Graduation Date
Spring 2024
Document Type
Thesis
Program
Master of Science degree with a major in Natural Resources, option Wildlife
Committee Chair Name
Frank Fogarty
Committee Chair Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Second Committee Member Name
Ho Yi Wan
Second Committee Member Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Third Committee Member Name
Jeffrey Kane
Third Committee Member Affiliation
HSU Faculty or Staff
Keywords
Lewis's woodpecker, Habitat, Management, Wildfire, Pyrodiversity, Oregon
Subject Categories
Wildlife
Abstract
Lewis’s woodpeckers (Melanerpes lewis) are described as "burn specialists" due to their preference for breeding in recently burned pine forests in the western US. However, despite increasing fire activity, this species experienced a 48% range-wide decline between 1968 and 2019, which raises questions about their adaptability to altered fire regimes in the region. We partnered with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife to investigate how Lewis’s woodpeckers in the eastern Cascades, Oregon were influenced by post-fire habitat characteristics such as snag size, snag density, and burn severity across five wildfires that varied in fire age, size, and severity. We examined aspects of pyrodiversity in the form of spatial configuration of burn severity at varying spatial scales. We aimed to understand how habitat differed between an area with Lewis’s woodpeckers year-round (White River Wildlife Area) and an area with only a breeding population (Deschutes National Forest). We used point count data collected from May – June 2023 to create N-mixture models to estimate Lewis’s woodpecker habitat associations. Our models showed that recent burns (3 – 6 years) with snag densities of ~65 snags/hectare and larger snags (> 40 cm diameter) had the highest abundance of Lewis’s woodpeckers. Our spatial models indicated that more connectivity between severely burned patches positively influenced Lewis’s woodpecker abundance. When comparing habitats between White River Wildlife Area and Deschutes National Forest, we saw notable differences in dominant tree species, live tree and snag densities, canopy cover, and decay class of trees and snags. Results from this work provide information for formulating more effective conservation and management strategies tailored to Lewis’s woodpecker populations in the eastern Cascades of Oregon in response to increasing wildfire activity in the region.
Citation Style
Journal of Wildlife Management
Recommended Citation
Welch, Brittany, "Post-fire vegetation and pyrodiversity influence breeding abundances of Lewis's woodpeckers in the eastern Cascades, Oregon" (2024). Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects. 755.
https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/etd/755