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Arizona Sky Island Birds
working together to assess wildfire and climate change effects
This area west of Rustler Park in the Chiricahua Mountains burned at high severity in the 1994 Rattlesnake Fire. The few surviving trees, however, provided a seed source for subsequent regeneration. Despite burning again in the 2011 Horseshoe II Fire, most of the regeneration survived.
Photo credit: Jose Iniguez
Dense pine regeneration following the 2002 Bullock Fire in the Butterfly Peak area of the Santa Catalina Mountains.
Photo credit: Jose Iniguez
Looking south towards Fly Peak in the Chiricahua Mountains it is apparent that a combination of the 1994 and 2011 fires has created a mosaic of mature, regenerating, and open patches in these high elevation forests.
Photo credit: Jose Iniguez
A decade after the 2003 Aspen Fire in the Santa Catalina Mountains, pines are beginning to regenerate within high severity areas, despite little soil development and limited seed sources.
Photo Credit: Jose Iniguez
When a fire burns at low to moderate severity, it creates an ideal seed-bed that often results in hyper-regeneration like this example 10 years after the 2003 Aspen Fire in the Santa Catalina Mountains.
Photo credit: Jose Iniguez
Steeper south-facing slopes in the Chiricahua Mountains that experienced severe stand-replacing fires are currently dominated by Madrean oak species that are able to re-sprout and use their existing root systems.
Photo credit: Jamie Sanderlin
Point-leaf manzanita is another species that is adapted to high severity fires and vigorously re-sprouts after these fires.
Photo credit: Jose Iniguez
Moderate severity patch near the Columbine area of the Pinaleno Mountains.
Photo credit: Jamie Sanderlin
Pine-oak forests that burned at high severity in the 2003 Aspen Fire in the Santa Catalina Mountains were dominated by oak immediately after the fire, however, pines are starting to re-establish with the help of logs that create important micro-sites.
Photo credit: Jose Iniguez
Small moderate fire severity patch in the Upper Garden Canyon area of the Huachuca Mountains.
Photo credit: Jamie Sanderlin
Large snags (dead standing trees) in the Santa Catalina Mountains are a reminder of the pine forests that have now transformed into oak forests following the 2003 Aspen Fire.
Photo credit: Jose Iniguez
Chihuahua Pine is a common pine in Mexico, but is found almost exclusively in the forests of southern Arizona within the U.S. This is also one of the only pines in the Southwest that can re-sprout after high severity fires such as the 2011 Horseshoe II Fire in the Chiricahua Mountains.
Photo Credit: Jamie Sanderlin
2011 Horseshoe Two Fire, Chiricahua Mountains.
Photo credit: Jamie Sanderlin
The 2011 Horseshoe II Fire in the Chiricahua Mountains killed many mature oak trees in the middle and lower elevations; however, re-sprouts for the killed oak were already more than a meter tall one year after the fire.
Photo credit: Jamie Sanderlin
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(Citations for more information)
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Birds and Climate Change
The climate within the southwestern United States is predicted to be warmer and drier in the future. This will likely cause shifts in the migratory patterns of bird species, leading to earlier migration periods for many species. Warming climate will alter disturbance regimes, especially fire, but also insect outbreaks, with unknown effects of birds and their habitats.
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Birds and Fire
Disturbance plays important roles for the conservation of birds by influencing habitat distribution and landscape heterogeneity. Increased landscape heterogeneity often leads to increased overall species richness, or the number of species in an area. Fire is a common natural disturbance in the Southwest.
There will be winners and losers depending on the time since fire and how each bird species responds to fire. Early post-disturbance vegetation structure after fire includes snags and ground cover from herbs. Aerial and ground insectivores, bark and wood foragers, and cavity nesters tend to favor burned habitats. As time progresses, snags fall and the understory develops with more shrubs. We would expect omnivores and shrub nesters to do well when this happens. Finally, as the forest matures the structure is characterized by a closed canopy with few snags and low understory development, while old-growth forests include snags, an open canopy, and an understory that starts to develop. Foliage gleaners and closed-canopy nesters tend to prefer unburned habitats.
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How does our study contribute more information?
Little is known about the effects of fire on Neotropical migratory birds in this region and further, few studies even describe habitat requirements of these birds, which is necessary for predictive models in response to climate change. We will quantify changes to habitat structure and composition that occurred over the 20-year period since our original study and evaluate the effects of fire (time since fire, fire severity) and vegetation change on the bird communities.
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More Information
(Citations for more information)
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