Effect of fire regimes on the demographic parameters of the perennial tussock grasses of a humid savanna": Article accepted for publication in Journal of Vegetation Sciences

To reduce tree encroachment and conserve savanna biodiversity, fire is often used. Choosing a fire regime to maintain savannas should take into account its impact on the diversity of living beings. However, the studies of fire impact on plants have mostly focused on woody plants and very little on herbaceous plants, especially perennial grasses which constitute almost all of the fire fuel and food for herbivores. It can be hypothesized that different fire regimes with different characteristics have different effects on perennial grasses even though they are recognized for their good adaptation to fire. These data are used to study the population of perennial grasses under the influence of three fire regimes. These fire regimes are the early fire applied in November, the mid-season fire applied in January and the late fire applied in March as well as the absence of fire. These fire treatments have been experimented since November 2013 on twelve 100m × 50m plots (three plots for each fire treatments) in shrub savanna in Lamto (Ivory Coast). On each of these plots, a 5m × 5m plot were delineated for this study. All individuals were identified, marked and measured (circumference at the base) and followed after fire. The measured demographic parameters such as mortality, fragmentation (the division of a tussock into several smaller ones), retrogression (the decrease in tussock size), growth, and fecundity by the number of seeds and the number of new individuals were measured and analyzed according to fire treatments, species, and circumference. These data show that all demographic parameters vary according to fire treatments, species and circumference. The late fire regime has a more detrimental effect on demographic parameters when the mid-season fire has a positive effect and should be chosen as the best fire regime for the savanna conservation. These files include a scientific article data accepted for publication in Journal of Vegetation Sciences. Three of our files contain datasets used only for the statistical tests giving the results of the article: Data_Frag_Recr_Retr, Data_Mortality and Data_New_tussocks. The file “Data_Frag_Recr_Retr” contains all the data on the fragmentation, recruitment and retrogression of tussocks of each species on each fire treatment plot. The “Data_Mortality” file groups the mortality data and “Data_New_tussocks” contains new individuals. The “Data_Fig5_&_test_Seed_number” and “Data_Fig6_&_test_Fecundity” files contain both da