ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
This article is part of the Research TopicFire Effects on Native Plant Species Diversity: Patterns and MechanismsView all 4 articles
Enhanced autosuccession after wildfire in a transitional sub-Mediterranean forest ecosystem: Evidence from the Kras Plateau (Slovenia)
Provisionally accepted
- 1Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia
- 2Slovenska akademia vied, Bratislava, Slovakia
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Wildfires are becoming an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in sub-Mediterranean regions, including areas where the vegetation is not historically adapted to fire. However, post-fire successional dynamics in these regions remain poorly documented. Vegetation was monitored annually for three years (2023–2025) after a major wildfire on the Kras Plateau (SW Slovenia). Monitoring took place in 50 permanent plots, which were assigned to five fire-severity classes. These included unburned control plots (class 0) and four burned classes (classes 1, 2a, 2b and 3). We analyzed species composition, ecological indicator values, vegetation structure, origin and habitat preference of species and plant functional traits using ordination and trait-based approaches. Post-fire succession followed an initial floristic composition model and an enhanced autosuccessional pathway across all fire-severity classes. The early dominance of ephemeral and ruderal species declined rapidly, while the abundance of perennial grasses, shrubs, and resprouting woody species increased. Functional traits shifted along R-C axis of Grime’s CSR strategy framework: from ruderal towards competitive and stress-tolerant, and successional trajectories consistently converged towards zonal thermophilous deciduous forest communities. High amount of precipitation facilitated rapid structural recovery, with shrubland developing within three years. Sub-Mediterranean forest vegetation on the Kras Plateau exhibits high resilience to wildfire, despite limited historical adaptation to fire. Enhanced autosuccession, combined with favorable post-fire moisture conditions, enables rapid recovery and reduces the likelihood of long-term degradation or the establishment of persistent post-fire shrublands.
Keywords: Autosuccession, Forest, Kras plateau, Recovery, Sub-Mediterranean, trait, vegetation, Wildfire
Received: 21 Dec 2025; Accepted: 30 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Čarni, Breg Valjavec, Čahojová and Jakob. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Andraž Čarni
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