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Cork oak (Quercus suber) as a West Mediterranean species is known for its ecological, economic and social values. Wildfires are one of the most serious problems threatening Quercus suber, endangering its occurrence in its area of distribution. Therefore, knowing the behavior of the species after fire and the factors influencing its responses are particularly important for forest management. In this study we assessed the post fire vegetative recovery in 730 trees affected by wildfires on 2014 in Kiadi cork oak forest, located in the Western side of Akfadou Mountains in Algeria. Few months after the fire, individual tree mortality was very low (7.53%), and nearly, all the trees sampled survived the fire since almost all trees resprouted from canopy and some of them showed basal resprouts. Moreover, those two modes of post fire vegetative recovery were not correlated to each other. The performed redundancy analyzes (RDA) revealed that the cork oak post-fire response was highly correlated with individual characteristics and with the environmental data. The main variables influencing the likelihood of good or poor vegetative recovery were the understory height and cover, soil characteristics, fire severity, tree status (alive/dead trees), tree diameter and tree exploitation. Our results confirmed the fire resistance of cork oak species; which is also the only Algerian tree to resprouts. Hence, this makes the species a good candidate for reforestation programs in fire prone ecosystems.

In this study, we are interested in the acorn biometry of the putative oak of Akfadou forest in Algeria. We measured the size of acorns of 34 putative species’ trees collected from 9 stands in the Akfadou forest massif (Algeria) and then we evaluated the growth of the seedlings by sowing the acorns in a nursery. We found that the performance of oak seedlings is strongly influenced by a “stand effect” and a “close pure species effect.” Indeed, the position and the ecological region influence acorn morphology. The growth of putative oaks in the nursery is remarkably homogeneous in terms of seedling height and diameter. However, the “close pure species” effect appears in the case of the high altitude stand where holm oak is present. This diversity is probably the consequence of genetic variations and/or environmental conditions of the stands. With climate change and decreasing precipitation, the frequency of dry years will only increase. These putative hybrids trees could constitute a future alternative for reforestation, improvement, and diversification of species in Algeria.