Identifying and mitigating social-ecological tradeoffs: Vegetation, birds, fuels, and modeled fire behavior in pinon-juniper fuel reduction treatments

Abstract

Mastication and hand-thinning treatments are increasingly used by land managers as a means of reducing tree cover for fire hazard mitigation and other habitat objectives in pinon-juniper (P-J) woodlands. (Battaglia et al. 2010; Redmond et al. 2013). However, the effects of these treatments on ecological processes including fire, and on a wide range of species, particularly vulnerable P-J obligate birds, are incompletely understood. To address these knowledge gaps, we measured vegetation and fuels, and conducted bird point counts at 232 sites in 29 pairs of 1 to 11-yearold treatments and untreated adjacent controls in P-J woodlands of the Arkansas River Valley, Colorado. We used a suite of statistical approaches including paired t-tests, mixed-effects models, and a principal component analysis to assess treatment impacts on vegetation composition and structure, bird abundance, fuels. We also used BehavePlus (Andrews et al. 2005) to develop fire behavior models to examine expected treatment impacts on fire behavior along gradients of fuel loads and under varying fuel moisture scenarios.

Parent Publication

• Symposium Proceedings on Piñon-Juniper Habitats: Status and Management for Wildlife - 2016

Citation

Coop, Jonathan D.; Magee, Patrick A. 2020. Identifying and mitigating social-ecological tradeoffs: Vegetation, birds, fuels, and modeled fire behavior in pinon-juniper fuel reduction treatments. In: Malcolm, Karl; Dykstra, Brian; Johnson, Kristine; Lightfoot, David; Muldavin, Esteban; Ramsey, Marikay. Symposium Proceedings on Pinon-Juniper Habitats: Status and Management for Wildlife - 2016. Proceedings RMRS-P-77. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 72-73.