Find research datasets worth reusing
Search datasets from major research repositories and use ShareScore to quickly assess how well each record supports discovery, access, and reuse.
28
datasets available to search
ShareScore release 0.9.0
Dataset results
28 results for “fire ecology”
Ecological memory effects on plants and soils in early post-fire steppe, Barton Ecological Research Area, Pocatello, Idaho, 2021
In many regions of the world, wildfires are becoming more frequent due to the invasion of exotic grasses that are highly flammable and often replace native plants as burned landscapes regrow. To prevent invasive species from dominating post-burn landscapes, land managers are increasingly applying seeds of native plants to suppress invasive plants and encourage ecosystem recovery. However, there is still much to learn about the ability of seeded species to establish and suppress flammable invaders. It is also unclear how previous human-caused landscape changes, such as nitrogen pollution or the removal of shrubs (a common practice in western USA rangelands), affect the success of native seed additions and plant recovery from fire. This study addresses these issues by building on a long-term experiment investigating the legacy effects of past nitrogen pollution and shrub removal in a highly invaded sagebrush steppe ecosystem at Idaho State University’s Barton Ecological Research Area in Pocatello, ID. This experiment burned in a wildfire in August, 2020, providing a unique opportunity to evaluate how a history of nitrogen pollution and shrub removal influences plant recovery from wildfire. We developed three native seed mixes intended to suppress invasive plants, particularly flammable annual grasses, and in April, 2021, we sowed the experimental mixes into research plots within the original experiment. To measure the initial effects of the experimental seed additions and the legacy effects of previous nitrogen pollution and shrub removal, we collected the data provided here during the summer of 2021, the first growing season following the wildfire. We established 240 monitoring quadrats (1 m²) within the original experiment, dividing the quadrats between areas where shrubs had formerly been (evidenced by stumps) and intershrub areas. At a microhabitat scale, the presence of shrubs alters soil properties and can create legacy effects after shrub death, and we were int
Karuk ecological fire management practices promote elk habitat in Northern California
<p>After a century of fire suppression and accumulating fuel loads in North American forests, prescribed burns are increasingly used to prevent conditions leading to catastrophic megafire. There is widespread evidence that prescribed fire was used by Indigenous communities to manage natural and cultural resources tribes for thousands of years. Wildlife habitat is an example of an ecological response that was actively managed with prescribed burns by Indigenous American peoples and is an important factor in western U.S. forest management planning, restoration and climate resilience efforts. We analyzed the effects of modern prescribed burns informed by traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) on the predicted change in elk winter habitat in Karuk aboriginal territory in Northern California between 2013 and 2018 using species distribution and simultaneous autoregressive modeling techniques. Burn types most closely resembling Karuk traditional practices, specifically those incorporating multiple-year broadcast burns, had significant positive effects on elk winter habitat suitability. Conversely, concentrated burns focused solely on reducing fuel loads had significant negative effects on elk winter habitat suitability. However, areas where these fuel-reduction burns were combined with multiple years of broadcast burns featured the highest increases in habitat. Our results suggest that transitioning to prescribed burns that more closely follow Karuk TEK will promote elk habitat in the region. This would be best achieved through continuing to work closely with Indigenous representatives to plan and implement cultural fire prescriptions on a landscape-scale, a trend we posit would benefit environmental management efforts across the globe.</p>
Fig. 3 in A small parasitoid of fire ants, Pseudacteon obtusitus (Diptera: Phoridae): native range ecology and laboratory rearing
Fig. 3. Frequency distribution of Solenopsis invicta head size from which Pseudacteon obtusitus emerged, sorted by gender and sample yr. Insert: frequency distribution of Pseudacteon obtusitus thoraces sorted by gender and sample yr.
Fig. 1 in A small parasitoid of fire ants, Pseudacteon obtusitus (Diptera: Phoridae): native range ecology and laboratory rearing
Fig. 1. Monthly phenology of Pseudacteon obtusitus across mo and yr at Corrientes Province, Argentina.
Fig. 2 in A small parasitoid of fire ants, Pseudacteon obtusitus (Diptera: Phoridae): native range ecology and laboratory rearing
Fig. 2. Relative percent abundance of Pseudacteon obtusitus categorized by the time of d (morning until 12:00 P.M., 12:00 to 3:00 P.M., afer 3:00 P.M.) and sample mo (Apr, May, Jun, Sep, Oct, Nov, Jan).
Data and code from: Shifting social-ecological fire regimes explain increasing structure loss from Western wildfires
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Higuera, P.E., M.C. Cook, J.K. Balch, E.N. Stavros, A.L. Mahood, and L.A. St. Denis. 2023. Shifting social-ecological fire regimes explain increasing structure loss from Western wildfires. PNAS Nexus 2: In Press.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span>Structure loss is an acute, costly impact of the wildfire crisis in the western United States ("West"), motivating the need to understand recent trends and causes. We document a 246% rise in West-wide structure loss from wildfires between 1999–2009 and 2010–2020, driven strongly by events in 2017, 2018, and 2020. Increased structure loss was not due to increased area burned alone. Wildfires became significantly more destructive, with a 160% higher structure loss rate (loss/kha burned) over the past decade. Structure loss was driven primarily by wildfires from unplanned human-related ignitions (e.g. backyard burning, power lines, etc.), which accounted for 76% of all structure loss and resulted in 10 times more structures destroyed per unit area burned compared to lightning-ignited fires. Annual structure loss was well explained by area burned from human-related ignitions, while decadal structure loss was explained by state-level structure abundance in flammable vegetation. Both predictors increased over recent decades and likely interacted with increased fuel aridity to drive structure-loss trends. While states are diverse in patterns and trends, nearly all experienced more burning from human-related ignitions and/or higher structure loss rates, particularly California, Washington, and Oregon. Our findings highlight how fire regimes – characteristics of fire over space and time – are fundamentally social-ecological phenomena. By resolving the diversity of Western fire regimes, our work informs regionally appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategies. With millions of structures with high fire risk, reducing human-related ignitions and rethinking how we build are critical for preventing future wildfire disasters.</span></p>
Data from: Wildfire disturbance and ecological cascades: teasing apart the direct and indirect effects of fire on tick populations
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data and code from: Shifting social-ecological fire regimes explain increasing structure loss from Western wildfires
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Karuk ecological fire management practices promote elk habitat in Northern California
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Huslia Fire Ecology Workshops: Fire effects on the ecology and people of the Koyukon Region in the western Interior of Alaska
These reports summarize workshops describing fire effects on the ecology and people of the Koyukon Region in the western Interior of Alaska. The first report summarizes all three workshops and is an oral history of indigenous burning in this part of Alaska. The major effect of fire on people is to reduce access by burning trapping cabins and toppling black spruce trees across traplines. Moreover in summer, the brush is so dense that access is difficult and game is impossible to see. Smoke from wildfires is a serious health problem in some years. Burned areas have a colder microclimate than unburned areas, causing both people and animals to avoid them. The second report centers on the final workshop with primary emphasis on the impacts on the community of Huslia. Fire has several important effects on the residents of Huslia. Fire fighting wages are an important source of income and a source of cross-generational mentorship. Wages are important in paying bills and in buying snow machines, ammunition and boat gas for subsistence activities; fire-fighting wages also have some negative effects through purchase of drugs and alcohol. Local residents feel largely disempowered in decisions related to fire management both because of insufficient opportunities for jobs on fire crews and because decisions about whether fires are suppressed or not are made largely without village input.
Data from: Fire catalyzed rapid ecological change in lowland coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest over the past 14,000 years
Disturbance can catalyze rapid ecological change by causing widespread mortality and initiating successional pathways, and during times of climate change, disturbance may contribute to ecosystem state changes by initiating a new successional pathway. In the Pacific Northwest of North America (PNW), disturbance by wildfires strongly shapes the composition and structure of lowland forests, but understanding the role of fire over periods of climate change is challenging, because fire-return intervals are long (e.g., millennia) and the coniferous trees dominating these forests can live for many centuries. We developed stand-scale paleorecords of vegetation and fire that span nearly the past 14,000 yr to study how fire was associated with state changes and rapid dynamics in forest vegetation at the stand scale (1–3 ha). We studied forest history with sediment cores from small hollow sites in the Marckworth State Forest, located ~1 km apart in the Tsuga heterophylla Zone in the Puget Lowland ecoregion of western Washington, USA. The median rate of change in pollen/spore assemblages was similar between sites (0.12 and 0.14% per year), but at both sites, rates of change increased significantly following fire events (ranging up to 1% per year, with a median of 0.28 and 0.38%, P < 0.003). During times of low climate velocity, forest composition was resilient to fires, which initiated successional pathways leading back to the dominant vegetation type. In contrast, during times of high climate variability and velocity (e.g., the early Holocene) forests were not resilient to fires, which triggered large-scale state changes. These records provide clear evidence that disturbance, in the form of an individual fire event, can be an important catalyst for rapid state changes, accelerating vegetation shifts in response to large-scale climate change.
Data from: Consequences of climatic thresholds for projecting fire activity and ecological change
Aim: Ecological properties governed by threshold relationships can exhibit heightened sensitivity to climate, creating an inherent source of uncertainty when anticipating future change. We investigated the impact of threshold relationships on our ability to project ecological change outside the observational record (e.g., the 21st century), using the challenge of predicting late‐Holocene fire regimes in boreal forest and tundra ecosystems. Location: Boreal forest and tundra ecosystems of Alaska. Time period: 850–2100 CE. Major taxa studied: Not applicable. Methods: We informed a set of published statistical models, designed to predict the 30‐year probability of fire occurrence based on climatological normals, with downscaled global climate model data for 850–1850 CE. To evaluate model performance outside the observational record and the implications of threshold relationships, we compared modelled estimates with mean fire return intervals estimated from 29 published lake‐sediment palaeofire reconstructions. To place our results in the context of future change, we evaluate changes in the location of threshold to burning under 21st‐century climate projections. Results: Model–palaeodata comparisons highlight spatially varying accuracy across boreal forest and tundra regions, with variability strongly related to the summer temperature threshold to burning: sites closer to this threshold exhibited larger prediction errors than sites further away from this threshold. Modifying the modern (i.e., 1950–2009) fire–climate relationship also resulted in significant changes in modelled estimates. Under 21st‐century climate projections, increasing proportions of Alaskan tundra and boreal forest will approach and surpass the temperature threshold to burning, with > 50% exceeding this threshold by > 2 °C by 2070–2099. Main conclusions: Our results highlight a high sensitivity of statistical projections to changing threshold relationships and data uncertainty, implying that projections of future ecosystem change in threshold‐governed ecosystems will be accompanied by notable uncertainty. This work also suggests that ecological responses to climate change will exhibit high spatio‐temporal variability as different regions approach and surpass climatic thresholds over the 21st century.
Low- and high-intensity fire in the riparian savanna: demographic impacts in an avian model species and implications for ecological fire management
<ol> <li><span>Climate change is driving changes in fire frequency and intensity, making it more urgent for conservation managers to understand how species and ecosystems respond. In tropical monsoonal savannas – Earth's most fire-prone landscapes – ecological fire management aims to prevent intense wildfires late in the dry season through prescribed low-intensity burns early in the dry season. Riparian habitats embedded within tropical savannas represent critical refuges for biodiversity, yet are particularly fire-sensitive. Better understanding of the impact of fire – including prescribed burns – on riparian habitats is therefore key but requires long-term detailed post-fire monitoring of species' demographic rates, as effects may persist and/or be delayed.</span></li> <li><span>We analyse impacts of (prescribed) low-intensity and (prescribed but escaped) high-intensity fire in northern Australian riparian and adjacent savanna habitat. We quantify multi-year impacts on density, survival, reproduction and dispersal of an Endangered riparian bird, the western purple-crowned fairy-wren (<em>Malurus coronatus coronatus</em>), in a well-studied individually-marked population.</span></li> <li><span>Following low-intensity fire, bird density was reduced by >20% in burnt compared to adjacent unburnt riparian habitat for ≥2.5 years. This was a result of reduced breeding success and recruitment for two years immediately following fire, rather than mortality or dispersal of adults.</span></li> <li><span>In contrast, high-intensity fire (in a dry year) resulted in a sharp decline in population density by 50% 2–8 months after fire, with no signs of recovery after 2.5 years. The decline in density was due to post-fire adult mortality, rather than dispersal. Breeding success of the (few) remaining individuals was low but not detectably lower than in unburnt areas, likely because breeding success was poor overall due to prevailing dry conditions.</span></li> <li> <span><em>Synthesis and applications</em>. </span><span>Even if there is no or very low mortality during fire, and no movement of birds away from burnt areas, both low- and high-intensity fire in the riparian zone reduce population density. However, the mechanism by which this occurs, and recovery time, differs with fire intensity. To minimise impacts of fire on riparian zones in tropical savannas, we suggest employing low-intensity prescribed burns under optimal conditions shortly after the breeding season.</span> </li> </ol>
Low- and high-intensity fire in the riparian savanna: demographic impacts in an avian model species and implications for ecological fire management
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Consequences of climatic thresholds for projecting fire activity and ecological change
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Fire catalyzed rapid ecological change in lowland coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest over the past 14,000 years
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Ecological Effects of Prescribed Fire on Soils in a Chihuahuan Desert Grassland at the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico (2003)
Fire resulting from natural ignition has become a more common event on the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) since the exclusion of domesticated livestock. Efforts to return fire to the native landscape has resulted in the use of prescribed fire during periods that meet burn prescriptions. A prescribed fire was performed on the Sevilleta NWR in June 2003. Among the measured site and burn characteristics that were measure, this project sampled soils before and after the fire from 5 previously-sampled locations that were burned in June 2003 and from 5 newly established locations that served as controls. The controls were within an area that was sampled between 1989 and 1996 for similar properties measured in this study and had previously been tested to be similar to the locations burned in 2003. The soil properties that are repeatedly measured at the burn and control locations include: field water content; water-holding capacity; organic matter; field extractable nitrate and ammonium; and potentially mineralizable nitrogen.
Data from: Physical and ecological isolation contribute to maintain genetic differentiation between fire salamander subspecies
<p>Landscape features shape patterns of gene flow among populations, ultimately determining where taxa lay along the continuum between panmixia to complete reproductive isolation. Gene flow can be restricted leading to population differentiation in two non-exclusive ways: "physical isolation", in which geographic distance in combination with the landscape features restricts movement of individuals promoting genetic drift, and "ecological isolation", in which adaptive mechanisms constrain gene flow between different environments via divergent natural selection. In central Iberia, two fire salamander subspecies occur in parapatry across elevation gradients along the Iberian Central System mountains, while in adjacent Mountains of Toledo Region only one of them occurs. By integrating population and landscape genetic analyses, we show a ubiquitous role of physical isolation between and within mountain ranges, with unsuitable landscapes increasing differentiation between populations. However, across the Iberian Central System, we found strong support for a significant contribution of ecological isolation, with low genetic differentiation in environmentally homogeneous areas, but high differentiation across sharp transitions in precipitation seasonality. These patterns are consistent with a significant contribution of ecological isolation in restricting gene flow among subspecies. Overall, our results suggest that ecological divergence contributes to reduce genetic admixture, creating an opportunity for lineages to follow distinct evolutionary trajectories.</p>
Data from: Balancing ecological costs and benefits of fire for population viability of disturbance-dependent butterflies
Disturbance is a fundamental ecological process and driver of population dynamics. Ecologists seek to understand the effects of disturbance on ecological systems and to use disturbance to modify habitats degraded by anthropogenic change. Demographic responses by plants to disturbance are often well described, but demographic responses by animals are less understood. This limits development of applied strategies that leverage disturbance to augment animal populations. We estimated demographic and behavioural responses of an endangered butterfly, Fender's blue, Plebejus icarioides fenderi, to experimental burning in Oregon, USA. We monitored butterfly vital rates for four years post-fire. Prescribed fire killed Fender's blue larvae. However, fecundity was higher relative to reference/unburned areas for two years after the burn and overwinter larval survivorship was higher for a year after the burn. Fire treatments did not influence adult movement behaviour. We used matrix models to project butterfly population dynamics in fire-driven successional landscapes. We compared optimal burn strategies given targeted burns, such as prescribed fire, to undirected burns, such as wildfires. Disturbance enhances population growth rate under both strategies, and the optimal proportion of landscape burned is similar in both cases. However, targeted burning leads to substantially higher population growth rates. Synthesis and applications. Demographic models allow planning of long-term and large-scale disturbance by balancing initial costs of disturbance with subsequent benefits. We use matrix models to project population growth in fire-driven successional landscapes and contrast prescribed burns with undirected burns (wildfires). We also use these models to evaluate the influence of local vs. non-local dispersal. Because random (non-local) dispersal allows individuals to disperse into areas that were just burned, non-local dispersal always increases population growth rates in this system. This contrasts with source-sink dynamics in stationary environments, in which local dispersal leads to higher population growth rates. Our matrix modelling approach has broad application to other disturbance-dependent taxa surviving in anthropogenically modified landscapes, and could be more widely applied to animal populations.
Data from: Incorporating disturbance into trophic ecology: fire history shapes mesopredator suppression by an apex predator
1.Apex predators can suppress smaller bodied 'mesopredators'. In doing so, they can provide refuge to species preyed upon by mesopredators, which is particularly important in regions where mesopredators are invasive. While most studies of mesopredator suppression focus on the response of mesopredators to human control of apex predators, other factors –including natural and anthropogenic disturbance – also drive the occurrence of apex predators and, in doing so, might shape spatial patterns of mesopredator suppression. 2.We examined the role of fire in shaping the occurrence of an apex predator and, by extension, mesopredators and small mammals in a fire-prone region of semi-arid Australia. We measured the activity of an apex predator (the dingo, Canis dingo); an invasive mesopredator it is known to suppress, the red fox (Vuples vuples); and two species of native small mammal (Mitchell's hopping mouse, Notomys mitchelli; silky mouse, Pseudomys apodemoides) that are potential prey, across 21 fire mosaics (each 12.56 km2). We used piecewise structural equation modelling and scenario analysis to explore the interactions between fire, predators and prey. 3.We found that dingoes were affected by fire history at the landscape scale, showing a preference for recently burned areas. While foxes were not directly affected by fire history, a negative association between dingoes and foxes meant that fire had an indirect impact on foxes, mediated through dingoes. Despite the suppression of foxes by dingoes, we did not observe a trophic cascade as small mammals were not negatively associated with foxes or positively associated with dingoes. 4.Synthesis and applications. Disturbance regimes have the capacity to shape patterns of mesopredator suppression when they alter the distributions of apex predators. Environmental change that promotes native predators can therefore help suppress mesopredators – a common conservation objective in regions with invasive mesopredators. The indirect consequences of disturbance regimes should be considered when managing disturbance (e.g. fire) for biodiversity conservation.
ScienceDex guides
Understand access before you commit
These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.