Of all terrestrial biomes, grasslands are losing the most biodiversity the most rapidly, so there is a critical need to document and learn from large‐scale restoration successes. In the Loess Canyons ecoregion of the Great Plains, USA, an association of private ranchers and natural resource agencies has led a multi‐decadal, ecoregion‐scale initiative to combat the loss of grasslands to woody plant encroachment by restoring large‐scale fire regimes. Here, we use 14 years of fire treatment history with 6 years of grassland bird monitoring and remotely sensed tree cover data across 136,767 ha of privately owned grassland to quantify outcomes of large‐scale grassland restoration efforts. Grassland bird richness increased across 65% (90,032 ha) of the Loess Canyons, and woody plant cover decreased up to 55% across 25% (7408 ha) of all fire‐treated areas. This was accomplished with extreme fire treatments that killed mature trees, were large (mean annual area burned was 3100 ha), spatially clustered and straddled boundaries between invasive woodlands and remaining grasslands – not heavily infested woodlands. Findings from this study provide the first evidence of human management reversing the impacts of woody encroachment on grassland birds at an ecoregion scale.
- Award ID(s):
- 1920938
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10224766
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Sustainability
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 20
- ISSN:
- 2071-1050
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 8321
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Animals must track resources over relatively fine spatial and temporal scales, particularly in disturbance‐mediated systems like grasslands. Grassland birds respond to habitat heterogeneity by dispersing among sites within and between years, yet we know little about how they make post‐dispersal settlement decisions. Many methods exist to quantify the resource selection of mobile taxa, but the habitat data used in these models are frequently not collected at the same location or time that individuals were present. This spatiotemporal misalignment may lead to incorrect interpretations and adverse conservation outcomes, particularly in dynamic systems. To investigate the extent to which spatially and temporally dynamic vegetation conditions and topography drive grassland bird settlement decisions, we integrated multiple data sources from our study site to predict slope, vegetation height, and multiple metrics of vegetation cover at any point in space and time within the temporal and spatial scope of our study. We paired these predictions with avian mark‐resight data for 8 years at the Konza Prairie Biological Station in NE Kansas to evaluate territory selection for Grasshopper Sparrows (
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/su12208321
