HR: 1340h
AN: GC23A-0994    [Abstracts]
TI: Impact of Wildland Fire and Climate Change on the Amur Tiger and its Habitat
AU: * Loboda, T V
EM: tloboda@hermes.geog.umd.edu
AF: University of Maryland, Geography Department, 2181 LeFrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742, United States
AB: The Sikhote-Alin ecoregion of the Russian Far East (RFE) is an area of high biological importance designated by the UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It presents a combination of boreal and temperate forest rich in rare endemic species including the critically endangered Amur tiger. The Amur tiger has the lowest population densities and reproductive potential of all tiger subspecies and thus requires extensive hunting areas. The availability of large hunting tracts for tigers is limited by economic activity and wildland fire. Increases in frequency of fire occurrence and amounts of burned area over the last 30 years resulted in extensive and irreversible modifications of the Amur tiger habitat. Changes in the natural fire cycle in the Amur tiger habitat require adopting a proactive approach to resource protection from wildland fire impacts. The fuzzy logic driven Fire Threat Model (FTM) has been developed to enable the resource managers to monitor tiger habitat quality, availability, and connectivity under changing climate. The model operates on publicly available remotely sensed data products and auxiliary information. It is parameterized to account for the regional drivers of fire occurrence and is focused on the specific habitat requirements of the Amur tiger. The analysis of fire threat to the Amur tiger under the present climate shows that fire occurrence has an immediate negative impact on the tiger habitat due to habitat fragmentation at the home-range scale, a significant decrease in food availability for the main prey species, and a subsequent drop in prey densities. However, post-fire emergence of a superior food base for browsers in combination with a sufficient protection offered by shrubland vegetation create a potential for an improvement of tiger habitat quality long-term. The potential is stronger in the northern portion of the tiger distribution area where dark coniferous and larch forests are replaced by shrublands and broadleaved deciduous forests, habitat types supporting higher prey densities. The projected increase in temperatures with a minimal increase in precipitation is shown by the ECHAM5 climate change scenarios over the RFE during the 21st century. The FTM runs during 2046-2050 and 2096-2100 time periods show an increase in fire threat to the Amur tiger. More frequent fire occurrence amplifies the negative short term impacts, minimizes the positive long-term impacts, and impedes forest regeneration leading to degradation of the tiger habitat under the current land management approach.
DE: 0410 Biodiversity
DE: 0439 Ecosystems, structure and dynamics (4815)
DE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0414, 0793, 4805, 4912)
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
DE: 1640 Remote sensing (1855)
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting