Research TopicsWildlife & Fish: Bird Monitoring
Effects of Fire and Sudden Oak Death on Bird Communities
Fires, diebacks from tree disease, other landscape-modifying events and the subsequent habitat succession effects bird communities. We are comparing bird census data fortuitously taken before these events with new data taken afterwards.
Census data on the bird communities in and near these events have been taken for some years with a standardized format by various agencies, organizations, university personnel, and others, before, during, and after these events. We have compiled this historic data (Hogoboom et al 2002) and, in cooperation with the Klamath Bird Observatory, we are now conducting monitoring in a systematic manner after such events occur (primarily fire) throughout the Klamath-Siskiyou region.
Fire is arguably the most dramatic, and perhaps the most pervasive, event both spatially and temporally. Within the Megram / Onion Fires of the fall of 1999, we had previously located more than 100 stations censused over the past several years in and near the fire that burned 125,000 acres within the Six Rivers and Shasta-Trinity National Forests, containing both managed and wilderness-designated forests. This is just one of many areas where we have had survey stations that were in or near a subsequent fire.
Description of changes in avifaunal communities at the species or guild level during the first several years following these fires is providing valuable information for post-wildfire (and comparable habitat alteration) management of National Forests. This natural (and rare) occurrence of an opportunity to directly compare pre- and post-wildfire bird census data was an extremely cost-effective study.
Reports and Publications:
- Hogoboom, B., P. Herrera, and C.J. Ralph. 2002. Effects of fires on bird habitat use. U.S. Forest Service, Redwood Sciences Laboratory, Arcata, California.
- Alexander, J.D., C.J. Ralph, B. Hogoboom, N.R. Seavy, and S. Janes. 2004. Understanding effects of fire suppression, fuel treatment, and wildfire on bird communities in the Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion. Pp. 42-46 in Kristi L. Mergenthaler, Jack E. Williams, and Erik S. Jules, eds. Proceedings of the Second Conference on Klamath-Siskiyou Ecology, Cave Junction, Oregon, May 29-31, 2003. Siskiyou Field Institute, Cave Junction, Oregon.
- Huff, M.H., N.E. Seavy, J.D. Alexander, and C.J. Ralph. 2005. Fire and birds in the maritime Pacific Northwest. Pp. 46-62 in: Victoria Saab and Hugh Powell, eds. Fire and Avian Ecology. Studies in Avian Biology 30.
- Alexander, J.D., N.E. Seavy, C.J. Ralph, and B. Hogoboom. 2006. Vegetation and topographical correlates of fire severity from two fires in the Klamath-Siskiyou region of Oregon and California. International Journal of Wildland Fire 15: 237-245.
Last modified by L.L. Long