Response of Tick-borne Disease to Fire and Timber Harvesting

Foley, Janet E.; Plourde, Benjamin T.

doi:10.1201/9780429095146-5

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“…Naturally occurring fires maintain communities such as coast redwood ( Sequoia sempervirens ) forests (Hulbert 1986, Lorimer et al 2009), and fire has been used for centuries by humans as a tool to manage brush, flush game, and regenerate prairie (Foley and Plourde 2018). Under natural fire regimes and repeated, controlled prescribed burns, the intensity and damage due to the fires are limited, such that most trees survive, and understory vegetation regrows rapidly (Pastro et al 2011).…”

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confidence: 99%

Response of small mammal and tick communities to a catastrophic wildfire and implications for tick‐borne pathogens

Pascoe

Plourde

López‐Pérez

et al. 2020

Journal of Vector Ecology

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Through their potentially devastating impacts on the environment, wildfires may impact pathogen, vector, and host interactions, leading to changing risks of vector‐borne disease in humans and other animals. Despite established risks for tick‐borne disease and increasing frequency and severity of wildfires in the United States, impacts of wildfire on ticks and tick‐borne pathogens are understudied. In 2015, the large Wragg fire extensively burned a long‐term field site at Stebbins Cold Canyon University of California Reserve (CC). We characterized the tick, reservoir host and pathogen community over a two‐year period after the burn, comparing our findings to pre‐fire data and to data from Quail Ridge Reserve (QR), a nearby unburned site. After the fire, there were 5.5 times more rodent, primarily Peromyscus spp., captures at CC than QR (compared to 3.5 times more pre‐fire). There were significantly fewer dusky‐footed woodrats (Neotoma fuscipes) at both sites post‐fire, likely due to drought but not fire. Pre‐fire tick infestation prevalence on rodents was comparable across sites (12.5% at CC and 9.9% at QR) and remained low at CC post‐fire (13.7%) but was significantly higher at QR (48.0%), suggesting that ticks or their habitat were destroyed during the burn. Normalized difference vegetation indices documented a 16‐fold loss of vegetation post‐ compared to pre‐fire at CC; loss of vegetation and direct impacts on fauna are likely the main drivers of the post‐fire differences in ticks we saw at CC. These data contribute to our understanding of tick‐associated disease risks in our increasingly disturbed landscapes.

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