Wildfires have important effects on wildlife habitat. Within fire perimeters, ‘fire refugia’ are unburned or less severely burned areas that contain residual pre-fire habitat structures and facilitate species persistence following fire. However, fire refugia may vary in their relative quality. The ability to evaluate the relative quality of fire refugia for wildlife habitat may help efficiently allocate resources for post-fire conservation planning, especially for at-risk species. Using spatial overlays of habitat models and burn severity data, we developed the refugia index, a flexible multi-scale, multi-criteria fuzzy logic model to assess the value of unburned areas for wildlife habitat affected by wildfires and other disturbances. We conducted a case study of the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) and applied our method to 4278 unburned areas in 15 fires that each burned > 400 ha of spotted owl nesting/roosting habitat in the eastern Cascade Mountains, U.S.A. In our study area, unburned areas represented ~ 1.7% of the area within the fire perimeters. Most fire refugia were low quality, because unburned areas were small relative to the desired nest patch size of spotted owls and contained little suitable nesting/roosting habitat. However, each fire contained a few high-quality fire refugia, because they co-occurred with suitable nesting/roosting habitat and were surrounded by desirable habitat characteristics for spotted owls. Our method illustrates how land managers can use readily available spatial data and analysis tools to understand fire effects on species’ habitat (e.g., habitat lost) and prioritize areas for post-fire conservation and management.

野火对野生生物栖息地具有重要影响。在火灾范围内，“火灾避难所”是未燃烧或较不严重燃烧的区域，其中包含残留的火灾前栖息地结构，并有助于火灾后物种的持久性。但是，防火避难所的相对质量可能有所不同。评估野生动植物栖息地相对避难所相对质量的能力可能有助于有效地分配资源用于防火后的规划，尤其是对濒危物种。利用栖息地模型的空间覆盖和烧伤严重性数据，我们开发了refugia指数，这是一种灵活的多尺度，多准则模糊逻辑模型，用于评估因野火和其他干扰影响的野生生物栖息地的未烧毁区域的价值。我们对北部斑点猫头鹰（Strix occidentalis caurina）进行了案例研究）并将我们的方法应用于15次大火中的4278个未燃烧区域，这些大火燃烧了美国喀斯喀特山脉东部超过400公顷的斑点猫头鹰筑巢/栖息地。在我们的研究区域中，未燃烧区域约占火灾范围内面积的1.7％ 。大部分火鸡的质量较差，因为未烧面积相对于斑点猫头鹰所需的巢斑面积较小，并且几乎没有合适的筑巢/栖息地。但是，每场火灾都包含一些高质量的火灾避难所，因为它们与合适的筑巢/栖息地共生，并且被斑点猫头鹰的理想栖息地特征所包围。我们的方法说明了土地管理者如何使用现成的空间数据和分析工具来了解火灾对物种栖息地的影响（例如，