Abstract

A fundamental problem in ecology is forecasting how species will react to major disturbances. As the climate warms, large, frequent, and severe fires are restructuring forested landscapes at large spatial scales, with unknown impacts on imperilled predators. We use the United States federally Threatened Canada lynx as a case study to examine how predators navigate recent large burns, with particular focus on habitat features and the spatial configuration (e.g., distance to edge) that enabled lynx use of these transformed landscapes. We coupled GPS location data of lynx in Washington in an area with several recent large fires and a number of GIS layers of habitat data to develop models of lynx habitat selection in recent burns. Random Forest habitat models showed lynx‐selected islands of forest skipped by large fires, residual vegetation, and areas where some trees survived to use newly burned areas. Lynx used burned areas as early as 1 year postfire, which is much earlier than the 2–4 decades postfire previously thought for this predator. These findings are encouraging for predator persistence in the face of fires, but increasingly severe fires or management that reduces postfire residual trees or slow regeneration will likely jeopardize lynx and other predators. Fire management should change to ensure heterogeneity is retained within the footprint of large fires to enable viable predator populations as fire regimes worsen with climate change.

Highlights

  • Climate change is inducing hotter, drier, and longer summers in North America

  • The patterns of habitat use revealed in this study can be distilled to a single overarching theme: Forest structure allows lynx to use areas of new burns and thrive in old burns

  • While previous studies have shown snowshoe hares and lynx use dense understory structure in undisturbed forest, our results highlight an even more critical importance of forest structure for lynx venturing into burned areas

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Summary

| INTRODUCTION

Climate change is inducing hotter, drier, and longer summers in North America. hotter, larger, and more severe wildfires are burning (Balshi et al, 2009; Fauria & Johnson, 2007; Littell et al, 2010; Westerling, Hidalgo, Cayan, & Swetnem, 2006), and in 2015, the United States saw a record-­setting 4.1 million ha consumed (National Interagency Fire Center 2016). Studies of lynx in Alaska, Canada, and to a lesser extent in the sub-­boreal regions of the contiguous US document general trends in lynx response to fire, but lack detailed information that could be used to improve lynx management and conservation (Koehler, 1990; Paragi, Johnson, Katnik, & Magoun, 1997; Staples, 1995) These studies describe lynx as selecting against recent burns in the open stage where shrubs and trees have not grown tall enough to provide cover and browse for snowshoe hares, especially during the winter when snow covers low understory structure, but have not probed in detail what habitat features lynx use when they are within a recent burn scar (Hodson et al, 2011; von Kienast, 2003; Koehler et al, 2008; Maletzke, Koehler, Wielgus, Aubry, & Evans, 2008). We used lynx locations and spatial data (forest cover, topographic setting, climate, and burn history) as potential driving variables (Vanbianchi, 2015)

| METHODS
Findings
| DISCUSSION
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