Patterns of woodboring beetle activity following fires and bark beetle outbreaks in montane forests of California, USA
2019
Background Increasingly frequent and severe drought in the western United States has contributed to more frequent and severe wildfires, longer fire seasons, and more frequent
bark beetleoutbreaks that kill large numbers of trees. Climate change is expected to perpetuate these trends, especially in montane ecosystems, calling for improved strategies for managing Western forests and conserving the wildlife that they support.
Woodboring beetles(e.g.,
Buprestidaeand Cerambycidae) colonize dead and weakened trees and speed succession of habitats altered by fire or
bark beetles, while serving as prey for some early-seral habitat specialists, including several
woodpeckerspecies. To understand how these ecologically important beetles respond to different sources of tree mortality, we sampled woodborers in 16 sites affected by wildfire or
bark beetleoutbreak in the previous one to eight years. Study sites were located in the Sierra Nevada, Modoc Plateau, Warner Mountains, and southern Cascades of California, USA. We used
generalized linear mixed modelsto evaluate hypotheses concerning the response of
woodboring beetlesto disturbance type, severity, and timing; forest stand composition and structure; and tree characteristics.
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