How does prescribed fire shape bird and plant communities in a temperate dry forest ecosystem?

To mitigate the impact of severe wildfire on human society and the environment, prescribed fire is widely used in forest ecosystems to reduce fuel loads and limit fire spread. To avoid detrimental effects on conservation values, it is imperative to understand how prescribed fire affects taxa having a range of different adaptations to disturbance. Such studies will have greatest benefit if they extend beyond short-term impacts of burning. We used a field study to examine the effects of prescribed fire on birds and plants across a 36-year post-fire chronosequence in a temperate dry forest ecosystem in south-eastern Australia, and by making comparison with long-unburnt reference sites (79 years since wildfire). We modelled changes in the relative abundance of 22 bird species and the cover of 39 plant species, and examined how individual species, functional groups, species richness and community composition differed between sites with different fire history. For most individual bird and pla...为缓解重度野火对人类社会与自然环境造成的影响，计划火烧（prescribed fire）已在森林生态系统中被广泛应用，以降低燃料载量、遏制火势蔓延。为避免对保护价值造成不利影响，亟需明晰计划火烧会如何影响各类对干扰具有多样适应策略的生物类群（taxa）。此类研究若能超越火烧的短期影响范畴，将获得最大的应用价值。本研究通过野外调查，对澳大利亚东南部温带干旱林生态系统中跨度达36年的火后时间序列样地内的鸟类与植物开展计划火烧效应研究，并以距上次野火已79年的长期未火烧对照样地作为参照。我们对22种鸟类的相对多度与39种植物的盖度变化进行了建模，并分析了不同火烧历史样地间的单个物种、功能群、物种丰富度以及群落组成的差异。针对多数鸟类与植物个体而言，