Aim: Forest disturbances are a natural ecological process, but climate and land-use change are altering disturbance regimes at an unprecedented rate, posing significant threats to biological communities and the species of concern.
Fire shapes biodiversity in many forested ecosystems, but historical management practices and anthropogenic climate change have led to larger, more severe fires that threaten many animal species where such disturbances do not occur naturally.
Wildfire activity throughout western North America is increasing which can have important consequences for species persistence. Native species have evolved disturbance-adapted traits that confer resilience to natural disturbance provided disturbances operate within their historical range of variability.
Animals often rely on the presence of multiple, spatially segregated cover types to satisfy their ecological needs; the juxtaposition of these cover types is called landscape complementation.
As global wildfire activity increases, wildlife are facing greater exposure to hazardous smoke pollution – with unknown consequences for biodiversity. Research on the effects of smoke on wild animals is extremely limited, in part due to the inherent logistical challenges of observing how animals respond to smoke in real time.
The effects of prescribed fire on forest pollinator communities are complex and incompletely understood. One of the least-studied questions concerns how these organisms are affected by the size, or spatial scale, of fire.
Spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics—termed pyrodiversity—areincreasingly recognized as important factors that structure wildlife communitiesin fire-prone ecosystems, yet there have been few attempts to incorporatepyrodiversity or post-fire habitat dynamics into predictive models of animaldistributionsandabundancetosupportpost-firemanagement.Weusetheblack-backed woodpecker—a s
Climate change has contributed to increased wildfires. Wildfire smoke exposes wildlife to hazards and mortality from particulate matter on a scale larger than the area impacted by fire.
In the Western US, area burned and fire size have increased due to the influences of climate change, long-term fire suppression leading to higher fuel loads, and increased ignitions. However, evidence is less conclusive about increases in fire severity within these growing wildfire extents.
Historically, wildfire and tribal burning practices played important roles in shaping ecosystems throughout the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion of northern California and southern Oregon.