The role of fire severity, distance from fire perimeter and vegetation on post-fire recovery of small-mammal communities in chaparral

Chaparral shrublands in southern California, US, exhibit significant biodiversity but are prone to large, intensewildfires.Debateexistsregardingfuelreductiontopreventsuchfiresinwildlandareas,buttheeffectsofthesefires on fauna are not well understood. We studied whether fire severity and distance from unburned fire perimeter influenced recovery of the small-mammal community from 13 to 39 months after the large (1134.2km 2 ) Cedar fire in San Diego County. In general, neither factor influenced small-mammal recovery. However, vegetation characteristics, distance to riparian habitat and the prevalence of rocky substrate affected recovery in species-specific patterns. This indicates the effects of fire severity and immigration from outside the fire perimeter, if they occur, do so within 1 year, whereas longer- term recovery is largely driven by previously known relationships between small mammals and habitat structure. Our results,whencombinedwithresultsfromother studiesinsouthernCalifornia,suggestwherehumanlivesor infrastructure arenotatrisk,effortstopreservechaparralbiodiversityshouldfocusonmaintainingthenativeplantcommunity.Doingso mayrequirenovelmanagementstrategiesinthefaceofanincreasinghumanpopulation,ignitionsourcesandthespreadof invasive exotic plants. Additional keywords: coastal sage scrub, fire management, shrubland. Received 26 May 2010, accepted 12 July 2011, published online 20 February 2012