Reconciling Yellow Rail Habitat Use And Landscape Dynamics At Seney National Wildlife Refuge

1. Reconciling Yellow Rail Habitat Use And Landscape Dynamics At Seney National Wildlife Refuge Greg Corace Seney NWR (Greg_Corace@fws.gov) Charles Goebel Ohio State Univ. Dan Kashian Wayne State Univ. http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Seney/what_we_do/research.html

2. To address impacts to biodiversity, conservation biology and restoration ecology take different approaches (see Young 2000; Noss et al. 2006). Conservation biology = genes, species, populations Restoration ecology = ecological processes/patterns, communities For managers of wild landscapes, the oversimplification of ecosystems is of special consideration [sensu “ecological forestry” (Franklin 1989) and “natural range of variation” (Landres et al. 1999)]

7. Refuge Land Management Refuge System Policy- Refuge Legislation Ownership Land Cover Planning & Mgmt. Corace et al. 2012. EnvMgmt. Corace et al. 2012. EnvMgmt. Ecosystem Capabilities-Disturbance Patterns-Function Drobyshev et al. 2008a,b CJFR and FEM

8. Alterations to Mixed-Pine Forests: Conserving and Restoring Infrequently Disturbed Ecosystems Time High-grading or clear cuts followed by fire outside “natural range of variation” (1880s-1930s). Now, natural, late successional, mixed pine one of the more regionally imperiled ecosystem type (Noss and Scott 1997)

9. Ecological Considerations for Landscape Management Based on Soils, Disturbances, and Resulting Composition and Structure Pinus strobus/Vaccinium angustifolium-Epigaea repens (PVE) Habitat Type1 Major and/or frequent ecological disturbances (e.g., crown fire) push stands to earlier seral stages, minor and/or infrequent disturbances (e.g., surface fire) to later seral stages. 1Burger and Kotar. 2003. Forest community and habitat types of Michigan.

10. Developing a fire history for Seney Dendrochronologically reconstructed the fire regime for the past 300+ years Drobyshev et al. 2008. CJFR 38:2497-2514.

11. Fire chronology Drobyshev et al. 2008. CJFR 38:2497-2514. Drobyshev et al. 2012. Dendrochronologia 30:137-145.

12. Characteristics of the fire regime Drobyshev et al. 2008. CJFR 38:2497-2514.

13. Seasonality of fires Early season fires Late season fires Drobyshev et al. 2008. CJFR 38:2497-2514.

14. Overview of Findings: Disturbance History • Fire return interval (FRI): 24-33 year (on average) pre-European, but Great Cutover fires significantly more frequent and fires less common now; • FRI of large (>10,000 ha) events mean 37 years, range 19 – 73 years (landscape-scale fires in 1754, 1791, 1864, 1891, 1910, 1976); • Seasonality: fires occurred in early, mid- and late-season, but large fires were solely late season events; • 10-fold increase in fire rotation (<100 years pre-European to 1,000 years present-day) ; • Altered hydrology likely linked to altered fire regime across the landscape. Drobyshev et al. 2008. CJFR 38:2497-2514.

15. What’s to Reconcile? • Numerous studies1 on the breeding ground at Seney have suggested a relationship between • YERA and ecological processes, primarily fire; • Recent work by Austin (2013, Waterbirds) indicated a preference for sites burned within 5 yrs.; • However, liberal estimate of FRI in these systems si 25 yr (5x what YERA seem to prefer)....so, did we miss fires or is something at else at play? 1Bookout and Stenzel (1987) Wilson Bulletin; Burkman (1993) Northern Michigan Univ. (M.S.)

16. Detection probabilities for fires of different size classes within Wilderness and non-Wilderness portions of Seney National Wildlife Refuge during three time periods. WildernessNon-Wilderness Fire size class (ha) 1707–1859 1860–1935 1936–2006 1707–1859 1860–1935 1936–2006 10 0.43 0.43 0.43 0.03 0.04 0.04 100 1 1 1 0.26 0.35 0.37 200 1 1 1 0.37 0.48 0.5 300 1 1 1 0.6 0.73 0.75 400 1 1 1 0.71 0.83 0.84 500 1 1 1 0.79 0.89 0.9 600 1 1 1 0.84 0.93 0.94 700 1 1 1 0.88 0.95 0.96 800 1 1 1 0.91 0.97 0.97 900 1 1 1 0.94 0.98 0.98 1000 1 1 1 0.95 0.99 0.99 1100 1 1 1 0.97 0.99 0.99 1200 1 1 1 0.98 0.99 1 Note: Fires >1200 ha in size had detection probability of 1 in both areas and for all time periods. Fire size column refers to the upper limit of the respective size class; the center of each class was used for calculation of the detection probability (e.g., 250 ha for 200–300 ha size class). Drobyshev et al. 2008. CJFR 38:2497-2514.

17. Not all lightning strikes cause fires, even with altered hydrology!

18. Thinking Landscapes Celebrating a Century of Conservation Celebrating a Century of Conservation

19. 3 Prohibitive High C 2 Level of intervention required B Degree of change from historical system A 1 Low Modest Now Future Then Time Numbers=trajectories, unmanaged Letters = trajectories, managed Jackson and Hobbs. 2009. Science. 325:567-569.

20. Walsh Ditch (~27 km) Ditch Plugs Veg./Hydro. Transects Bork et al. 2013. Am. Mid. Nat. 169:286-302.

21. Quantify wetland composition and structure across a chronosequence of Rx and wildfire (Rx fire mapped since 1935); • Quantify secretive marshbird occupancy (abundance?) across restoration gradient: benchmark (control)-altered-restored; • Improve spatial and temporal planning of Rx fire treatments across landscape. Future Work?

23. Post-Doc: Igor Drobyshev (OSU) Grad. Student: Steven Rist (OSU) Assistants: Too many to mention, but thanks to all! Funding: Joint Fire Science Program, Seney NWR, The Ohio State University, Wayne State University, Seney Natural History Association Reconciling Yellow Rail Habitat Use And Landscape Dynamics At Seney National Wildlife Refuge http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Seney/what_we_do/research.html