Subtropical coniferous forests of the lesser Himalaya provide critical ecosystem services but fire regimes have received limited scientific attention. We reconstructed fire regimes using tree-ring methods in a chir pine (Pinus roxburghii Sarg.) forest of Uttarakhand, India. We cross-dated tree-ring samples with fire scars from 36 trees at three sites near rural villages between 1535 and 1848 m elevation. Fires were highly frequent (mean fire intervals all <6 yr) but of low severity, so most mature trees of this thick-barked species survived numerous burns. Fire scars occurred primarily in the dormant period to the middle of early wood formation in tree-rings, consistent with fire season records. Despite the high fire frequency, fires were mostly asynchronous among the three sites, indicating a bottom-up pattern of local ignitions. We observed that resin tapping of the pines interacted with surface fire by allowing fire to burn into the wood of some tapped trees and weaken their structural integrity to the point of breakage. Ongoing frequent surface fire regimes linked to human land use are prominent disturbance factors in chir pine forests. Given that these forests support substantial human populations and form part of the watershed for many more people, the effects of anthropogenic fire and interactions with resin-tapping merit further investigation at landscape to regional scales. We suggest developing a research network in Himalayan forests as well as more broadly across southeast Asian pine forests to track interacting disturbances and their ecological and social implications.

中文翻译：

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在印度北阿坎德邦的赤松林中频繁燃烧

小喜马拉雅山的亚热带针叶林提供了关键的生态系统服务，但火灾状况受到的科学关注有限。我们在印度北阿坎德邦的 chir 松 (Pinus roxburghii Sarg.) 森林中使用树轮方法重建了火灾状况。我们在海拔 1535 至 1848 米之间的乡村附近的三个地点对带有火痕的树轮样本进行了交叉年代测定。火灾非常频繁（平均火灾间隔均小于 6 年）但严重程度较低，因此这种厚皮树种的大多数成熟树木在多次烧伤中幸存下来。火痕主要发生在休眠期到树木年轮早期木材形成的中期，与火灾季节记录一致。尽管火灾频率很高，但三个地点之间的火灾大多不同步，表明局部点火是自下而上的模式。我们观察到松树的树脂攻丝与表面火相互作用，让火燃烧到一些被攻丝的树木的木材中，并削弱它们的结构完整性到破损点。与人类土地利用相关的持续频繁的地表火灾状况是赤松林的主要干扰因素。鉴于这些森林支持大量人口，并成为更多人分水岭的一部分，人为火灾的影响以及与树脂开采的相互作用值得在景观到区域尺度上进行进一步研究。我们建议在喜马拉雅森林以及更广泛的东南亚松林中建立一个研究网络，以追踪相互作用的干扰及其生态和社会影响。