Events
Online Grazing Management Courses
Access short course. This open-access short course provides fundamental information on rangeland ecology and management. It is hosted by the University of California Rangelands Research & Education Archive and is of interest to staff in government agencies and NGOs who manage local, state, and federal lands—including open space districts, county parks, water districts—and those who…
Ecophysiology (UI Course, REM 560)
Course Description: Functional responses and adaptations of individual species to their environment, emphasizing the physiological mechanisms that influence the interactions between organisms and the major environmental factors (e.g., solar radiation, energy balance, temperature, water and nutrients, climate), and how this affects the interactions among species and their growth and survival (e.g., competition, herbivory, and allelopathy).…
Using weed-suppressive bacteria to control invasive annuals
View webinar recording. Cheatgrass and medusahead invasions pose a serious threat to Great Basin ecosystems. Managers and scientists are hopeful that strains of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens will be able to selectively inhibit root growth of annual weeds in more complex rangeland ecosystems. These weed-suppressive bacteria (WSB) are now commercially available in many states and…
Explained in 90 seconds: How climate change fuels wildfires
90 second video. In this video, Matthew Hurteau — assistant professor of forest resources at Penn State University — explains how warming temperatures, prolonged drought, and a century’s worth of fire suppression policy are “priming the system to make it more flammable.”
Implementing the National Seed Strategy: National, regional, and local perspectives
View webinar recording. Three speakers from three different federal agencies discuss implementation opportunities and challenges from a national, regional and local perspective. Examples will relate to strategy goals (producing and providing needed seed, conducting research, expanding tools for land managers and communications).
Effects of grazing on sage-grouse and other shrub-steppe birds: A collaborative project to inform management of sage-steppe rangelands
View webinar recording. Greater sage-grouse have declined since the mid-1960s, and grazing is the most extensive land use within sage-grouse habitat. The webinar presents progress on a 10-year project designed to document the effects of cattle grazing on: 1) demographic traits of greater sage-grouse; 2) sage-grouse habitat characteristics, 3) insect abundance (important prey for sage-grouse…
Biophysical settings review in the Great Basin: What it is? How it works? Why it matters?
Webinar brief Webinar recording This webinar, led by LANDFIRE Fire Ecologist Kori Blankenship, provides an introduction to LANDFIRE BpS models and invites your participation in the current BpS review opportunities. Intermountain Basin Big Sagebrush Shrubland and Intermountain Basin Big Sagebrush Steppe ecosystems cover over 90 million acres in the western U.S. and provide critical habitat…
Recovery and adaptation after wildfire
View webinar recording. Becoming a fire-adapted community that can live with wildfire is envisioned as a continuous, iterative process of adaptation. Miranda Mockrin, a research scientist with the Forest Service combined national and case study research to examine how experience with wildfire alters the built environment and community- and government-level wildfire mitigation, planning, and regulations.…
Modeling dynamic fuels with an index system: MoD-FIS in the Great Basin and southwestern US
Webinar recording The LANDFIRE Program strives to produce consistent fire behavior fuel model grids for the U.S. These models are relevant for predicting fire behavior, including spread and intensity, during average conditions; however, they often fall short during drought or seasonably dry conditions. To address the need for that information, LANDFIRE developed a seasonal product…
Relations among cheatgrass-driven fire, climate and sensitive-status birds across the Great Basin
View webinar recording.This webinar highlights a project examining how projected changes in fire regimes and fire and fuels treatments may affect habitat quality for and probability of occupancy of sensitive-status breeding birds. Statistical change-point analyses will be used to detect any abrupt, nonlinear temporal changes-thresholds-in projected vegetation cover, habitat quality, and occupancy. Detection of ecological…