RAPID: Synergistic effects of habitat fragmentation and climate-change driven megafire on biodiversity in a large-scale experiment

自然界正在以多种方式发生变化，威胁着生态系统。一个大问题是，这些威胁是否相互作用，其中一些使其他威胁比预期的要糟糕得多。该项目将研究两种威胁的相互作用，火灾和栖息地破碎化（大森林分解成许多小森林片段），在澳大利亚的昆虫。 研究人员将测试小的未燃烧区域的位置如何作为甲虫的避难所（安全空间），帮助它们在一些燃烧的碎片中恢复，但在其他碎片中可能不会。如果附近没有避难所，火灾的影响可能特别严重。该项目将利用2020年1月的一场大火，这场大火烧毁了一个非常大且长期运行的森林碎片化实验。火灾提供了一个短暂的机会，研究火灾的影响如何与栖息地破碎化的影响相互作用。研究人员将找到并绘制避难所地图，将它们与碎片大小和栖息地联系起来，并估计有多少物种被大火消灭。研究结果将使研究人员能够弄清楚火灾和碎片化的影响可能是如何相关的。此外，研究结果将为在火灾风险增加的情况下管理支离破碎的森林提供重要信息。相对于其巨大的生物多样性和生态系统功能的重要性，严重火灾对森林无脊椎动物的影响研究甚少。火灾前甲虫生物多样性（700多个物种）的长期连续记录，以及现有的大规模实验操作的景观到栖息地片段，提供了一个难得的机会，研究可能的协同效应的碎片化和火灾。这项研究将提供第一批数据，以评估这种影响对生物多样性的丧失和恢复，以及小型避难所的作用。此外，该研究对严重火灾后的初始条件和生态系统轨迹进行了研究，将为受极端事件影响的支离破碎的森林系统的恢复驱动因素的长期研究提供基准。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The natural world is changing in many ways that threaten ecological systems. A big question is whether the threats interact, with some making others much worse than otherwise expected. This project will examine the interaction of two threats, fire and habitat fragmentation (the breaking up of large forests into many small forest fragments), on insects in Australia. Researchers will test how the location of small unburned areas may act as refugia (safe spaces) for beetles, helping them recover in some burned fragments but perhaps not in others. Without nearby refugia, impacts of fire may be especially bad. The project will take advantage of a huge fire in January 2020 that burned through a very big and long-running forest fragmentation experiment. The fire has provided a fleeting opportunity to study how effects of fire may interact with those of habitat fragmentation. Researchers will find and map refugia, relate them to fragment size and habitat, and estimate how many species were wiped out by the fire. Results will allow researchers to figure out how impacts of fire and fragmentation may be related. Also, results will critically inform the management of fragmented forest under increased fire risk. Relative to their enormous biodiversity and importance in ecosystem function, the impact of severe fire on forest invertebrates is poorly studied. A long, continuous record of beetle biodiversity (over 700 species) before the fire, together with the existing large-scale experimental manipulation of the landscape into habitat fragments, provides a rare opportunity to study possible synergistic effects of fragmentation and fire. The study will provide the first data to evaluate such effects on biodiversity loss and recovery, and the role of small refugia. Additionally, this study of initial conditions and ecosystem trajectory after a severe fire will provide a baseline for long-term study of the drivers of recovery in fragmented forest systems impacted by extreme events that are becoming more common.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.