Supporting biodiversity by prescribed burning in grasslands — A multi-taxa approach

Abstract

There are contrasting opinions on the use of prescribed burning management in European grasslands. On the one hand, prescribed burning can be effectively used for the management of open landscapes, controlling dominant species, reducing accumulated litter or decreasing wildfire risk. On the other hand burning can have a detrimental impact on grassland biodiversity by supporting competitor grasses and by threatening several rare and endangered species, especially arthropods. We studied the effects of prescribed burning in alkaline grasslands of high conservation interest. Our aim was to test whether dormant-season prescribed burning can be an alternative conservation measure in these grasslands. We selected six sites in East-Hungary: in three sites, a prescribed fire was applied in November 2011, while three sites remained unburnt. We studied the effects of burning on soil characteristics, plant biomass and on the composition of vegetation and arthropod assemblages (isopods, spiders, ground beetles and rove beetles). Soil pH, organic matter, potassium and phosphorous did not change, but soluble salt content increased significantly in the burnt sites. Prescribed burning had several positive effects from the nature conservation viewpoint. Shannon diversity and the number of flowering shoots were higher, and the cover of the dominant grass Festuca pseudovina was lower in the burnt sites. Graminoid biomass was lower, while total, green and forb biomass were higher in the burnt plots compared to the control. The key finding of our study was that prescribed burning did not decrease the abundance and diversity of arthropod taxa. Species-level analyses showed that out of the most abundant invertebrate species, 10 were not affected, 1 was negatively and 1 was positively affected by burning. Moreover, our results suggest that prescribed burning leaving unburnt patches can be a viable management tool in open landscapes, because it supports plant diversity and does not threaten arthropods.

Effect of summer fire on cursorial spider (Aranei) and beetle (Coleoptera) assemblages in meadow steppes of Central European Russia

“…In general, changes in the abundance and/or diversity of various taxa were more or less significant only in the first post-fire year, after which the assemblage returned to its previous state. Late-autumn patchy fires also had no significant effects on epigeic arthropods (Valkó et al 2016).…”

Resprouting of woody species encroaching temperate European grasslands after cutting and burning

“…The use of prescribed burning as a regular tool for grassland conservation and management in Europe attracts more and more interest (Goldammer ; Valkó et al. ). However, to introduce it, e.g.…”

Prescribed patch burnings increase thrips species richness and body size in grassland communities

“…Prescribed burnings are management tools usually set in grassland and savanna ecosystems to increase forage quality for grazing, reduce shrub encroachment and prevent catastrophic burnings by reducing plant biomass (Valk o et al, 2014(Valk o et al, , 2016Limb et al, 2016;Stevens et al, 2017). Through the conservation lens, patch burnings can be an approach to increase landscape-scale heterogeneity, and enhance biodiversity (Kelly et al, 2015).…”