Zoology - Theses

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The role of fire in the distribution and persistence of the great desert skink, Liopholis kintorei, under climate change

CADENHEAD, NATASHA ( 2013)

Fire regimes are predicted to change under climate change, with associated impacts on species and ecosystems. However, the magnitude and direction of regime changes are uncertain, as are species’ responses to those changes. For many species, how they respond will determine their medium-long-term viability. We propagate fire regime and species’ response uncertainties through a 50-year viability analysis of the great desert skink in Newhaven Sanctuary, central Australia. We characterise fire change with three scenarios. Species’ response uncertainty was characterised as three competing models based on fire and habitat variables fitted to 11 years of occupancy data. We evaluate fire management options for conserving the species, based on their robustness to uncertainty about fire and species’ response. Efforts to minimise the frequency and size of fires provides the most consistent improvements to species’ persistence. We show that disentangling important from unimportant uncertainties enables conservation managers to make more efficient, defensible decisions.