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Abstract Social connections among individuals are essential components of social‐ecological systems (SESs), enabling people to take actions to more effectively adapt or transform in response to widespread social‐ecological change. Although scholars have associated social connections and cognitions with adaptive capacity, measuring actors' social networks may further clarify pathways for bolstering resilience‐enhancing actions.We asked how social networks and socio‐cognitions, as components of adaptive capacity, and SES regime shift severity affect individual landscape management behaviours using a quantitative analysis of ego network survey data from livestock producers and landcover data on regime shift severity (i.e. juniper encroachment) in the North American Great Plains.Producers who experienced severe regime shifts or perceived high risks from such shifts were not more likely to engage in transformative behaviour like prescribed burning. Instead, we found that social network characteristics explained significant variance in transformative behaviours.Policy implications: Our results indicate that social networks enable behaviours that have the potential to transform SESs, suggesting possible leverage points for enabling capacity and coordination toward sustainability. Particularly where private lands dominate and cultural practices condition regime shifts, clarifying how social connections promote resilience may provide much needed insight to bolster adaptive capacities in the face of global change. Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog. 

In agroecosystems, bats can provide a critical ecosystem service by consuming night-flying insect pests. However, many bats also face intense population pressures from human landscape modification, global change and novel diseases. To better understand the behavioral activity of different bat species with respect to space, time, habitat, and other bat species in this environment, we investigated species correlations in space and time over row crop agricultural fields. We used acoustic grids to document spatial and temporal co-occurrence or avoidance between bats and recorded eight species across the 10 field sites we sampled. All species significantly overlapped in two-dimensional space and displayed considerable temporal overlap during the night, yet often exhibited significantly different temporal activity patterns, suggesting fine scale partitioning behavior. Conversion of land to agriculture is likely to increase globally, making it critical to better understand how bat species interact with one another and the landscape to facilitate persistence in these human altered ecosystems. 

Uncertainty in satellite-derived burned area estimates are especially high in grassland systems, which are some of the most frequently burned ecosystems in the world. In this study, we compare differences in predicted burned area estimates for a region with the highest fire activity in North America, the Flint Hills of Kansas, USA, using the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) MCD64A1 burned area product and a customization of the MODIS MCD64A1 product using a major ground-truthing effort by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE-MODIS customization). Local-scale ground-truthing and the KDHE-MODIS product suggests MODIS burned area estimates under predicted fire occurrence by 28% over a 19-year period in the Flint Hills ecoregion. Between 2001 and 2019, MODIS product indicated <1 million acres burned on average, which was far below the KDHE-MODIS customization (mean = 2.6 million acres). MODIS also showed that <1% of the Flint Hills burned 5 times from 2001–2019 (2001, 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2013), whereas KDHE-MODIS customization showed this never happened in any single year. KDHE-MODIS also captured some areas of the Flint Hills that burned every year (19 times out of 19 years), which is well-known with field inventory data, whereas the maximum fire occurrence in MODIS was 14 times in 19 years. Finally, MODIS never captured >8% burned area for any given year in the Flint Hills, even in years when fire activity was highest (2008, 2009, 2011, 2014). Based on these results, coupling MODIS burned area computations with local scale ground-truth efforts has the potential to significantly improve fire occurrence estimates and reduce uncertainty in other grassland and savanna regions. 

Wildfire activity has surged in North America’s temperate grassland biome. Like many biomes, this system has undergone drastic land-use change over the last century; however, how various land-use types contribute to wildfire patterns in grassland systems is unclear. We determine if certain land-use types have a greater propensity for large wildfire in the U.S. Great Plains and how this changes given the percentage of land covered by a given land-use type. Almost 90% of the area burned in the Great Plains occurred in woody and grassland land-use types. Although grassland comprised the greatest area burned by large wildfires, woody vegetation burned disproportionately more than any other land-use type in the Great Plains. Wildfires were more likely to occur when woody vegetation composed greater than 20% of the landscape. Wildfires were unlikely to occur in croplands, pasture/hay fields, and developed areas. Although these patterns varied by region, wildfire was most likely to occur in woody vegetation and/or grassland in 13 of 14 ecoregions we assessed. Because woody vegetation is more conducive to extreme wildfire behaviour than other land-use types in the Great Plains, woody encroachment could pose a large risk for increasing wildfire exposure. Regional planning could leverage differential wildfire activity across land-uses to devise targeted approaches that decrease human exposure in a system prone to fire. 

Wildfire activity has surged in North America’s temperate grassland biome. Like many biomes, this system has undergone drastic land-use change over the last century; however, how various land-use types contribute to wildfire patterns in grassland systems is unclear. We determine if certain land-use types have a greater propensity for large wildfire in the U.S. Great Plains and how this changes given the percentage of land covered by a given land-use type. Almost 90% of the area burned in the Great Plains occurred in woody and grassland land-use types. Although grassland comprised the greatest area burned by large wildfires, woody vegetation burned disproportionately more than any other land-use type in the Great Plains. Wildfires were more likely to occur when woody vegetation composed greater than 20% of the landscape. Wildfires were unlikely to occur in croplands, pasture/hay fields, and developed areas. Although these patterns varied by region, wildfire was most likely to occur in woody vegetation and/or grassland in 13 of 14 ecoregions we assessed. Because woody vegetation is more conducive to extreme wildfire behaviour than other land-use types in the Great Plains, woody encroachment could pose a large risk for increasing wildfire exposure. Regional planning could leverage differential wildfire activity across land-uses to devise targeted approaches that decrease human exposure in a system prone to fire.