Mammalian resilience to megafire in western U.S. woodland savannas

Increasingly frequent megafires, wildfires that exceed the size and severity of historical fires, are dramatically altering landscapes and critical habitats across the world. Across the western U.S., megafires have become an almost annual occurrence, but the implications of these fires for the conservation of native wildlife remain relatively unknown. Woodland savannas are among the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems and provide important food and structural resources to a variety of wildlife, but they are potentially threatened by megafires. Understanding the resistance and resilience in wildlife assemblages following these extreme perturbations can help inform future management interventions that limit biodiversity loss due to megafire. We assessed the resilience of a woodland mammal community to the short-term impacts of megafire. Specifically, we utilized a 5-year camera trap data set (2016-2020) from the Hopland Research and Extension Center to examine the impacts of the 2018 Mendo..., We conducted our study at the 5,300-acre U.C. Hopland Research and Extension Center (HREC) in Mendocino County, northern California (39°00′ N, 123°04’ W). The HREC ecosystem is composed of a diverse range of habitat types including grassland, oak woodland, and shrubland (chaparral). HREC is situated at an intersection of wildlands and ranchlands; it provides habitat for a diverse group of wildlife and serves as pastoral land for people and livestock. The region is characterized by a Mediterranean climate, with mild seasons and rains in the winter.
On July 27, 2018, the 2018 River Fire, part of the much larger 2018 Mendocino Complex fire, burned over 3,400 acres of the 5,300-acre Hopland Research and Extension Center. At the time, the Mendocino Complex Fire was the largest fire in California’s recorded history, burning 459,123 acres. The scale and severity of this fire contrasted the historical fire regime in this region which is characterized by frequent, cooler fires in woodlands and i..., This is a repository containing the data described in the Methods section of Mammalian resilience to megafire in western U.S. woodland savannas by Calhoun et al.
Data are divided across the following files.- Nine detection histories of the form \"[species]_detection_history.csv\"- One metadata file, \"metadata.csv\"- Three other data files, \"species_groups.csv\", \"cam_op.csv\", and \"species_recordtable_OctNov_15min.csv\"
All files are .csv files and can be opened with Microsoft Excel or any equivalent, as well as any programming language.
These 13 files are described in detail in the accompanying README, a .md file, which can be viewed with any plaintext reader.