Assessing the response of beetle community to the management of a Mediterranean burned forest

Abstract

In the last years, the practice of removing all the deadwood after wildfire and use it with energetic purposes has increased. With the objective to evaluate and decrease the impacts of these practices upon biodiversity, from the University of Girona the project Anifog has been created, conducted by the Pecat research team, where a Handbook of Good Management Practices in burned forests has been done to guide managers and forest workers. In my Final Grade Work has been evaluated how two different management practices following the handbook recommendations affect the diversity of saproxylic beetles. The first management consists on logging dead trees or those damaged by the wildfire leaving part of the wood on-site (Sustainable logging), and the second one consists on leaving the forest unaltered after the fire (Non-intervention). Saproxylic beetles have an important ecological role in the recycling of nutrients found in deadwood and, therefore, are important for the recovering of the ecosystem after a wildfire. Furthermore, they are used in our study as bioindicators of the deadwood and its associated biodiversity