensity wildfires. Under these conditions, meta-populations persist over time in refugia in riparian
areas and during fire-free intervals expand outwards re-colonizing shrubland dominated slopes. The
lack of su
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 364-372 |
Journal | Madrono |
State | Published - 2006 |