Vanbianchi Carmen M, Murphy Melanie A, Hodges Karen E
Department of Biology University of British Columbia Okanagan Kelowna BC Canada.
Department of Ecosystem Science and Management University of Wyoming Laramie WY USA.
Ecol Evol. 2017 Mar 12;7(7):2382-2394. doi: 10.1002/ece3.2824. eCollection 2017 Apr.
A fundamental problem in ecology is forecasting how species will react to major disturbances. As the climate warms, large, frequent, and severe fires are restructuring forested landscapes at large spatial scales, with unknown impacts on imperilled predators. We use the United States federally Threatened Canada lynx as a case study to examine how predators navigate recent large burns, with particular focus on habitat features and the spatial configuration (e.g., distance to edge) that enabled lynx use of these transformed landscapes. We coupled GPS location data of lynx in Washington in an area with several recent large fires and a number of GIS layers of habitat data to develop models of lynx habitat selection in recent burns. Random Forest habitat models showed lynx-selected islands of forest skipped by large fires, residual vegetation, and areas where some trees survived to use newly burned areas. Lynx used burned areas as early as 1 year postfire, which is much earlier than the 2-4 decades postfire previously thought for this predator. These findings are encouraging for predator persistence in the face of fires, but increasingly severe fires or management that reduces postfire residual trees or slow regeneration will likely jeopardize lynx and other predators. Fire management should change to ensure heterogeneity is retained within the footprint of large fires to enable viable predator populations as fire regimes worsen with climate change.
生态学中的一个基本问题是预测物种将如何应对重大干扰。随着气候变暖，大规模、频繁且严重的火灾正在大空间尺度上重塑森林景观，对濒危食肉动物产生未知影响。我们以美国联邦政府列为濒危物种的加拿大猞猁为例，研究食肉动物如何在近期的大面积火灾中生存，特别关注栖息地特征以及使猞猁能够利用这些转变后的景观的空间配置（例如与边缘的距离）。我们将华盛顿州一个近期发生多起大面积火灾地区的猞猁GPS定位数据与多个栖息地数据的GIS图层相结合，以建立猞猁在近期火灾后的栖息地选择模型。随机森林栖息地模型显示，猞猁选择的是未被大火烧毁的森林孤岛、残留植被以及部分树木存活下来的区域，以便利用新烧毁的地区。猞猁在火灾后最早1年就开始利用烧毁区域，这比此前认为的该食肉动物在火灾后2至4十年才开始利用要早得多。这些发现对于食肉动物在火灾面前的生存具有积极意义，但火灾愈发严重或管理措施减少了火灾后的残留树木或减缓了再生速度，可能会危及猞猁和其他食肉动物。随着气候变化导致火灾情况恶化，火灾管理应做出改变，以确保在大面积火灾的影响范围内保持异质性，从而维持食肉动物种群的生存能力。
