Fire frequency effects on plant community characteristics in the Great Basin and Mojave Deserts

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Wildfire regimes are changing dramatically across North American deserts with the spread of invasive grasses. Invasive grass fire cycles in historically fire-resistant deserts are resulting in larger and more frequent wildfire. This study experimentally compared how single and repeat fires influence invasive grass-dominated plant fuels in the Great Basin, a semi-arid, cold desert, and the Mojave, a hyper-arid desert. Both study sites had identical study designs. In the summer of 2011, we experimentally burned half of each experimental block, the other half remaining as an unburned control. Half of the burned plots were reburned 5 years later to simulate increasing burn frequency. We estimated non-woody plant biomass, cover, and density in plots from 2017 to 2020.