Fire Regimes and Environmental Gradients Shape Bird, Mammal and Plant Distributions in Temperate Forests

Abstract

All photographs in this section are provided by authors of papers in our scientific journals and are used by permission.All copyrights reserved. Fire is a global driver of ecosystems. In a recent study published in Ecosphere, we tested six hypotheses relating to fire regimes and environmental gradients using data on birds (493 sites), mammals (175 sites), and vascular plants (615 sites) systematically collected in dry eucalypt forests in southern Australia. We showed that interacting fire regimes and environmental gradients influence the distribution of birds, small mammals, and plants, and that multiple components of the fire regime drive biotic distributions. These results underscore the important insights that can be gained by modeling how fire regimes, not just fire events, influence biota in forests. These photographs illustrate the article “Fire regimes and environmental gradients shape vertebrate and plant distributions in temperate eucalypt forests” by L. T. Kelly et al., published in Ecosphere 8(4):e01781. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.1781