Camera traps link population-level activity patterns with wildfire smoke events for mammals in Eastern Washington State

Fire Ecology

Original Research

Ravan Ahmadov¹  Eric P. James¹  Jessalyn Ayars²  Olivia V. Sanderfoot³  Sierra Raby⁴  Robert L. Emmet⁵  Alexandra Karambelas⁶  Beth Gardner⁷  Sarah B. Bassing⁷ 

[1] Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA;NOAA Global Systems Laboratory, Boulder, CO, USA;Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA;Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA;Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA;National Agricultural Statistics Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA;Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, Boston, MA, USA;School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA;

关键词: Air pollution;    Air quality;    Climate change;    Detection probability;    Occupancy modeling;    PM;    Wildfire smoke;    Wildlife behavior;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s42408-023-00207-1

 received in 2022-08-24, accepted in 2023-07-20,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDue to anthropogenic climate change and historic fire suppression, wildfire frequency and severity are increasing across the western United States. Whereas the indirect effects of fire on wildlife via habitat change are well studied, less is known about the impacts of wildfire smoke on animal health and behavior. In this study, we explore the effects of wildfire smoke on the behavior of eight medium- to large-bodied mammalian species in a heterogenous study area in Washington, USA. We linked population-level activity metrics derived from camera trap data to concentrations of fire-specific fine particulate matter (PM2.5). We hypothesized that mammalian activity would decline during smoke events, as animals attempt to reduce potential health impacts of smoke inhalation. We used occupancy models and Poisson regression models to test the effect of fire-specific PM2.5 levels on daily detection probability and the number of detections per day, respectively, for each study species.ResultsWhile we did not observe any significant responses to daily mean concentrations of PM2.5 in the occupancy models, we found three species with significant responses in their rates of detections per day in the Poisson regression. Specifically, for each standard deviation increase in the daily mean concentration of PM2.5, there was a 12.9% decrease in the number of bobcat detections per day, an 11.2% decrease in the number of moose detections per day, and a 5.8% increase in the number of mule deer detections per day. In general, the effects of PM2.5 were small compared to other relevant covariates.ConclusionsWe generally found little evidence to support our hypothesis that animals would reduce their activity in response to wildfire smoke. However, our study demonstrated that mammals exhibited species-specific behavioral responses to smoke, which are possibly adaptive responses to reduce health impacts from smoke inhalation. Though we found only a few immediate behavioral responses to smoke exposure, we note that longer-term health consequences of smoke exposure for wildlife are also likely and generally unknown. Our study shows how camera traps, which are already widely used to study wildlife, can also be used to investigate the impacts of wildfire smoke on animal behavior and provides a step towards developing methods to better understand this increasing source of environmental stress on wildlife.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Association for Fire Ecology 2023

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