Modeling the Effects of Fire Severity and Spatial Complexity on Small Mammals in Yosemite National Park, California

Fire Ecology

Table 1 Vegetation and fire severity patch characteristics at 10 small mammal trapping areas in Yosemite National Park, California.

Site number	Canopy cover (%)^a	Shrub cover (%)^a	Oak tree cover (%)^a	Fire severity index^b	Total severity patch perimeter (m)^c	Severity patch squareness index^d	Distance to nearest unburned edge (m)
1	80	26	0.3	1.41	30 660	0.84	228.5
2	65	6	9.3	1.68	26 220	0.81	173.3
3	57	0	1.8	1.76	29 580	0.81	228.3
4	79	3	1.8	2.07	21 360	0.72	876.0
5	79	2	0.0	2.10	18 240	0.67	917.4
6	52	0	4.1	2.20	20 820	0.77	302.6
7	76	2	0.0	2.73	22 260	0.75	4436.2
8	47	7	3.7	2.97	15 600	0.48	729.5
9	50	6	0.0	3.13	23 400	0.76	683.6
10	36	7	3.6	3.46	16 380	0.61	571.2

^a Vegetation characteristics ocularly estimated using aerial photographs and stereoscope; canopy cover refers to total cover of all tree species.
^b Fire severity index = amount of area within the boundary of a fire × that area’s estimated fire severity code (Miller and Thode 2007), where each polygon was assigned one of the following: 1 = unchanged, 2 = low severity, 3 = moderate severity, and 4 = high severity.
^c Total severity patch perimeter = sum of the perimeter of all of the fire severity polygons within the trapping area.
^d Patch squareness is an index representing how square the patches are for a trapping area, 0 = square, 1 = least square-like.