Staeben, J.C.  2003.  The Effects of Fire and Fire Surrogate Forest Management Practices on Coleopterans in the Clemson Experimental Forest.  M.S. Thesis.  Clemson University, Clemson, SC, 90 pages.

While forest managers recognize the need for fuel reduction and forest restoration, little is known about the impact of treatments on the ecology of invertebrate organisms that inhabit the forest.

In this study ground active beetles were collected before and after management treatments.  These beetles belong to the order coleoptera, which includes diverse soil-inhabiting organisms that occur in a wide range of habitats.

• Prescribed burning, mechanical thinning, and prescribed burning and thinning combined were found to have little impact on beetle communities.
• Treatment, time, and time/treatment interactions were found to not significantly impact the presence or absence of any beetle family or species in a treatment.
• While treatments had little impact on beetle communities as a whole, collection period, treatment and time-treatment interactions did affect individual family, genus, and species studied.