Scholarlink

Background <p>Fire regimes are rapidly shifting due to climate change and increasing vegetation flammability, with these dynamics often intensified in areas undergoing widespread rural abandonment, a trend particularly evident in mountainous landscapes of sub-Mediterranean Europe. We assessed avian community responses, including post-fire beta diversity, during the first breeding season following a megafire in a depopulated mountain landscape in northwestern Iberia, within a transitional biogeographic context. We employed a stratified sampling design across major habitat types to survey bird communities and quantify fire attributes and vegetation structure, combining field-based measurements with satellite-derived spectral indices.</p> Results <p>We recorded 2928 individuals representing 56 bird species, classified into multiple functional guilds. Fire severity was the main negative driver of community structure and composition, significantly impacting most functional groups. In contrast, spatial heterogeneity in fire severity fostered a broader range of ecological niches, enhancing the coexistence of diverse guilds and buffering the immediate effects of high fire severity. Postfire vegetation structure was a key determinant of community reassembly: snag-rich stands, unburned forest patches, and early post-fire open habitats facilitated both avian persistence and recolonization. These components also provided critical resources for highly specialized guilds, including cavity-nesting and open-habitat species. Bird community composition differed significantly between burned and unburned areas, and fire heterogeneity had a strong positive effect on post-fire beta diversity only when interacting with post-fire habitat structure.</p> Conclusions <p>Our findings demonstrate that fire attributes alone cannot account for short-term avian responses; rather, their interaction with pre-fire structural legacies is critical to understanding community reassembly. The conservation of snag-rich stands, early-successional open habitats, and unburned forest refugia—alongside the maintenance of fine-scale heterogeneity—should be prioritized to support post-fire bird community recovery in abandoned sub-Mediterranean mountain landscapes.</p>

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Megafire attributes and pre-fire structural legacies shape short-term avian responses in an Atlantic-Mediterranean ecotone

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月26日

查看全文
  • Fernando García-Fernández,
  • Adrián Regos,
  • Miguel Cánibe,
  • María Vidal,
  • Jesús Domínguez

摘要

Background

Fire regimes are rapidly shifting due to climate change and increasing vegetation flammability, with these dynamics often intensified in areas undergoing widespread rural abandonment, a trend particularly evident in mountainous landscapes of sub-Mediterranean Europe. We assessed avian community responses, including post-fire beta diversity, during the first breeding season following a megafire in a depopulated mountain landscape in northwestern Iberia, within a transitional biogeographic context. We employed a stratified sampling design across major habitat types to survey bird communities and quantify fire attributes and vegetation structure, combining field-based measurements with satellite-derived spectral indices.

Results

We recorded 2928 individuals representing 56 bird species, classified into multiple functional guilds. Fire severity was the main negative driver of community structure and composition, significantly impacting most functional groups. In contrast, spatial heterogeneity in fire severity fostered a broader range of ecological niches, enhancing the coexistence of diverse guilds and buffering the immediate effects of high fire severity. Postfire vegetation structure was a key determinant of community reassembly: snag-rich stands, unburned forest patches, and early post-fire open habitats facilitated both avian persistence and recolonization. These components also provided critical resources for highly specialized guilds, including cavity-nesting and open-habitat species. Bird community composition differed significantly between burned and unburned areas, and fire heterogeneity had a strong positive effect on post-fire beta diversity only when interacting with post-fire habitat structure.

Conclusions

Our findings demonstrate that fire attributes alone cannot account for short-term avian responses; rather, their interaction with pre-fire structural legacies is critical to understanding community reassembly. The conservation of snag-rich stands, early-successional open habitats, and unburned forest refugia—alongside the maintenance of fine-scale heterogeneity—should be prioritized to support post-fire bird community recovery in abandoned sub-Mediterranean mountain landscapes.