Old-forest Species Threatened by Megafires: Research Brief
/The King Fire burned through an area used for a long-term (23 years) demography study of spotted owls in the central Sierra Nevada, allowing the authors to compare the number and distribution of owls both before and one year after the fire.
Jones, G. M., Gutiérrez, R. J., Tempel, D. J., Whitmore, S. A., Berigan, W. J., & Peery, M. Z. 2016. Megafires: an emerging threat to old‐forest species. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 14(6): 300-306. DOI: 10.1002/fee.1298
Gavin M. Jones (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dept. of Forestry & Wildlife Ecology) also recorded a webinar 1/11/2017 "BALANCING FOREST ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION AND OLD-FOREST SPECIES CONSERVATION IN THE SIERRA NEVADA, CA" that discussed the results of this paper and other future projects about the spotted owl. Webinar description: Concern over the social, economic, and ecological consequences of increasingly frequent "megafires" in California's Sierra Nevada have led some to propose large-scale forest restoration to increase ecosystem resilience.
Webinar courtesy of Utah State University Forestry Extension
