Assessing the quality of fire refugia for wildlife habitat

Andrus, Robert A.; Martinez, Anthony J.; Jones, Gavin M.; Meddens, Arjan J. H.

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2020.118868

Cited by 19 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Future choices made by land managers regarding post-fire habitats, and emerging science about post-fire succession, will be consequential for spotted owls. Despite ongoing methodological differences between researchers, there is broad agreement that current post-fire management-characterized by clearcutting of snag forest habitat, spraying of herbicides to eliminate native shrubs, and creation of tree plantations-is harmful to declining spotted owl populations (Hanson et al, 2018;Jones et al, 2018;Lee, 2018;Peery et al, 2019). Moreover, research indicates that such post-fire clearcutting and creation of tree plantations may often lead to higher future fire severity (Thompson et al, 2007;Bradley et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of Postfire Management Are Unjustified in Spotted Owl Habitat

Hanson

Tonja²

2021

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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In mixed-conifer forests inhabited by California spotted owls, land managers hypothesize that without human intervention natural conifer regeneration will take many decades or longer to begin within interior areas of large high-severity fire patches, due to long distances from live tree seed sources. As a result, widespread post-fire logging, followed by sprayed application of herbicides and planting of conifer seedlings, are used to create tree plantations. These are activities routinely conducted in spotted owl territories following fires, despite current data that indicate this approach has adverse impacts on spotted owl occupancy. Land managers acknowledge such impacts, but continue these forest management practices, assuming they are a necessary harm, one that is warranted to ensure the later return of mature conifer forests used by spotted owls for nesting and roosting. However, few data have been gathered to test this hypothesis. At 5 years post-fire, we surveyed field plots on a grid within large high-severity fire patches in spotted owl habitat within the Rim fire of 2013 in the Sierra Nevada, California. In our analysis the percentage of plots lacking conifer regeneration decreased significantly with larger plot sizes, a finding contrary to previous studies which assumed vast “deforested” areas in wildland fires, a bias created by small plot size. We found higher conifer regeneration closer to live-tree edges, but we consistently found natural post-fire conifer regeneration at all distances into interior spaces of large high-severity fire patches, including >300 m from the nearest live trees. Distance from live-tree edges did not affect pine dominance in post-fire regeneration. The post-fire natural conifer regeneration reported in our results suggests that the adverse effects of current post-fire management in spotted owl habitat are not necessary practices that can be justified.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of Postfire Management Are Unjustified in Spotted Owl Habitat

Hanson

Tonja²

2021

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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“…Finally, the habitat quality in this study was obtained by using the InVEST model based on a combination of the effects of various threat factors on different LULC types (Song et al, 2020). Although the Invest model was the main method in studies of habitat quality assessment, the parameters such as the weight of threat factors and habitat suitability were mainly obtained based on the existing literature or expert scoring method, which may be subjective (Andrus et al, 2021), and the ecological environment of the QTP was complex, and the parameters may vary from region to region. Not only that, since a large part of the QTP is a nature reserve or uninhabited area, it has certain particularity, and the distribution characteristics of various threat factors may be similar, so there may be some errors in the obtained results.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, habitat quality has become a hot issue in ecological security research. At present, habitat quality can be assessed based on the measured species diversity, or through the analysis of the evolution of the habitat by parameter substitution (Andrus et al, 2021). As the parameter substitution method has become the main method, the relationship between resources and habitat suitable land is mainly discussed from the perspective of landscape pattern (Zhu Z. et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responses of Habitat Quality and Animal Biodiversity to Grazing Activities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Liu

Wang

et al. 2021

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Grazing activities perhaps lead to habitat quality degradation and animal biodiversity loss while the effects on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is still relatively poorly studied. Based on the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs model, geographical detector model and generalized linear mixed model, the responses of habitat quality and animal biodiversity to grazing activities at 5 km grid scale were analyzed. Results showed that the overall habitat quality on the QTP was high with 76.43% of the total area, and poor level accounted for 19.56%. High level habitat was mainly distributed in the southern part, while the poor level in the northern part. The mean grazing activity explanatory ability to habitat quality, bird species richness and mammal richness were 0.346, 0.430, and 0.354. The interaction effects between slope and grazing activities on habitat quality, bird species richness and mammal richness were the most important interaction effects, and the area affected by the interaction was 73.82, 46.00, and 46.17% of habitat quality, bird species richness and mammal richness, respectively. The interaction effects on habitat quality, bird species richness and mammal richness all showed “low in the northwest and high in the southeast”. Grazing activities and habitat quality had a positive correlation while bird species richness, and mammal richness negative correlations. The spatial relationship of grazing activities of habitat quality was “higher in the middle and lower around the periphery”, while the spatial distribution of grazing activities of bird species richness and mammal richness was “higher in the east and lower in the west”. This study explicitly revealed the responses of habitat quality and animal biodiversity to grazing activities, thus providing references for biodiversity conservation on the QTP.

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“…More recently, Andrus et al. (2021) combined SDMs with fire severity maps to inform post‐fire survey design and management decisions. They developed a refugium index to assess the value of unburned areas for wildlife habitat using a flexible multi‐scale fuzzy logic.…”

Section: Opportunities and Solutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In one example, Bosso et al (2018) mapped the pre-fire occurrence of 12 species of bat using SDMs and used these maps to evaluate how much of their habitat was affected by fire. More recently, Andrus et al (2021) combined SDMs with fire severity maps to inform post-fire survey design and management decisions. They developed a refugium index to assess the value of unburned areas for wildlife habitat using a flexible multi-scale fuzzy logic.…”

Section: Species Distribution Modelling and Spatial Prioritizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design considerations for rapid biodiversity reconnaissance surveys and long‐term monitoring to assess the impact of wildfire

Southwell

Legge

Lindenmayer

et al. 2021

Diversity and Distributions

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Aims Reconnaissance surveys followed by monitoring are needed to assess the impact and response of biodiversity to wildfire. However, post‐wildfire survey and monitoring design are challenging due to the infrequency and unpredictability of wildfire, an urgency to initiate surveys and uncertainty about how species respond. In this article, we discuss key design considerations and quantitative tools available to aid post‐wildfire survey design. Our motivation was to inform the design of rapid surveys for threatened species heavily impacted by the 2019–2020 fires in Australia. Location Global. Methods We discuss a set of best practice design considerations for post‐wildfire reconnaissance surveys across a range of survey objectives. We provide examples that illustrate key design considerations from post‐fire reconnaissance surveys and monitoring programmes from around the world. Results We highlight how the objective of post‐fire surveys drastically influences design decisions (e.g. survey location and timing). We discuss how the unpredictability of wildfire and uncertainty in the response of biodiversity complicate survey design decisions. Main conclusions Surveys should be conducted immediately following wildfire to assess the impact on biodiversity, to ground truth fire severity mapping and to provide a benchmark from which to assess recovery. Where possible, surveys should be conducted at burnt and unburnt sites in regions with historical data so that state variables of interest can be compared with baseline estimates (i.e. BACI design). This highlights the need to have long‐term monitoring programmes already in place and be prepared to modify their design when wildfires occur. There is opportunity to adopt tools from statistics (i.e. power analysis) and conservation planning (i.e. spatial prioritization) to improve survey design. We must anticipate wildfires rather than respond to them reactively as they will occur more frequently due to climate change.

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Assessing the quality of fire refugia for wildlife habitat

Cited by 19 publications

References 64 publications

Impacts of Postfire Management Are Unjustified in Spotted Owl Habitat

Impacts of Postfire Management Are Unjustified in Spotted Owl Habitat

Responses of Habitat Quality and Animal Biodiversity to Grazing Activities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Design considerations for rapid biodiversity reconnaissance surveys and long‐term monitoring to assess the impact of wildfire

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