The goal of this project was to understand how plant communities respond to the combined and individual effects of a press (i.e., urbanization) and pulse (i.e., fire) disturbance event following the Chimney Tops 2 Fire of 2016 in the wildland-urban interface of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Particularly, we were investigating native plant communities across a fire gradient (from low to high intensity), in both exurban (Gatlinburg) and natural (GSMNP) conditions. We examined the following questions:

 

1. Will diversity, abundance, richness, and plant compositional differences be reduced by the combined effect of wildfire and urbanization?

2. Will the individual pulse effect of fire severity contribute more strongly to community homogenization than the press effect of urbanization?

3. Through time, will species turnover be lowest as the disturbance gradient increases (i.e., high fire severity and exurban location)?

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This study will provide a comprehensive analysis of effects of fire intensity on understory plant assemblages. In addition, this study will be one of the few to investigate the effects that both anthropogenic and fire disturbances have on native plant communities in GSMNP. The results from this study will improve our understanding of impacts of fire disturbance on vegetation in areas where fire suppression has caused accumulation of a high amount of fire fuel over the last several decades. Knowledge of these effects can help us predict plant species composition at sites that are influenced by pulse and press disturbance events.

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Biology education- variation in biology and non-biology majors attitudes toward anthropogenic disturbances​

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The purpose of this study is to understand differences in biology major and non-biology major attitudes toward wildfire and urbanization and their intention to act on global change issues. Attitude in this study is defined as “positive or negative feelings and predispositions” to wildfire and urbanization. Education and outreach initiatives have been set in place for large human disturbances, such as climate change, but impacts related to other disturbances (specifically wildfire and urbanization) have been overlooked. We aim to answer the following questions:

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1. Does major (biology or non-biology) influence attitude(s) toward wildfire and urbanization?

2. Does method of intervention (fact-based or emotion-based) impact students’ attitudes toward wildfire and urbanization?

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An understanding of the students’ attitudes toward these events will lead to more effective education efforts that in turn lead to acceptance of the practices used to mitigate such disturbances.

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