The relationships between ecosystem productivity and disturbance and their interactive (and isolated) effects on biodiversity are a major focus of the Safford lab. We have worked for years in vegetation of ultramafic (“serpentine”) soils, using them as a model system to study how productivity gradients influence disturbance effects on species. Field studies include grazing effects on plant diversity (Safford and Harrison 2001, Harrison et al. 2003) and fire effects on diversity and ecosystem structure (Safford and Harrison 2004; DeSiervo et al. 2015). Safford and Mallek (2010) reviewed the research on this general subject, and Safford et al. (2005) and Safford and Miller (2020) summarized what we know about the flora endemic to serpentine substrates in California.
We are also heavily involved in studies of forest management effects on plant diversity, including the effects of forest thinning and prescribed fire (Stevens et al. 2014, 2015; Winford et al. 2015), and the effects of postfire management (Bohlman et al. 2016; Shive et al. 2017). More recently, we are studying the effects of fire severity and environmental covariates on plant diversity (DeSiervo et al. 2015, Stevens et al. 2015; Richter et al. 2019, Miller and Safford 2020, Jonah Weeks, study in progress; Emily Brodie, study in progress). Jesse Miller recently led a study evaluating the effects of fire severity on the lichen community of yellow pine and mixed conifer forests in the Sierra Nevada (Miller et al. 2018). Jesse led a review paper summarizing the published patterns in fire effects on plant diversity across the western US (Miller and Safford 2020), and Jesse is also leading an analysis of the relative influence of local fire severity and pyrodiversity (landscape-scale heterogeneity in fire severity) on post-fire plant diversity in several Sierra Nevada fires. Using fires in the Sierra Nevada, Zack Steel partnered with Point Blue Conservation Science to study the effects of fire severity on bird and bat diversity (Steel et al. 2019).
The Safford lab has collaborated with partners to use historical forest inventory data to test the ability of species distribution models to accurately predict future conditions for hundreds of California species, and we have explicitly explored the role of fire in driving model results and actual species responses (Dobrowski et al. 2011, Crimmins et al. 2014). We have investigated the possible future impacts of climate change and fire on the distribution of sensitive, management indicator species in California (Lawler et al. 2012). We have also compared model projections with actual trends in high elevation forests (Dolanc et al. 2013a), and we have developed models of growth-climate relationships in high elevation species that can be used as a basis for future projections (Dolanc et al. 2013b).