Long-term benefits of burns for large mammal habitat undermined by large, severe fires in the American West

Escalating wildfire frequency and severity are altering wildland habitats worldwide. Yet investigations into fire impacts on wildlife habitat rarely extend to the macroecological scales relevant to species conservation and global change processes. We evaluate the effects of wildfire on habitat quality and selection by large mammals spanning three trophic levels in the Western United States. We analyze 12 years of GPS telemetry data for 2,966 mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), 52 black bears (Ursus americanus), and 74 cougars (Puma concolor) across Utah and Nevada, USA. Over 800 areas burned between 1990-2022 overlapped with the home ranges of 1,892 animals, resulting in almost 23,000 km2 of burned habitat and representing 12.8% of the total home range area for animals in our sample. Habitat suitability models for 664 mule deer, 14 black bears, and 11 cougars indicated that burns improved summer home range quality for mule deer and black bears by 7% and 14%, respectively, highlighting the ..., , # Long-term benefits of burns for large mammal habitat undermined by large, severe fires in the American West

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.fqz612k4d](10.5061/dryad.fqz612k4d)

## Description of the data and file structure

This data and code supports a study on wildlife responses to burned habitats at broad spatiotemporal scales. Data are available for cougar, black bear, and mule deer habitat selection models and other analyses. 

### Files and variables

#### File: fire-SSF-models.R

**Description:** Code for building individual step-selection functions, including model evaluation & coefficient bootstrapping

#### File: rsf-predictions.R

**Description:** Includes code (commented) to demonstrate the extraction process for RSF predictions in burned and simulated unburned habitats to calculate MQD (median quality difference). The output MQD data are available for the statistical analyses below the extraction procedures.  Also includes comparison of wildfires versus prescribed burns. 

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