Research and Publications
View report.
The initial report includes actions to be implemented by Interior’s bureaus to immediately address the threat of rangeland fire to Western sagebrush-steppe landscapes and improve fire management efforts before the start of the 2015 wildfire season.
View research brief.
This research brief summarizes research that found seed harvester ants, along with small mammals, could have a large impact on reseeding
efforts after a fire. But the populations over time are not well known. The number of ants in burned areas is significantly greater than unburned areas, but this may be an initial, short-lived response.
View paper.
This paper highlights greater sage-grouse egg depredation observations obtained opportunistically from three common raven nests located in Idaho and Nevada where depredated greater sage-grouse eggs were found at or in the immediate vicinity of the nest site, including the caching of eggs in nearby rock crevices. Nests were opportunistically monitored by counting and removing depredated eggs and shell fragments from the nest sites during each visit to determine the extent to which the common raven pairs preyed on greater sage-grouse eggs. These observations may represent the first evidence that breeding, territorial pairs of common ravens cache greater sage-grouse eggs and are capable of depredating multiple greater sage-grouse nests.
View report.
This report outlines national and regional prescribed fire activity, state prescribed fire programs, and identifies impediments limiting the use of prescribed fire. The results include all federal, state, and private prescribed fire acres for forestry, rangeland, and agricultural burning that occurred in 2014.
View article.
This study evaluated how divergence from historic (pre-Euroamerican settlement) fire frequencies due to a century of fire suppression influences rates of high-severity fire in five forest types in California. With some variation, results suggest that fires in forest types characterized by fuel-limited fire regimes (e.g., yellow pine and mixed conifer forest) tend to burn with greater proportions of high-severity fire as either time since last fire or the mean modern fire return interval (FRI) increases.
View the Order.
This Order sets forth enhanced policies and strategies for preventing and
suppressing rangeland fire and for restoring sagebrush landscapes impacted by fire across the West. These actions are essential for conserving habitat for the greater sage-grouse as well as other
wildlife species and economic activity, such as ranching and recreation, associated with the sagebrush-steppe ecosystem in the Great Basin region.
View press release.
This press release highlights the issuance of Secretarial Order 3336 calling for a comprehensive science-based strategy to address the more frequent and intense wildfires that are damaging vital sagebrush landscapes and productive rangelands, particularly in the Great Basin region of Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Oregon and California.
View report.
This report provides a GIS protocol for identifying strategic locations for fuel breaks to protect remaining large patches of habitat. It was prepared by The Nature Conservancy for the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA).
Geodatabase that accompanies the report –
File 1 (682MB)
File 2 (84.5MB)
View article.
In this news article, work by Ann Kennedy, scientist at Washington State, Susan Meyer, USFS research ecologist, and others is highlighted. Their work includes sorting through some 20,000 strains of naturally occurring soil bacteria to discover two that single out cheatgrass.
View abstracts.
These abstracts of recent papers on rangeland management in the West were prepared by Charlie Clements, Rangeland Scientist, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Reno, NV.