Joseph B Fontaine

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• PhD Wildlife Science, MS Zoology, AB Chemistry
• Lecturer at Murdoch University

Removal of fire-killed trees (i.e. post-fire or salvage logging) is often conducted in part to reduce woody fuel loads and mitigate potential reburn effects. Studies of post-salvage fuel dynamics have primarily used chronosequence or modelling approaches, with associated limitations; longitudinal studies tracking fuels over time have been rare. We...

Projected effects of climate change across many ecosystems globally include more frequent disturbance by fire and reduced plant growth due to warmer (and especially drier) conditions. Such changes affect species - particularly fire-intolerant woody plants - by simultaneously reducing recruitment, growth, and survival. Collectively, these mechanisms...

Forest die-offs associated with drought and heat have recently occurred across the globe, raising concern that associated changes in fuels and microclimate could link initial die-off disturbance to subsequent fire disturbance. Despite widespread concern, little empirical data exist. Following forest die-off in the Northern Jarrah Forest, south-west...

A key uncertainty concerning the effect of wildfire on carbon dynamics is the rate at which fire-killed biomass (e.g., dead trees) decays and emits carbon to the atmosphere. We used a ground-based approach to compute decomposition of forest biomass killed, but not combusted, in the Biscuit Fire of 2002, an exceptionally large wildfire that burned o...

Context Invasive plants are one of the most significant threats to woodlands globally. Methods of invasive plant control include manual removal and herbicide application. While the impacts of control methods on invasive and off-target native plant species are often explored, the impacts on below-ground organisms, such as fungi, are less well unders...

Alongside gradual changes in climate, extreme events such as droughts and heatwaves have increased in frequency globally. Together, chronic change and extreme events have been linked to forest die‐off, as well as larger, more severe wildfires. Increased disturbance frequency inevitably increases the likelihood of compounding effects, highlighting t...

The time interval between fires is a critical component of the fire regime that affects plant species persistence in fire‐prone ecosystems. Fire intervals that are too short or too long may not support regeneration from seed banks or resprouting. Fire intervals that support adequate regeneration may also vary with other factors such as climate, her...

Mortality of tree species around the globe is increasingly driven by hotter drought and heat waves. Tree juveniles are at risk, as well as adults, and this will have a negative effect on forest dynamics and structure under climate change. Novel management options are urgently needed to reduce this mortality and positively affect forest dynamics and...

Context The concept of the fire regime is central to understanding and managing fire-prone ecosystems globally, and information on past regimes can provide useful insights into species disturbance adaptations. Although observations from satellite imagery or palaeoecological proxy data can provide direct evidence of past, pre-colonial fire regimes,...

Climate change, with warming and drying weather conditions, is reducing the growth, seed production, and survival of fire‐adapted plants in fire‐prone regions such as Mediterranean‐type ecosystems. These effects of climate change on local plant demographics have recently been shown to reduce the persistence time of local populations of the fire‐kil...

In this comment we examine a recent study published in Environmental Research Letters that analysed fire history data from forests in Western Australia to suggest that changes in forest structure result in a long-term reduction of fire risk after 56 years since last fire. We examine the data underpinning this study and find that its strongly skewed...

Disturbances can alter persistence trajectories of restored ecosystems. Resprouting is a common response of plants to disturbances such as fire or herbivory. Therefore, understanding a plant's resprouting response can inform successful restoration. We investigated patterns and drivers of resprouting following fire in fire‐prone Banksia woodlands re...

Context Extinction debt, the time-delayed species loss response to fragmentation associated with habitat clearance, is a conservation concern for management of biological diversity globally. Extinction debt is well defined but difficult to measure owing to the long-term data needed to measure species loss, particularly for communities of long-lived...

Increasing fire severity and warmer, drier postfire conditions are making forests in the western United States (West) vulnerable to ecological transformation. Yet, the relative importance of and interactions between these drivers of forest change remain unresolved, particularly over upcoming decades. Here, we assess how the interactive impacts of c...

Many degraded ecosystems need active restoration to conserve biodiversity and re‐establish ecosystem function, both highlighted targets of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the proposed EU Nature restoration law. Soil translocation, where both plant propagules and their associated soil biota are co‐introduced, has increasingly been propose...

Aims Responses of ecological restoration projects to disturbances are rarely explored, yet their capacity to withstand and recover from disturbance (resilience) is a critical measure of restoration success. In many plant communities, the soil seed bank (SSB) provides an important source of propagules for species persistence and community resilience...

The frequency and intensity of forest disturbances, such as drought and fire, are increasing globally, with an increased likelihood of multiple disturbance events occurring in short succession. Disturbances layered over one another may influence the likelihood or intensity of subsequent events (a linked disturbance) or impact response and recovery...

Background Climate change is eroding forest resilience to disturbance directly through warming climate and indirectly through increasing disturbance activity. Forests characterized by stand-replacing fire regimes and dominated by serotinous species are at risk when the inter-fire period is insufficient for canopy seed bank development and climate c...

The resilience of serotinous obligate-seeding plants to fire may be compromised if increasing fire frequency curtails time available for canopy seed bank accumulation (i.e., immaturity risk), but how various drivers affect seed availability at the time of fire is poorly understood. Using field data from California closed-cone pine (Pinus attenuata...

Climate change projections predict that Mediterranean-type ecosystems (MTEs) are becoming hotter and drier and that fires will become more frequent and severe. While most plant species in these important biodiversity hotspots are adapted to hot, dry summers and recurrent fire, the Interval Squeeze framework suggests that reduced seed production (de...

Postfire resprouting (R+) and recruitment from seed (S+) are common resilience traits in Australian ecosystems. We classified 2696 woody Australian taxa as R+ or not (R−) and as S+ or not (S−). The proportions of these traits in Australian ecosystems were examined in relation to fire regimes and other ecological correlates, and by trait mapping on...

Increasing extreme wildfire occurrence globally is boosting demand to understand the fuel dynamics and fire risk of fire-prone areas. This is particularly pressing in fire-prone, Mediterranean climate-type vegetation, such as the Banksia woodlands surrounding metropolitan Perth, southwestern Australia. Despite an extensive wildland-urban interface...

The resilience of serotinous obligate-seeding plants to fire may be compromised if increasing fire frequency curtails time available for canopy seed bank accumulation (i.e., immaturity risk), but how various drivers affect seed availability at the time of fire is poorly understood. Using field data from California closed-cone pine (Pinus attenuata...

Unseasonal fire occurrence is increasing globally, driven by climate change and other human activity. Changed timing of fire can inhibit postfire seedling recruitment through interactions with plant phenology (the timing of key processes, e.g., flower initiation, seed production, dispersal, germination), and therefore threaten the persistence of ma...

We outline the multiple, cross-scale, and complex consequences of terrestrial and marine ecosystem heatwaves in two regions on opposite sides of the planet: the southwestern USA and southwestern Australia, both encompassing Global Biodiversity Hotspots, and where ecosystem collapses or features of it have occurred in the past two decades. We highli...

With climate change, heat waves are becoming increasingly frequent, intense and broader in spatial extent. However, while the lethal effects of heat waves on humans are well documented, the impacts on flora are less well understood, perhaps except for crops. We summarize recent findings related to heat wave impacts including: sublethal and lethal e...

Ecological resilience is widely acknowledged as a vital attribute of successful ecosystem restoration, with potential for restoration practice to contribute to this goal. Hence, defining common metrics of resilience to naturally occurring disturbances is essential for restoration planning, efforts, and monitoring. Here, we reviewed how plant commun...

The rapid expansion of urban areas worldwide is leading to native habitat loss and ecosystem fragmentation and degradation. Although the study of urbanisation’s impact on biodiversity is gaining increasing interest globally, there is still a disconnect between research recommendations and urbanisation strategies. Expansion of the Perth metropolitan...

The rapid expansion of urban areas worldwide is leading to native habitat loss and ecosystem fragmentation and degradation. Although the study of urbanisation's impact on biodiversity is gaining increasing interest globally, there is still a disconnect between research recommendations and urbanisation strategies. Expansion of the Perth metropolitan...

We recently published a framework of demographic mechanisms that may impact plant population responses to changes in fire seasonality [1]. This framework now includes eight mechanisms identified in [1,2] and further detailed in [3,4]. Subsequently, Cao et al. [5] have proposed that seed dormancy class, based on the dormancy classification scheme of...

Questions Globally, ecological restoration is required to restore degraded landscapes and to contribute to biodiversity conservation. Ecological theory suggests that manipulating dispersal, abiotic and biotic filters limiting plant re‐establishment will improve restoration outcomes. Here, we manipulated spread depth of soil containing a salvaged so...

Forests are increasingly affected by natural disturbances. Subsequent salvage logging, a widespread management practice conducted predominantly to recover economic capital, produces further disturbance and impacts biodiversity worldwide. Hence, naturally disturbed forests are among the most threatened habitats in the world, with consequences for th...

Forests are increasingly affected by natural disturbances. Subsequent salvage logging, a widespread management practice conducted predominantly to recover economic capital, produces further disturbance and impacts biodiversity worldwide. Hence, naturally disturbed forests are among the most threatened habitats in the world, with consequences for th...

Ongoing changes in fire regimes have the potential to drive widespread shifts in Earth's vegetation. Plant traits and vital rates provide insight into vulnerability to fire‐driven vegetation shifts because they can be indicators of the ability of individuals to survive fire (resistance) and populations to persist (resilience) following fire. In 15...

Many plant species in fire‐prone environments maintain persistence through fire via soil seedbanks. However, seeds stored within the soil are at risk of mortality from elevated soil temperatures during fire. Seeds may be protected from fire‐temperature impacts by burial, however, those buried too deeply may germinate but fail to emerge. Thus, succe...

Plant species conservation relies on their reproductive success and likelihood of population persistence. Knowledge of plant mating systems, particularly the relationship between plants and their pollinators, is fundamental to inform conservation efforts. This knowledge could be critical for prioritising efforts in human-dominated fragmented landsc...

Variations in global patterns of burning and fire regimes are relatively well measured, however, the degree of influence of the complex suite of biophysical and human drivers of fire remains controversial and incompletely understood. Such an understanding is required in order to support current fire management and to predict the future trajectory o...

Salvage logging following natural disturbances may alter the natural successional trajectories of biological communities by affecting the occurrences of species, functional groups and evolutionary lineages. However, few studies have examined whether dissimilarities between bird communities of salvaged and unsalvaged forests are more pronounced for...

Context Feral pigs (Sus scrofa) are an increasing threat to agriculture and ecological communities globally. Although ground rooting is their most readily observable sign, feral pigs typically remain highly cryptic and their abundance and impacts are difficult to quantify. Aims The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of current fer...

Worldwide, extreme climatic events such as drought and heatwaves are associated with forest mortality. However, the precise drivers of tree mortality at individual and stand levels vary considerably, with substantial gaps in knowledge across studies in biomes and continents. In 2010–2011, a drought‐associated heatwave occurred in south‐western Aust...

Altered fire regimes resulting from climate change and human activity threaten many terrestrial ecosystems. However, we lack a holistic and detailed understanding of the effects of altering one key fire regime component – season of fire. Altered fire seasonality can strongly affect post-fire recovery of plant populations through interactions with p...

Amblyomma triguttatum triguttatum (Koch 1844), known as the ornate kangaroo tick, is one of the most common ticks encountered in Western Australia. This widespread tick has been implicated in the epidemiology of Q Fever (Coxiella burnetii) and possibly spotted fever (Rickettsia gravesii), however little is known about the ecology of A. t. triguttat...

Prolonged drought and intense heat‐related events trigger sudden forest die‐off events and have now been reported from all forested continents. Such die‐offs are concerning given that drought and heatwave events are forecast to increase in severity and duration as climate change progresses. Quantifying consequences to carbon dynamics and storage fr...

Fire has long shaped biological responses of plants and plant communities in many ecosystems; yet, uncontrolled wildfire frequently puts people and infrastructure at risk. Fuel or hazard reduction burning outside of the historic fire season is a common and widespread practice aimed at reducing the risk of high‐severity fires, which ideally also con...

Globally, forest die-off from global-change-type drought events (hotter droughts) are of increasing concern, with effects reported from every forested continent. While implications of global-change-type drought events have been explored for above-ground vegetation, below-ground organisms have received less attention, despite their essential contrib...

Urban environments are increasingly important for biodiversity conservation, but pet cats threaten wildlife therein, displaying nuisance behaviour such as hunting, fighting, fouling and urine spraying. In an attempt to empower landholders wishing to reduce cat incursions humanely, we tested the effectiveness of two ultrasonic cat deterrents (CatSto...

Heat waves have profoundly impacted biota globally over the past decade, especially where their ecological impacts are rapid, diverse, and broad-scale. Although usually considered in isolation for either terrestrial or marine ecosystems, heat waves can straddle ecosystems of both types at subcontinental scales, potentially impacting larger areas an...

Although novel ecosystems are increasing globally, their utility for biodiversity conservation is poorly understood. Native fauna are predicted to use novel ecosystems when those ecosystems provide structure and resources similar to the native habitat. We modified existing terminology on wildlife functional groups to develop a conceptual model that...

Logging to “salvage” economic returns from forests affected by natural disturbances has become increasingly prevalent globally. Despite potential negative effects on biodiversity, salvage logging is often conducted, even in areas otherwise excluded from logging and reserved for nature conservation, inter alia because strategic priorities for post‐d...

Agricultural pursuits in post-mining environments are becoming increasingly important globally as many regions are challenged with food insecurity and post-mining land-use legacies. Although there are many advantages for agricultural production at post-mining sites, these substrates have abiotic and biotic challenges for plant growth, including poo...

Simple Summary Waiving adoption fees to encourage adoptions and reduce euthanasias of healthy adult cats in crowded shelters is controversial because of concerns that people attracted to free adoptions may be less responsible owners. An extremely busy kitten season in 2015 left no shelter or foster vacancies for incoming cats at Western Australia’s...

Addressing plant-soil relationships within restoration science may improve success and reduce costs. Here we assess the question of topsoil storage time: how does stockpile age impact plant biomass and soil microbial activity, particularly root symbionts such as rhizobia and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF)? Working in Western Australia and in sa...

An outreach bulletin on the impacts of drought-induced forest die-off on fuels and fire potentials

Species integrity relies on the maintenance of reproductive isolation, particularly between closely related species. Further, it has been hypothesized that the presence of heterospecific pollen on flower stigmas adversely affects plant reproduction with increasing effect in closely related species. Using two pairs of co-occurring buzz-pollinated Th...

Dynamics of dead wood, a key component of forest structure, are not well described for mixed-severity fire regimes with widely varying fire intervals. A prominent form of such variation is when two stand-replacing fires occur in rapid succession, commonly termed an early-seral "reburn." These events are thought to strongly Influence dead wood abund...

Questions Climate change‐type drought (the combination of drought and heatwave) has become a widely documented driver of forest dieback yet, to date, limited measurement of post‐event forest dynamics has been reported. Can climate change‐type drought trigger structural and/or compositional changes in a forest type which is usually highly resilient...

Roaming pet cats kill and harass wildlife, hybridise with wild felids, interbreed with feral populations, spread disease or annoy neighbours, and endanger their own welfare by fighting, being struck by vehicles or ingesting poisons. Confinement of pet cats is unpopular, so alternative methods to curb roaming behaviour would benefit wildlife conserv...

Frequency and intensity of disturbance is projected to increase for many ecosystems globally, with uncertain consequences, particularly when disturbances occur in rapid succession. We quantified community response (52 shrub species and the tree Eucalyptus todtiana) to a severe hailstorm followed 2 months later by prescribed fire for a Mediter-ranea...

Postfire resprouting and recruitment from seed are key plant life-history traits that influence population dynamics, community composition and ecosystem function. Species can have one or both of these mechanisms. They confer resilience, which may determine community composition through differential species persistence after fire. To predict ecosyst...

There is an increasing interest in eucalypt reforestation for a range of purposes in Australia, including pulp-wood production, carbon mitigation and catchment water management. The impacts of this reforestation on soil water repellency have not been examined despite eucalypts often being associated with water repellency and water repellency having...

State-and-transition models are increasingly used as a tool to inform management of post-disturbance succession and effective conservation of biodiversity in production landscapes. However, if they are to do this effectively, they need to represent faunal, as well as vegetation, succession. We assessed the congruence between vegetation and avian su...

QuestionsTranslocation of topsoil and its seed bank for ecological restoration is increasingly popular. How representative is the soil seed bank of the extant vegetation at the source site? What influence does the transfer process have on germinant density, species and plant functional type composition? Does smoke and heat treatment of transferred...

Many pet cats hunt and, irrespective of whether or not this threatens wildlife populations, distressed owners may wish to curtail hunting while allowing their pets to roam. Therefore we evaluated the effectiveness of three patterned designs (simple descriptions being rainbow, red and yellow) of the anti-predation collar cover, the Birdsbesafe® (BBS...

Background/Question/Methods Climate change is already altering disturbance regimes around the world. Fire regimes are directly affected; as the climate warms and precipitation is redistributed, many areas will see large increases or decreases in fire likelihood, intensity, severity, and extent. Serotiny, the retention of seeds in the canopy of veg...

Fuel age is an imprecise surrogate for fire hazard in species-rich Mediterranean-type shrublands. We present an efficient method for aerial biomass and litter estimation of shrublands on sandy and calcareous substrates in south-western Australia that enables fuel accumulation patterns to be compared independently of vegetation age. For sites rangin...

Changing disturbance–climate interactions will drive shifts in plant communities: these effects are not adequately quantified by environmental niche models used to predict future species distributions. We quantified the effects of more frequent fire and lower rainfall – as projected to occur under a warming and drying climate – on population respon...

Mediterranean regions worldwide, and southwest (SW) Australia in particular, are characterised by their high plant biodiversity, fire-prone vegetation, and substantial conservation challenges in relation to human land use, expanding populations and changing climate. Recent climate change is evident in SW Australia, with markedly decreasing rainfall...

Expectations and patterns of publication have changed markedly with evolving online availability and associated development of new citation gathering databases. Perhaps the most vulnerable components of the scientific literature to ongoing change are books and book chapters, given their elongated publication timelines and generally more limited onl...