Post-Soviet fire and grazing regimes govern the abundance of a key ecosystem engineer on the Eurasian steppe, the yellow ground squirrel Spermophilus fulvus
Koshkina A. Freitag M. Grigoryeva I. Hölzel N. Stirnemann I. Velbert F. Kamp J.
March 2023John Wiley and Sons Inc
Diversity and Distributions
2023#29Issue 3395 - 408 pp.
Aim: Grazing intensity and fire patterns across the Eurasian steppes have changed dramatically over the past decades due to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and Kazakhstan is now a global fire hotspot. The implications of these changes for ecosystem functioning are largely unclear. We aimed to understand the effects of changed grazing intensity and fire frequency on a key ecosystem engineer, the yellow ground squirrel Spermophilus fulvus, on a very large scale. Location: Kazakhstan. Methods: Ground squirrels were surveyed in an area of ca. 100,000 ha in the dry steppe of central Kazakhstan, using hierarchical distance sampling at more than 200 random points, stratified by fire frequency and livestock grazing intensity. We modelled abundance as a function of different variables, grouped at the landscape scale (fire and grazing), meso-scale (soil and vegetation structure) and at burrow scale (plant traits such as palatability, digestibility and nutrient content). Results: Ground squirrels prefer areas of a high wormwood cover (Artemisia spp.) and high plant species richness, which are moderately grazed, preferably by cattle, with only rare fire occurrence. High squirrel densities were also related to the availability of nitrogen-rich plants of high nutritional value for herbivores. Main Conclusions: Yellow ground squirrels seem to reach their density optima by balancing trade-offs between optimal foraging in areas of short, nutrient-rich vegetation and a good visibility of approaching predators. Post-Soviet changes in grazing pressure, resulting in higher fire recurrence rates due to grass encroachment and litter accumulation (i.e. fuel for wildfire), have likely affected the abundance of burrowing mammals and associated biodiversity across huge parts of the Eurasian steppes and semideserts.
burrowing mammal , grassland , habitat models , Kazakhstan , land-use change , livestock grazing , wildfire
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Institute of Landscape Ecology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), Astana, Kazakhstan
Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, Bonn, Germany
Karaganda State University named of E.A. Buketov, Karaganda, Kazakhstan
Department of Conservation Biology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
Institute of Landscape Ecology
Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK)
Federal Agency for Nature Conservation
Karaganda State University named of E.A. Buketov
Department of Conservation Biology
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