Project Results

About This Project

We are interested in learning about the ways in which the fall 2017 wildfires in Napa and Sonoma counties have reshaped plant-pollinator relationships in oak woodlands. Knowing more about the effects of intense wildfires and understanding the pre- and post-fire plant-pollinator networks will assist in appropriate restoration of plant communities and guide future fire management to positively impact wild bees.

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What is the context of this research?

Bees pollinate nearly 85% of flowering plants and 67% of agricultural crops, provide essential ecosystem services in most biomes, and have an estimated global economic value of over 150 billion USD. Many of the over 1,500 bee species in California are severely declining in population size and range, driven in large part by anthropogenic landscape change.

The combination of climate change and long-term fire suppression have led to fire regimes marked by large, high intensity burns. In the fall of 2017 Napa and Sonoma Counties in Northern California experienced unusually large and severe wildfires. In the early 2000s the LeBuhn Lab sampled bee and plant communities at sites located in oak woodlands in both Sonoma and Napa Valleys, about half of which burned in the fall wildfires.

What is the significance of this project?

With wildfires becoming increasingly common in areas where fires have historically been suppressed, understanding the impacts of fire on ecosystems and ecosystem services is incredibly important. Bees are a keystone species in nearly every biome on earth and are impacted by fire both directly and indirectly through the complex relationships between resource availability and pollinators. Understanding how fire changes bee and plant communities, and whether these changes help to make the communities more resilient, will provide the scientific foundation on which future fire management and restoration decisions can be based.

What are the goals of the project?

Through this project we hope to expand a multi year data set tracking how plant-pollinator networks change following wildfires and to understand what makes a network resilient. We will hand net bees and record plant associations at 9 sites distributed throughout the Napa and Sonoma valleys. 4 of these sites burned in the Fall 2017 wildfires and 5 sites did not burn. We will share our findings with landowners and managers in the region through local outreach and with the global scientific community through publication in a scientific journal. We would like our research to add to what is currently known about how disturbance impacts plant-pollinator communities and to inform pollinator conservation.