In May 2012, a fire affected approximately 165 hectares of forest in the Moravian Sahara region. Originally a balanced mosaic of open steppe habitats and forests, the area was transformed in the 19th century by the planting of a disproportionate number of Scots pine. Since then, many local species have been declining, but the large-scale forest fire of 2012 may have brought a significant change, according to researchers from Mendel University.
The team of experts from the university’s Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology and Faculty of Agronomy, led by Emanuel Kula, focused on how the fire and subsequent forestry interventions affected communities of ground beetles in sandy forests located in southern Moravia. They found that fire can create valuable habitats that support rare and drought-loving beetle species. The results of their research has since been published in the prestigious journal Agricultural and Forest Entomology.
As part of the research, the experts monitored the beetle communities for nine years following the fire in 2012. They compared six different habitat types that varied in fire severity and type of subsequent intervention.
“In our research, for example, we compared areas left without intervention with those subjected to intensive land preparation for planting lodgepole pine. The results showed that fire can create valuable open habitats that support rare and drought-loving beetle species, especially sand beetles. On the contrary, intensive restoration interventions led, in many cases, to habitat simplification and a decrease in species diversity,” explained Dominik Stočes from the Institute of Zoology, Fishery, Hydrobiology and Apiculture at MENDELU.
From this point on, scientists theorized that controlled burning outside the growing season could be a useful tool for biodiversity management in open sandy forests. Sand-dwelling species are usually poor colonizers of forested habitats, which increases their vulnerability, an issue further worsened by climate change.
“Many of these species are strongly associated with unvegetated sands or steppes, and are currently declining due to forest thickening. Their occurrence is often locally restricted, with some species listed on red lists of threatened species,” said Stočes.
“We point out that increased forest cover should not only be seen as a sign of regeneration, but also as a potential threat to the species richness and biodiversity of sandy habitats in Central Europe. Not all afforestation is desirable from a biodiversity point of view; natural regeneration after fire may be preferable to intensive land reforestation,” the scientist pointed out. The results of the research may be useful for protected area managers, forest managers, conservationists and, of course, researchers.
