Rafael García

• PhD
• University of Concepción

Background Vegetation plays a crucial role in the ignition, propagation, and severity of fire, and understanding the relationship between plants and fire through flammability attributes has become a useful tool that is increasingly used in studies on fire dynamics worldwide. However, in the southern cone of South America, rather few studies have sy...

The Andes mountain range in South America has a high level of endemism and is a major source of ecosystem services. The Andes is increasingly threatened by anthropo-genic disturbances that have allowed the establishment of non-native plants, mainly in the lower elevation areas. However, synergies between climate change and anthropogenic pressure ar...

One of the tree species with the greatest invasive potential worldwide is Pinus contorta Douglas ex Loundon, which is characterized by producing a great number of individuals in short periods of time, generating different impacts on the ecosystems it invades. The genus Chusquea is present in a diverse number of ecosystems in South America. In the t...

Background The use of Bayesian inference (BI) is a common methodology for data analysis in Ecology and Evolution. This statistical approach is particularly useful in cases which information is scarce, because allows formalizing sources of information, other than sampling data (priors), obtained from technical reports, expert opinions and beliefs. R...

Introducción y objetivos: Las áreas silvestres protegidas (ASP) tienen como tarea principal la protección de la biodiversidad de un área determinada, para lo cual es fundamental limitar el ingreso de especies exóticas. El objetivo del presente estudio fue registrar las especies de plantas exóticas que prosperan al interior de ASP de Chile y describ...

Pinus contorta is considered one of the most invasive tree species worldwide, generating significant impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems. In several Patagonian ecosystems in southern Chile, it has escaped from plantations established mainly in the 1970s, and is now invading both forests and treeless environments. In this study, we evaluated the...

Research in global change ecology relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature in open areas at around 2 m above the ground. These climatic grids do not reflect conditions below vegetation canopies and near the ground surface, where critical ecosystem functions occur and most terrestrial species reside. Here, we...

Wildfires are responsible for a substantial loss of forest ecosystem services globally and represent a major driving force of forest degradation across Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC). The detrimental effect of forest fires is particularly relevant in regions where fire has been historically absent or has rarely occurred. Nowadays, there is...

Research in environmental science relies heavily on global climatic grids derived from estimates of air temperature at around 2 meter above ground1-3. These climatic grids however fail to reflect conditions near and below the soil surface, where critical ecosystem functions such as soil carbon storage are controlled and most biodiversity resides4-8...

Current analyses and predictions of spatially‐explicit patterns and processes in ecology most often rely on climate data interpolated from standardized weather stations. This interpolated climate data represents long‐term average thermal conditions at coarse spatial resolutions only. Hence, many climate‐forcing factors that operate at fine spatiote...

AimsBiological invasions have historically been addressed mostly from an aboveground perspective, so little is known about the impacts of belowground invasions. We studied the impact of belowground invasions on growth of native tree species and test the possibility of novel interactions between native and non-native hosts and native and non-native...

A critical aspect of predicting soil organic carbon (SOC) concentrations is the lack of available soil information; where information on soil characteristics is available, it is usually focused on regions of high agricultural interest. To date, in Chile, a large proportion of the SOC data have been collected in areas of intensive agricultural or fo...

Los resultados presentados en este informe son parte del trabajo interdisciplinario que realiza el Centro de Ciencia del Clima y la Resiliencia (CR)2. El (CR)2 es un centro de excelencia financiado por el programa FONDAP de CONICYT (Proyecto 15110009) en el cual participan cerca de 60 científicos asociados a la Universidad de Chile, la Universidad...

A critical aspect of predicting soil organic carbon (SOC) concentrations is the lack of available soil information; where information on soil characteristics is available, it is usually focused on regions of high agricultural interest. To date, in Chile, a large proportion of the SOC data have been collected in areas of intensive agricultural or fo...

One of the critical aspects in modelling soil organic carbon (SOC) predictions is the lack of access to soil information which is usually concentrated in regions of high agricultural interest. In Chile, most soil and SOC data to date is highly concentrated in 25 % of the territory that has intensive agricultural or forestry use. Vast areas beyond t...

Volumen 1-Año: 2018 http://bioinvasiones.org/

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201195.].

In recent decades large fires have affected communities throughout central and southern Chile with great social and ecological consequences. Despite this high fire activity, the controls and drivers and the spatiotemporal pattern of fires are not well understood. To identify the large-scale trends and drivers of recent fire activity across six regi...

Pre-screening of variables for model comparison using importance values for variables included in final GLM and GAM model comparison. Highly correlated variables (Pearson’s correlation coefficient > 0.60) and variables with importance values < 0.05 were not included in model comparison. (DOCX)

Comparison of Random Forests variable importance values for the entire study area and the North and South bioclimatic zone models. Variables ranked according to their Random Forests variable importance values shown as the estimated mean decrease in accuracy (MDA). (DOCX)

Spatial distribution of the probability of fire occurrence based on best GLM. (EPS)

Summary of GAM model comparison for study area and North and South bioclimatic zone model sets. Model AIC, delta AIC between best model and model shown, % deviance explained, model r-squared, degrees of freedom and predictor variables included in each model. All continuous variables were significant at the p < 0.0001 significance level. (DOCX)

Image of high severity fire that occurred in an Araucaria araucana forest in 2015, China Muerta National Reserve, Araucanía region, south-central Chile (photo D. McWethy). (JPG)

Fire selective ‘preference’ for specific vegetation types using R-package ‘Resource Selection Function’. (EPS)

Tree invasions are increasing globally, causing major problems for biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being. In South America, conifer invasions occur across many ecosystems and while numerous studies address the ecological consequences of these invasions, little is known about social perceptions and people's attitudes toward their con...

A large area previously dominated by native ecosystems in South America is now covered by monocultures of non-native tree species, mainly of the genus Pinus. Currently, pine plantations and the invasions that have been generated from these are causing a homogenization process at the landscape, stand, and even micro-site scales. The continuous and e...

Many species in the family Pinaceae are invaders. These species are relatively easy to control because of some of their intrinsic characteristics and because they are highly visible and easy to eliminate. Many Pinaceae species have been well studied because of their use in forestry and their invasive behavior in many countries. The impacts of invas...

Effects of plantation forestry on biodiversity are controversially discussed in literature. While some authors stress positive effects, others tend to attribute a largely negative influence to plantations. One important factor steering the influence on biodiversity are management practices. A second important factor is the environmental matrix. Chi...

Conifers, which are widely planted as fast growing tree crops, are invading forested and treeless environments across the globe, causing important changes in biodiversity. However, how small-scale impacts on plant diversity differ according to pine size and habitat context remains unclear. We assessed the effects of different stages of pine invasio...

Understanding biological invasions patterns and mechanisms is highly needed for forecasting and managing these processes and their negative impacts. At small scales, ecological processes driving plant invasions are expected to produce a spatially explicit pattern driven by propagule pressure and local ground heterogeneity. Our aim was to determine...

Some broom species have the ability to modify elements of the fire regime in invaded areas. One such species, Teline monspessulana (Syn. Genista monspessulana; French Broom), has expanded notoriously in south-central Chile’s Mediterranean climate. The biota of this area may be particularly vulnerable to effects of invasive species on the fire regim...

Efecto de la alta temperatura en la germinación y supervivencia de semillas de la especie invasora Pinus contorta y dos especies nativas del sur de Chile Effects of high temperatures in the germination and seed survival of the invasive species Pinus contorta and two native species of South Chile SUMMARY Studies in South America have reported increm...

The effect of a pine invasion on the fuel characteristics was studied to predict fire behaviour and hypothesize potential changes on fire regime. Subalpine Andean forests, fire-prone environments, in the Malalcahuello Reserve in south-central Chile were invaded by the non-native Pinus contorta affecting the native endangered trees Araucaria araucan...

The interaction between plant attributes, environmental factors and the history of human intervention determines which species show a more invasive behavior and which areas are more likely to be invaded. Identifying which factors favor the invasion and which constraint it, remains an essential goal for understanding the process of invasion and to p...

Introducción Las plantas invasoras incluyen diversas formas de vida tales como lianas, hierbas, arbustos y árboles, sin embargo, es este último grupo a quienes se les ha atribuido ser los mayores agentes de cambio en las comunidades recipientes, más aún si se trata de ecosistemas abiertos (Richardson et al. 1994). La evidencia indica que los árbole...

Conifers are the most studied group of plants in invasion biology. Outside their natural range, they are capable of causing major community and ecosystem impacts. Pinus contorta, is currently considered one of the world's most invasive tree species, especially in temperate ecosystems. This study aims to determine if the invaded vegetation differ al...

Conifers are the most studied group of plants in invasion biology. Outside their natural range, they are capable of causing major community and ecosystem impacts. Firms contorta, is currently considered one of the world's most invasive tree species, especially in temperate ecosystems. This study aims to determine if the invaded vegetation differ al...

Efecto de dos especies de plantas invasoras fijadoras de nitrógeno sobre las propiedades químicas del suelo en el centro-sur de Chile RESUMEN Dos especies invasoras leñosas, Acacia dealbata y Teline monspessulana (Fabaceae), ampliamente distribuidas en el centro-sur de Chile, poseen la capacidad de fijar biológicamente el nitrógeno atmosférico y co...

Dos especies invasoras leñosas, Acacia dealbata y Teline monspessulana (Fabaceae), ampliamente distribuidas en el centro-sur de Chile, poseen la capacidad de fijar biológicamente el nitrógeno atmosférico y contribuir a la fertilidad del suelo. Se presentan evidencias de potenciales cambios ocasionados por estas especies en las propiedades químicas...

Worldwide, it has been reported that invasive species and fire can interact positively changing landscape dynamics and ecosystem cycles. This work aims to study the effect of forest fires on the seed bank of Teline monspessulana (L.) K. Koch (French Broom) and its implications for the invasion of the species in the mediterranean area of southcentra...

Worldwide, it has been reported that invasive species and fire can interact positively changing landscape dynamics and ecosystem cycles. This work aims to study the effect of forest fires on the seed bank of Teline monspessulana (L.) K. Koch (French Broom) and its implications for the invasión of the species in the mediterranean area of south-centr...

Invasive species can increase fire frequency and intensity, generating favorable conditions for their self-perpetuation. Mediterranean south-central Chile may be especially prone to the effects of invasive species on fire regimes because it is less adapted to fire and it contains a highly endemic flora. Teline monspessulana (L.) K. Koch (syn. Cytis...

Invasive plant species and fire may generate positive feedbacks, modifying landscape dynamics and ecosystem cycles. This study aims to study the population patterns of Teline monspessulana after forest wildfires in the coastal areas of the Bio-Bio Region of Chile, which is dominated by forest plantations of Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus globulus. Th...

Invasive plant species and fire may generate positive feedbacks, modifying landscape dynamics and ecosystem cycles. This study aims to study the population patterns of Teline monspessulana after forest wildfires in the coastal areas of the Bio-Bio Region of Chile, which is dominated by forest plantations of Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus globulus. Th...