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Living Among The Ash: The Impacts of Wildfire on Wildlife Use Patterns on a Pinus banksiana (Jack Pine) Barrens

By Casey Halloran, Meghan Bargabos, Danielle Garneau, and Mark Lesser
Goals:
Analyze the use of unburned and burned forest space by fauna species and wildlife as a whole.
Count the number of occurrences in each zone per species.
Compare species trends in regard to seasons and predator-prey relationships.
Evaluate habitat occurrences over time since the 2018 wildfire.
Determine if there are species-specific differences in use of burned vs. unburned sites (1957 burn since regenerated.







July 2018 wildfire











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Conceptual Diagram:
Predation Risk Shifts as a Function of Forest Structure Changes Post-fire

adapted from Doherty et al. 2022

Prey:
Predators:
ambush predators (sit & wait)
coursing predator







Methods:
fall 2018-summer 2022 game camera design
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n=4 in 2018 burn
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n=4 in 1957 burn (unburn)
summer 2022-present game camera design
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feeding guild (herbivore, predator)
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predator hunting style (ambush, coursing)
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Meghan Bargabos graduate student headed to check game camera
*game camera design shift as part of a landscape-scale survey of wildlife use across chronosequence of stand ages on the Flat Rock (see Wildlife Monitoring research being led by Meghan Bargabos MS Natural Resources and Ecology)
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cameras checked on rotation for battery change and image download
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images catalogued into records table using camera metadata using CamTrap package in R
Data analysis:
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Species-specific wildlife occurrences in burn (2018 wildfire) and unburn (1957 wildfire)
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Wildlife occurrences over time in burn (2018 wildfire) and unburn (1957 wildfire) by:
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feeding guild (herbivore, predator)
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predator hunting style (ambush, coursing)
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