Planted Seedling Survival in a Post-Wildfire Landscape : From Experimental Planting to Predictive Probabilistic Surfaces

Across the southwestern United States, high-severity wildfire is causing increasingly large patches of tree mortality, removing the seed sources required for the natural regeneration of these formerly conifer-dominated landscapes. Planting tree seedlings can accelerate succession and restore the ecosystem services that pre-wildfire forests provided, but in the semi-arid southwestern US, the survival of planted conifer seedlings is typically low. We present data on a seedling planting experiment within the footprint of the 2011 Las Conchas Fire in northern New Mexico, using microclimate variables and site-level topographic indices to determine which factors influence seedling survival of four conifer tree species. We then extrapolate these findings to the wider landscape for the most commonly planted species, producing a spatial projection of probabilistic seedling survival as a function of both site- and landscape-scale factors, using readily available topographic data. Both sets of analyses highlight the importance of landscape heterogeneity, quantifiable using topographic indices, in shaping microclimatic environments and affecting seedling survival in a predictable manner. Our results demonstrate that using these methods to guide future plantings may increase conifer tree seedling survival in high-severity post-wildfire landscapes