Defining vegetation age class distributions for multispecies conservation in fire-prone landscapes

Abstract

The generation of heterogeneous fire mosaics is commonly advocated as a strategy for biodiversity conservation in flammable ecosystems, but it is usually unclear how mosaic properties link to biodiversity outcomes. Here we define a formal relationship between these elements and outline a method for determining the composition of fire mosaics defined by vegetation age classes that maximise species diversity. The method involves 1. quantifying species abundance in each of several previously defined vegetation age classes, and 2. using optimisation to determine the age class distribution that maximises species diversity. We applied the method to 135 species from four taxa in a southeastern Aust..