When bigger isn’t better – implications of large high-severity wildfire patches for avian diversity and community composition

Steel, Zachary L.; Fogg, Alissa M.; Burnett, Ryan D.; Roberts, L. Jay; Safford, Hugh D.

doi:10.32942/osf.io/ay94q

2020

DOI: 10.32942/osf.io/ay94q

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When bigger isn’t better – implications of large high-severity wildfire patches for avian diversity and community composition

Zachary L. Steel¹,

Alissa M. Fogg²,

Ryan D. Burnett³

et al.

Abstract: Aim: Modern wildfires increasingly create large high-severity patches with interior areas far from less disturbed habitats. We evaluated how these trends impact montane bird communities by investigating the effect of internal distance to lower severity areas, high-severity patch size, and years since fire on avian alpha and beta diversity.Location:Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, USAMethods:Bird occurrence data were collected during 2009-2017 within high-severity patches of 27 wildfires representing 1-30 y… Show more

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Cited by 3 publications

References 43 publications

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Movement behavior in a dominant ungulate underlies successful adjustment to a rapidly changing landscape following megafire

Calhoun,

Connor,

Gaynor

et al. 2024

Mov Ecol

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Background Movement plays a key role in allowing animal species to adapt to sudden environmental shifts. Anthropogenic climate and land use change have accelerated the frequency of some of these extreme disturbances, including megafire. These megafires dramatically alter ecosystems and challenge the capacity of several species to adjust to a rapidly changing landscape. Ungulates and their movement behaviors play a central role in the ecosystem functions of fire-prone ecosystems around the world. Previous work has shown behavioral plasticity is an important mechanism underlying whether large ungulates are able to adjust to recent changes in their environments effectively. Ungulates may respond to the immediate effects of megafire by adjusting their movement and behavior, but how these responses persist or change over time following disturbance is poorly understood. Methods We examined how an ecologically dominant ungulate with strong site fidelity, Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus), adjusted its movement and behavior in response to an altered landscape following a megafire. To do so, we collected GPS data from 21 individual female deer over the course of a year to compare changes in home range size over time and used resource selection functions (RSFs) and hidden Markov movement models (HMMs) to assess changes in behavior and habitat selection. Results We found compelling evidence of adaptive capacity across individual deer in response to megafire. Deer avoided exposed and severely burned areas that lack forage and could be riskier for predation immediately following megafire, but they later altered these behaviors to select areas that burned at higher severities, potentially to take advantage of enhanced forage. Conclusions These results suggest that despite their high site fidelity, deer can navigate altered landscapes to track rapid shifts in encounter risk with predators and resource availability. This successful adjustment of movement and behavior following extreme disturbance could help facilitate resilience at broader ecological scales.

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Movement behavior in a dominant ungulate underlies successful adjustment to a rapidly changing landscape following megafire

Calhoun,

Connor,

Gaynor

et al. 2024

Mov Ecol

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Fire and Mechanical Forest Management Treatments Support Different Portions of the Bird Community in Fire-Suppressed Forests

Roberts

Burnett

Fogg

2021

Forests

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Silvicultural treatments, fire, and insect outbreaks are the primary disturbance events currently affecting forests in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California, a region where plants and wildlife are highly adapted to a frequent-fire disturbance regime that has been suppressed for decades. Although the effects of both fire and silviculture on wildlife have been studied by many, there are few studies that directly compare their long-term effects on wildlife communities. We conducted avian point counts from 2010 to 2019 at 1987 in situ field survey locations across eight national forests and collected fire and silvicultural treatment data from 1987 to 2016, resulting in a 20-year post-disturbance chronosequence. We evaluated two categories of fire severity in comparison to silvicultural management (largely pre-commercial and commercial thinning treatments) as well as undisturbed locations to model their influences on abundances of 71 breeding bird species. More species (48% of the community) reached peak abundance at moderate-high-severity-fire locations than at low-severity fire (8%), silvicultural management (16%), or undisturbed (13%) locations. Total community abundance was highest in undisturbed dense forests as well as in the first few years after silvicultural management and lowest in the first few years after moderate-high-severity fire, then abundance in all types of disturbed habitats was similar by 10 years after disturbance. Even though the total community abundance was relatively low in moderate-high-severity-fire habitats, species diversity was the highest. Moderate-high-severity fire supported a unique portion of the avian community, while low-severity fire and silvicultural management were relatively similar. We conclude that a significant portion of the bird community in the Sierra Nevada region is dependent on moderate-high-severity fire and thus recommend that a prescribed and managed wildfire program that incorporates a variety of fire effects will best maintain biodiversity in this region.

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Trading places: opposite colonization and extinction responses of the hermit warbler and western bluebird to the 2021 Dixie Fire

Bielski,

Wood

2024

California Fish and Wildlife Journal

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Forty years of increasing fire size and severity in California’s Sierra Nevada were embodied by the 2021 Dixie Fire, which burned 389,837 ha between July and October, making it one of the largest, most destructive fires in California’s history. Historical fire regimes burned substantial areas annually, but primarily at low and moderate severities. Studies of the implications of fires like the Dixie Fire, which burn largely at higher severities, have focused on habitat change in the burned area; much less is known about potential edge effects. The hermit warbler (Setophaga occidentalis) and western bluebird (Sialia mexicana) have previously been characterized as species with dramatic, opposing post-wildfire responses: hermit warblers display a strongly negative response to fires while western bluebirds display a strong positive response. We conducted passive acoustic monitoring pre- and post-Dixie Fire inside and outside the burned area and analyzed the audio with the machine learning animal identification tool BirdNET. We then used a multi-season occupancy modeling framework to characterize both species’ site extinction and site colonization responses as a function of fire and habitat variables. We found no influence of edge effects, though this may have been a function of the low density of our recorders relative to the home range of these species. We did, however, observe contrasting relationships between the species. Hermit warbler site extinction was elevated in burned areas, particularly those burned at higher severities, while site colonization in unburned habitat was positively associated with canopy cover. Western bluebirds displayed the exact opposite pattern (elevated colonization in areas of high-severity fire, elevated extinction in unburned areas with high canopy cover). These results suggest contrasting trajectories for fire-influenced bird species under contemporary fire regimes and could guide hypothesis generation for broader studies of biodiversity responses to fire in this ecosystem.

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When bigger isn’t better – implications of large high-severity wildfire patches for avian diversity and community composition

Cited by 3 publications

References 43 publications

Movement behavior in a dominant ungulate underlies successful adjustment to a rapidly changing landscape following megafire

Movement behavior in a dominant ungulate underlies successful adjustment to a rapidly changing landscape following megafire

Fire and Mechanical Forest Management Treatments Support Different Portions of the Bird Community in Fire-Suppressed Forests

Trading places: opposite colonization and extinction responses of the hermit warbler and western bluebird to the 2021 Dixie Fire

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