Fire exclusion in historically frequent-fire forests of the southwestern United States has altered forest structure and increased the probability of high-severity fire. Warmer and drier conditions, coupled with dispersal distance limitations, are impeding tree seedling establishment and survival following high-severity fire. High-severity patches are commonly dominated by non-forest vegetation, a state that can be reinforced by subsequent fire events. We sought to determine the influence of fire probability on post-fire vegetation development in a severely burned landscape in New Mexico, USA. We used LANDIS-II to simulate three fire probability scenarios—historical fire probability, contemporary fire probability, and the mean of the two—with contemporary climate. As fire probability increased, the mean size of the largest fires and the mean landscape fire severity increased. These changes in fire characteristics resulted in decreased total aboveground biomass and photosynthetic capacity on the landscape after 50 years. Additionally, the distribution of individual species biomass shifted, with early successional species, especially those that resprout after fire, increasing as a fraction of total biomass with increasing fire occurrence. Counter to empirical data, our simulations did not show a conifer establishment limitation, suggesting a source of uncertainty that will need to be addressed to improve projections of forest dynamics under future climate. Even without limited conifer regeneration, continued increases in fire frequency are likely to favor resprouting species and result in a loss of forest biomass and ecosystem productivity in this southwestern forest landscape.

美国西南部历史上频繁发生火灾的森林被防火，改变了森林结构，并增加了发生高强度火灾的可能性。更高的温度和更干燥的条件，再加上分散距离的限制，阻碍了树苗的建立和高强度火灾后的生存。高强度斑块通常以非森林植被为主，随后的火灾可能会加剧这种状态。我们试图确定火灾概率对美国新墨西哥州严重烧毁景观中的火灾后植被发育的影响。我们使用LANDIS-II来模拟三种具有现代气候的火灾概率情景-历史火灾概率，当代火灾概率以及两者的平均值。随着着火概率的增加，最大火灾的平均大小和景观火的平均严重性增加。这些火灾特征的变化导致50年后地上总生物量和景观光合能力的下降。另外，单个物种生物量的分布发生了变化，早期演替物种，尤其是火灾后萌芽的物种，随着火灾发生的增加而占总生物量的比例增加。与经验数据相反，我们的模拟并未显示针叶树的建立局限性，这表明需要解决不确定性源，以改善未来气候下森林动态的预测。即使没有有限的针叶树再生，