Notice of Intent: Successional changes in arthropod assemblages during watershed restoration and fire management

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The Valles Caldera National Preserve (VALL) and the Jemez Ranger District of the Santa Fe National Forest are currently undergoing a landscape restoration project, funded under the USFS Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) and the DOI Resilient Landscapes Program. The goals of both programs are to restore natural fire regimes to the forest and grassland watersheds on the Preserve. Large-scale restoration efforts involve forest thinning to reduce fuel loads, and prescribed and managed fires to further eliminate fuels and allow for natural fire regimes to return to the landscape. Fires can have varying impacts on the floral and faunal communities. VALL has been subjected to two recent large-scale uncharacteristic wildfires (the 2011 Las Conchas fire, and the 2013 Thompson Ridge fire), which led to various post-fire impacts on terrestrial invertebrate communities on severely-burned watersheds. In 2011, following the Las Conchas fire, Preserve biologists established a number of replicated monitoring sites to measure post-fire responses of vegetation, birds, small mammals and invertebrates. In addition, the USFS has plans to conduct a prescribed fire in 2016 (the Southern Paliza Fire), and there have already been collections of invertebrates pre-fire, and when the burn is completed, another set of samples will be collected to assess fire-related changes in pest and beneficial invertebrates. This CESU project will continue the studies of arthropod communities in severely-burned forest stands, woodlands and grasslands. These assessments will, in turn, be applied to the adaptive management process in the Preserve and Forestâ¿¿s restoration and fire management programs.

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