Fire and Mechanical Forest Management Treatments Support Different Portions of the Bird Community in Fire-Suppressed Forests

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I really enjoyed reading of the mansucript, which is based on extensive dataset, it is nicely written and brings novel and important findings for forest management in the area and probably eslewhere. The authors monitored avian communities for almost 20 years after fire and silviculture disturbances and compared the influence of different management practices on species richness and abundance of birds. They sampled bird communities at hundreds of sites per treatment. The results are highly interesting and provide many important conclusions for management decisions for the forest habitats in the area. They discuss their results in details and provide a comprehensive guide for conservation implications. 

I have only these minor comments:

Figure 2 legend – please include explanation of MT, LSF, MHSF abbreviations

Line 489 – Undisturbed – change to undisturbed

Line 450 – Nine of the 10…

Discussion – what is the natural cycle of fire disturbance? Do the mature forest species still have enough space for viable populations in the area? I think so.. 

Discussion - I feel the discussion is quite long. Please, go through and try to leave some paragraphs/sentences, which are do not follow from your results.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 1 comments (and our responses in bold):

I really enjoyed reading of the mansucript, which is based on extensive dataset, it is nicely written and brings novel and important findings for forest management in the area and probably eslewhere. The authors monitored avian communities for almost 20 years after fire and silviculture disturbances and compared the influence of different management practices on species richness and abundance of birds. They sampled bird communities at hundreds of sites per treatment. The results are highly interesting and provide many important conclusions for management decisions for the forest habitats in the area. They discuss their results in details and provide a comprehensive guide for conservation implications. 

Thank you very much for the kind comments and thoughtful review!

 

I have only these minor comments:

Figure 2 legend – please include explanation of MT, LSF, MHSF abbreviations

Figure 2 legend edited as requested

 

Line 489 – Undisturbed – change to undisturbed

Edited as requested

 

Line 450 – Nine of the 10…

Edited as requested

 

Discussion – what is the natural cycle of fire disturbance? Do the mature forest species still have enough space for viable populations in the area? I think so.. 

Edited text in section 4.3 where we discuss the short natural fire return intervals of 5-15 years and mention later in that paragraph that the undisturbed forest habitat type is dominated by roughly ten ubiquitous species with the added descriptor of "mature forest and generalist species" to make this point more clear. 

 

Discussion - I feel the discussion is quite long. Please, go through and try to leave some paragraphs/sentences, which are do not follow from your results.

We edited section 4.2 by removing several sentences that were redundant with some text in the introduction to shorten the discussion somewhat. But we found it difficult to remove any more text, as this manuscript covers a large region with a complex management and disturbance regime, is based on a vast dataset, and uses complex analyses, all of which we felt needed addressing in the discussion. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors make nice use of a chronosequence approach to look at the effects of alternative forms of forest disturbance on bird abundance and diversity.  It would be one of very few papers to provide strong data showing that we cannot successfully mimic fire as a natural disturbance process through timber harvesting alone.  The paper would, therefore, make a great contribution to discussions about how land managers might maintain the integrity of ecosystems while allowing timber harvesting at the same time—appropriate levels of severe fire have to be included in management plans. 

I provide minor editorial suggestions below, and comment on a few points that might be problematic as currently stated. 

L12—“frequent fire disturbance regime” should be “frequent-fire disturbance regime.”  Without the hyphenated compound adjective, you’d be referring to a fire disturbance regime of unknown type that occurs frequently.

L17—“20-year” should also be hyphenated.  There are other instances throughout the MS where you write low, or moderate, or high severity fire, and in all instances the compound adjectives modifying the word “fire” should be hyphenated (low-, or moderate-, or high-severity fire).

L115—I am not sure you want to encourage managers to “enhance” biodiversity through management practices; they should be striving to “maintain natural levels” of biodiversity.

L128—I’m not sure that your dissimilarity analyses allow you to “…further understand the importance of different disturbances or post-disturbance periods in supporting avian diversity” as much as it allows you to assess the similarity in overall community composition among land categories as a way to include multiple species at the same time in your analysis of treatment effects.

L133—Delete the word contiguous; the southern forest unit is not abutting the rest.

L181, 183—“have” should be “had”

L439—“between” should be “among”

L520—figure 4 should be figure 5

L574—“post-high severity” should be “post-high-severity” (otherwise it’s severity that’s post high)

L574-576—our paper on the forgotten stage of succession (Swanson, M. E., J. F. Franklin, R. L. Beschta, C. M. Crisafulli, D. A. DellaSala, R. L. Hutto, D. B. Lindenmayer, and F. J. Swanson. 2011. The forgotten stage of forest succession: early-successional ecosystems on forest sites. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9:117-125) may be a relevant reference here too.

L585-599—I think you’re missing the importance of wood-boring beetles—nest sites are not the limiting factor after MHSF.  Your dismissal of beetles in the next paragraph because woodpeckers are not abundant following beetle ourbreaks misses the point.  Beetle outbreak areas are dominated by bark beetles, not wood-boring beetles—the wood-boring beetles that BBWO and other woodpeckers respond to are themselves unique to burned forest conditions (and the connection between the birds and those beetles is well established by Harris, Powell, Saab, Rota, and others…they should probably be cited). 

L629—I recommend replacing “increase avian diversity” with something like “could support native species that do not respond positively to other forms of disturbance.”  (The goal of management should never be to increase diversity; it should be to maintain natural levels of diversity.)

L646-652—I think our paper that you cite elsewhere (Hutto et al. 2020) makes this point in no uncertain terms, and, as the title implies, is specifically meant for land managers (even in the abstract, we say “…only severe fire can produce the variety of post-fire conditions used by species that are nowhere more abundant than in burned forests”)

L658—I think our 2020 chronosequence study covers a longer duration of post-fire years than any of the papers cited here…just saying.

L683—again, we scientists should not be encouraging an “increase in avian diversity” as a management goal.  We should be encouraging the maintenance of natural population levels of all native species.

L719—whoa!  I think the statement you make here (“Our results suggest that even those fires that result in more severe effects than typically occurred historically can increase avian diversity within this disturbance-starved ecosystem”) is misguided.  First, there were ALWAYS severe fire effects in mesic mixed-conifer forests—even in the dry mixed-conifer forest systems throughout the West…not necessarily large acreages, and not necessarily frequently, but always present (as dozens of references now attest, counter to the dogmatically accepted view that severe fire is unnatural).  Some relevant references include:

Baker, W. L. 2015. Are high-severity fires burning at much higher rates recently than historically in dry-forest landscapes of the western USA? PLoS ONE 10(9): e0136147.

Baker, W. L., T. T. Veblen, and R. L. Sherriff. 2007. Fire, fuels and restoration of ponderosa pine-Douglas fir forests in the Rocky Mountains, USA. Journal of Biogeography 34:251-269.

Hessburg, P. F., R. B. Salter, and K. M. James. 2007. Re-examining fire severity relations in pre-management era mixed conifer forests: inferences from landscape patterns of forest structure. Landscape Ecology 22:5-24.

Klenner, W., R. Walton, A. Arsenault, and L. Kremsater. 2008. Dry forests in the Southern Interior of British Columbia: historic disturbances and implications for restoration and management. Forest Ecology and Management 256:1711-1722.

Odion, D., and C. Hanson. 2008. Fire severity in the Sierra Nevada revisited: conclusions robust to further analysis. Ecosystems 11:12-15.

Odion, D. C., C. T. Hanson, A. Arsenault, W. L. Baker, D. A. DellaSala, R. L. Hutto, W. Klenner, M. A. Moritz, R. L. Sherriff, T. T. Veblen, and M. A. Williams. 2014. Examining historical and current mixed-severity fire regimes in ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests of western North America. PLoS ONE 9:e87852 (87851-87814).

Perry, D. A., P. F. Hessburg, C. N. Skinner, T. A. Spies, S. L. Stephens, A. H. Taylor, J. F. Franklin, B. McComb, and G. Riegel. 2011. The ecology of mixed severity fire regimes in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. Forest Ecology and Management 262:703-717.

Rhodes, J. J., and W. L. Baker. 2008. Fire probability, fuel treatment effectiveness and ecological tradeoffs in western U.S. public forests. Open Forest Science Journal 1:1-7.

Schoennagel, T., and C. R. Nelson. 2011. Restoration relevance of recent National Fire Plan treatments in forests of the western United States. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9:271-277.

Schoennagel, T., R. L. Sherriff, and T. T. Veblen. 2011. Fire history and tree recruitment in the Colorado Front Range upper montane zone: implications for forest restoration. Ecological Applications 21:2210-2222.

Sherriff, R. L., and T. T. Veblen. 2006. Ecological effects of changes in fire regimes in Pinus ponderosa ecosystems in the Colorado Front Range. Journal of Vegetation Science 17:705-718.

Sherriff, R. L., and T. T. Veblen. 2007. A spatially-explicit reconstruction of historical fire occurrence in the ponderosa pine zone of the Colorado Front Range. Ecosystems 10:311-323.

Williams, M. A., and W. L. Baker. 2012a. Comparison of the higher-severity fire regime in historical (A.D. 1800s) and modern (A.D. 1984-2009) montane forests across 624,156 ha of the Colorado Front Range. Ecosystems 15:832-847.

Williams, M. A., and W. L. Baker. 2012b. Spatially extensive reconstructions show variable-severity fire and heterogeneous structure in historical western United States dry forests. Global Ecology and Biogeography 21:1042-1052.

Williams, M. A., and W. L. Baker. 2014. High-severity fire corroborated in historical dry forests of the western United States: response to Fulé et al. Global Ecology and Biogeography 23:831-835.

 

Second, you’re implying that a worthy management goal is to “increase avian diversity” again.  In sum, I suggest re-wording to something like “Our results suggest that even fires that result in historically typical severe effects can serve to maintain natural levels of avian diversity within this disturbance-starved ecosystem.”

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 2 comments (and our responses in bold):

The authors make nice use of a chronosequence approach to look at the effects of alternative forms of forest disturbance on bird abundance and diversity.  It would be one of very few papers to provide strong data showing that we cannot successfully mimic fire as a natural disturbance process through timber harvesting alone.  The paper would, therefore, make a great contribution to discussions about how land managers might maintain the integrity of ecosystems while allowing timber harvesting at the same time—appropriate levels of severe fire have to be included in management plans. 

Thank you very much for the kind comments and thoughtful review! 

 

I provide minor editorial suggestions below, and comment on a few points that might be problematic as currently stated. 

L12—“frequent fire disturbance regime” should be “frequent-fire disturbance regime.”  Without the hyphenated compound adjective, you’d be referring to a fire disturbance regime of unknown type that occurs frequently.

Edited as suggested - we found multiple instances of the grammatical error and fixed it throughout the manuscript. 

 

L17—“20-year” should also be hyphenated.  There are other instances throughout the MS where you write low, or moderate, or high severity fire, and in all instances the compound adjectives modifying the word “fire” should be hyphenated (low-, or moderate-, or high-severity fire).

Edited as suggested

 

L115—I am not sure you want to encourage managers to “enhance” biodiversity through management practices; they should be striving to “maintain natural levels” of biodiversity.

Edited as suggested - and again we found 2 or 3 other instances in the text and fixed each one.

 

L128—I’m not sure that your dissimilarity analyses allow you to “…further understand the importance of different disturbances or post-disturbance periods in supporting avian diversity” as much as it allows you to assess the similarity in overall community composition among land categories as a way to include multiple species at the same time in your analysis of treatment effects.

Edited as suggested

 

L133—Delete the word contiguous; the southern forest unit is not abutting the rest.

Edited as suggested

 

L181, 183—“have” should be “had”

Edited as suggested

 

L439—“between” should be “among”

Edited as suggested

L520—figure 4 should be figure 5

Edited as suggested

 

L574—“post-high severity” should be “post-high-severity” (otherwise it’s severity that’s post high)

Edited as suggested

 

L574-576—our paper on the forgotten stage of succession (Swanson, M. E., J. F. Franklin, R. L. Beschta, C. M. Crisafulli, D. A. DellaSala, R. L. Hutto, D. B. Lindenmayer, and F. J. Swanson. 2011. The forgotten stage of forest succession: early-successional ecosystems on forest sites. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9:117-125) may be a relevant reference here too.

Agreed, we added this reference as suggested

 

L585-599—I think you’re missing the importance of wood-boring beetles—nest sites are not the limiting factor after MHSF.  Your dismissal of beetles in the next paragraph because woodpeckers are not abundant following beetle ourbreaks misses the point.  Beetle outbreak areas are dominated by bark beetles, not wood-boring beetles—the wood-boring beetles that BBWO and other woodpeckers respond to are themselves unique to burned forest conditions (and the connection between the birds and those beetles is well established by Harris, Powell, Saab, Rota, and others…they should probably be cited). 

Excellent point, we edited this paragraph to clarify and added references

 

L629—I recommend replacing “increase avian diversity” with something like “could support native species that do not respond positively to other forms of disturbance.”  (The goal of management should never be to increase diversity; it should be to maintain natural levels of diversity.)

Edited as suggested

 

L646-652—I think our paper that you cite elsewhere (Hutto et al. 2020) makes this point in no uncertain terms, and, as the title implies, is specifically meant for land managers (even in the abstract, we say “…only severe fire can produce the variety of post-fire conditions used by species that are nowhere more abundant than in burned forests”)

We added this reference as suggested

 

L658—I think our 2020 chronosequence study covers a longer duration of post-fire years than any of the papers cited here…just saying.

We added this reference as suggested

 

L683—again, we scientists should not be encouraging an “increase in avian diversity” as a management goal.  We should be encouraging the maintenance of natural population levels of all native species.

Edited as suggested

 

L719—whoa!  I think the statement you make here (“Our results suggest that even those fires that result in more severe effects than typically occurred historically can increase avian diversity within this disturbance-starved ecosystem”) is misguided.  First, there were ALWAYS severe fire effects in mesic mixed-conifer forests—even in the dry mixed-conifer forest systems throughout the West…not necessarily large acreages, and not necessarily frequently, but always present (as dozens of references now attest, counter to the dogmatically accepted view that severe fire is unnatural).  Some relevant references include:

Baker, W. L. 2015. Are high-severity fires burning at much higher rates recently than historically in dry-forest landscapes of the western USA? PLoS ONE 10(9): e0136147.

Baker, W. L., T. T. Veblen, and R. L. Sherriff. 2007. Fire, fuels and restoration of ponderosa pine-Douglas fir forests in the Rocky Mountains, USA. Journal of Biogeography 34:251-269.

Hessburg, P. F., R. B. Salter, and K. M. James. 2007. Re-examining fire severity relations in pre-management era mixed conifer forests: inferences from landscape patterns of forest structure. Landscape Ecology 22:5-24.

Klenner, W., R. Walton, A. Arsenault, and L. Kremsater. 2008. Dry forests in the Southern Interior of British Columbia: historic disturbances and implications for restoration and management. Forest Ecology and Management 256:1711-1722.

Odion, D., and C. Hanson. 2008. Fire severity in the Sierra Nevada revisited: conclusions robust to further analysis. Ecosystems 11:12-15.

Odion, D. C., C. T. Hanson, A. Arsenault, W. L. Baker, D. A. DellaSala, R. L. Hutto, W. Klenner, M. A. Moritz, R. L. Sherriff, T. T. Veblen, and M. A. Williams. 2014. Examining historical and current mixed-severity fire regimes in ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests of western North America. PLoS ONE 9:e87852 (87851-87814).

Perry, D. A., P. F. Hessburg, C. N. Skinner, T. A. Spies, S. L. Stephens, A. H. Taylor, J. F. Franklin, B. McComb, and G. Riegel. 2011. The ecology of mixed severity fire regimes in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. Forest Ecology and Management 262:703-717.

Rhodes, J. J., and W. L. Baker. 2008. Fire probability, fuel treatment effectiveness and ecological tradeoffs in western U.S. public forests. Open Forest Science Journal 1:1-7.

Schoennagel, T., and C. R. Nelson. 2011. Restoration relevance of recent National Fire Plan treatments in forests of the western United States. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9:271-277.

Schoennagel, T., R. L. Sherriff, and T. T. Veblen. 2011. Fire history and tree recruitment in the Colorado Front Range upper montane zone: implications for forest restoration. Ecological Applications 21:2210-2222.

Sherriff, R. L., and T. T. Veblen. 2006. Ecological effects of changes in fire regimes in Pinus ponderosa ecosystems in the Colorado Front Range. Journal of Vegetation Science 17:705-718.

Sherriff, R. L., and T. T. Veblen. 2007. A spatially-explicit reconstruction of historical fire occurrence in the ponderosa pine zone of the Colorado Front Range. Ecosystems 10:311-323.

Williams, M. A., and W. L. Baker. 2012a. Comparison of the higher-severity fire regime in historical (A.D. 1800s) and modern (A.D. 1984-2009) montane forests across 624,156 ha of the Colorado Front Range. Ecosystems 15:832-847.

Williams, M. A., and W. L. Baker. 2012b. Spatially extensive reconstructions show variable-severity fire and heterogeneous structure in historical western United States dry forests. Global Ecology and Biogeography 21:1042-1052.

Williams, M. A., and W. L. Baker. 2014. High-severity fire corroborated in historical dry forests of the western United States: response to Fulé et al. Global Ecology and Biogeography 23:831-835.

Second, you’re implying that a worthy management goal is to “increase avian diversity” again.  In sum, I suggest re-wording to something like “Our results suggest that even fires that result in historically typical severe effects can serve to maintain natural levels of avian diversity within this disturbance-starved ecosystem.”

This is a completely fair point, and while thinking through how to reword the text as suggested we decided to simply delete the sentence as this particular point is not central to our discussion.