Aim Climate‐driven fire increases could be modified by fire‐fuel feedback, as recent fires reduce burnable fuels for future fires. Knowing the effects of fire‐fuel feedback is essential for more accurate projection of fire activity, which, however, has often been overlooked due to the challenge in its quantification. This study aims to project future fire activity under the changing climates with consideration for fire‐fuel fe...

Generalist predator populations often surge during resource pulses but decline sharply afterwards and shift to alternative prey sources, which experience elevated predation rates. Understanding these numerical and functional responses of predators to resource pulses is especially important for effectively managing island ecosystems, where invasive mammals are generalist predators and vulnerable indigenous birds are alternative...

Urbanisation dramatically alters ecosystems, disrupting key processes and threatening species persistence. Despite growing knowledge of the impacts of cities on wildlife, particularly for birds and mammals, there remains a paucity of research on how urbanisation impacts other taxa, including reptiles. We examined how urbanisation affects skink communities across multiple New Zealand cities by undertaking pitfall trapping surve...

Understanding marginal habitat use by invasive species is important for predicting how distributions may change under future climates. We investigated the influence of food availability and temperature on ship rat ( Rattus rattus ) distribution and density across a forested elevational gradient in New Zealand by measuring ship rat demographics following a beech (Nothofagaceae) mass seeding event (‘mast’) at three elevation ban...

Global climate change could alter the range, abundance, and interactions of species, potentially favouring invasive species and harming endemics. Ship rats ( Rattus rattus ) are one of the world's worst invasive predators but are typically absent from Aotearoa New Zealand's native Fuscospora cliffortioides (mountain beech) forest above 1000 m. Stoats ( Mustela erminea ) are another damaging invasive predator in Aotearoa New Ze...

Purpose of Review Society is concerned about the long-term condition of the forests. Although a clear definition of forest health is still missing, to evaluate forest health, monitoring efforts in the past 40 years have concentrated on the assessment of tree vitality, trying to estimate tree photosynthesis rates and productivity. Used in monitoring forest decline in Central Europe since the 1980s, crown foliage transparency ha...

Islands are epicenters of animal extinctions and population declines. These losses exacerbate biodiversity loss and disrupt ecological services in areas of high endemism. Island defaunation is primarily driven by invasive mammalian predators, and mammal eradications are reversing population declines for some island species. Invasive mammal eradications may also have the capacity to restore ecological interactions, along with t...

Research assessing changes of the main attributes describing forested landscapes often supply contradictory findings when viewed within an unchanging socioeconomic framework (i.e., unchanging forest management policies and no human population increase). Some studies suggest forest decline, others no change, and others expansion. We used ground-measured forest inventory data from Romania to examine the evolution of the forested...

The incidence and severity of forest fires are linked to the interaction between climate, fuel and topography. Increased warming and drying in the future is expected to have a significant impact on the risk of forest fire occurrence. An increase in fire risk is linked to the synchronous relationship between climate and fuel moisture conditions. A warmer, drier climate will lead to drier forest fuels that will in turn increase...