Woodpecker guides post-fire forest management

Woodpecker guides post-fire forest
management

April 26 2023

Black-backed Woodpecker at its nest in a burned tree. Credit: Jeremy Roberts,
www.ConservationMedia.com

What's good for the Black-backed Woodpecker is good for restoration
of burned California forests. The birds' unique relationship with fire

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underpins the latest research into improved post-fire management. A
study published in Ecological Applications describes a new tool that
factors how fires burn into forest management decisions and turns
science into action for wildlife conservation.

"Wildfire is like a 10,000-piece puzzle, and climate change is
rearranging the pieces," said lead author Andrew Stillman with the
Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and the Cornell Lab of
Ornithology. "Gigantic, severe fires are becoming the new norm in
California due to drought, longer burn seasons, and dense forests. But
birds do really well in landscapes that are 'pyrodiverse'– areas where fire
results in uneven patches burned at high, medium, and low severity."

Black-backed Woodpeckers love pyrodiversity. They prefer to build
their nest cavities in newly burned areas after high severity fire. But they
also like to be adjacent to an area that burned at low intensity where
their young can hide from predators among living trees that still provide
cover. The species' unique habitat associations means that they are
sensitive to the removal of trees after fire, and forest managers use
information on the woodpecker to guide their post-fire planning.

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Regrowth among burned trees in the Sierra Nevada. Credit: Jean Hall.

After a wildfire, forest managers face difficult decisions about how to
best protect and restore the burned areas while balancing the needs of
people and wildlife. Sometimes there isn't time to survey wildlife in
burned areas, making it hard to choose where to invest in wildlife
conservation. To address this need, the researchers developed an online
tool to predict the potential abundance of Black-backed Woodpeckers
after fire. Incorporating new information on the value of pyrodiversity
made the underlying models more accurate.

"The tool we've created uses data from 11 years of surveys to predict

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where woodpeckers could be found in the greatest numbers using data
available within months after a fire burns," said Stillman. "The birds
move in to take advantage of a boom in juicy beetle larvae in the burned
trees."

The online tool uses many layers of information, starting with a satellite-
derived layer of burn severity that forest managers can upload. That
layer is then used to assess pyrodiversity based on how much forest
canopy has been lost. Other datasets on woodpecker home ranges,
vegetation type, latitude, longitude, elevation, years since a fire burned,
and more, are also integrated.

The Sierra Nevada in Northern California comes back to life after a wildfire.
Credit: Jean Hall.

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What pyrodiversity looks like: a mosaic of burned, partially burned, and living
trees after a wildfire in Montana. Credit: Jeremy Roberts,
www.ConservationMedia.com

The new tool will save time and effort after a wildfire and is meant for
forest managers, conservationists, and private landowners. It is hosted by
The Institute for Bird Populations in partnership with the USDA Forest
Service. Though currently set up for California, the methods hold
promise for other regions and species.

"A burned forest is a unique, incredible, and complicated ecosystem that
bursts with new life," Stillman said. "At first you think everything is
dead. The ground is ash. The trees are black. But as you start walking
around, you find that the place is alive. It's not dead, just changed."

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More information: Andrew N. Stillman et al, Incorporating
                                   pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for rapid post‐fire
                                   management: A woodpecker case study, Ecological Applications (2023).
                                   DOI: 10.1002/eap.2853

                                   Provided by Cornell University

                                   Citation: Woodpecker guides post-fire forest management (2023, April 26) retrieved 16 June
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