Fact Sheet / Brief

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Don’t bust the biological crust: Preserving and restoring an important desert resource

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This bulletin summarizes recent research on biological soil crusts, which are a complex of microscopic organisms growing on the soil surface in many arid and semi-arid ecosystems. These crusts perform the important role of stabilizing soil and reducing or eliminating water and wind erosion. One of the largest threats to biological soil crusts in the arid and semi-arid areas of the western United States is mechanical disturbance from vehicle traffic and grazing. The spread of the annual invasive cheatgrass has increased the fuel load in areas that previously would not carry a fire, posing a potentially widespread and new threat to this resource.

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Nine tips for communicating science to people who are not scientists

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Based on nearly 25 years of experience at NASA, the University of Georgia, and The Weather Channel, Marshall Shepherd offers nine tips for communicating science to non-scientists.

  1. Know your audience
  2. Don’t use jargon
  3. Get to the point
  4. Use analogies and metaphors
  5. Give 3 key points
  6. You are the expert
  7. Use social media
  8. Take your message beyond the journals
  9. Relate to your audience
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Commonly referenced wildland fire initiatives, programs, and networks

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Numerous agencies, organizations, and collaboratives conduct activities related to wildland fire. Understanding all of their different roles and objectives can be confusing. This fact sheet provides brief descriptions of some of the most common wildland fire initiatives, programs, networks, and other efforts taking place around the country.

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Landscape-level prescriptions: A new foundation for restoration planning

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This brief was developed to help guide collaborative landscape planning efforts, through use of a framework of seven core principles and their implications for management of fire-prone interior forest landscapes.

Key findings included:

  • Historically, forests were spatially heterogeneous at multiple scales as a result of interactions among succession, disturbance, and other processes.
  • Planning and management are needed at fine to broad scales to restore the key characteristics of resilience.
  • Landscapes must be viewed as socio-ecological systems that provide services to people within the limited capacities of ecosystems.
  • Development of landscape-level prescriptions is the foundation of restoration planning.
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Restoring desert biocrusts after severe disturbances

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This research brief reports that applying salvaged biocrust material to severely disturbed soil rapidly reestablished favorable biocrust characteristics and stabilized soil more than doing nothing. This is likely a useful restoration strategy when unavoidable soil disturbances are planned and there are opportunities to salvage material.

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Synthesizing best-management practices for desert tortoise habitats

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This brief synthesizes best-management practices for reducing non-native grasses while increasing native species and desirable features in desert tortoise habitats.

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Effectiveness and longevity of wildland fire as a fuel treatment

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This research brief is based on several studies that can inform decision making by fire managers. Knowing that fire occurrence, size, and severity are limited by recent wildfires should provide greater flexibility and confidence in managing fire incidents and managing for resource benefit. Specifically, the findings from this study can be used by fire managers to help predict whether a previous fire will act as a fuel treatment based on fire age, forest type, and expected weather.

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Living with fire: How social scientists are helping wildland-urban interface communities reduce wildfire risk

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Key findings highlighted in this brief:

  • Community wildfire protection plans (CWPPs) are an effective way to reduce wildfire risk in the U.S. wildland urban interface (WUI), but most WUI communities have no such plan in place.
  • Community support and involvement are necessary for CWPPs to succeed. WUI communities reflect a wide range of social characteristics, preventing an effective “one-size-fits-all” approach to CWPP creation.
  • Scientists have identified four WUI community archetypes, which can be useful in working with individual communities to create effective CWPPs.
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Fuel breaks to reduce large wildfire impacts in sagebrush ecosystems

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This technical note provides a brief synopsis of proactive, linear fuel breaks as a tool for reducing negative impacts associated with large-scale wildfire in sagebrush ecosystems. The note summarizes what fuel breaks are designed to do, features of effective fuel breaks, specifications of common fuel break designs, and maintenance and management considerations based on a compilation of existing publications and practical lessons learned from past greenstrip and plant materials trials in the Great Basin. The purpose is primarily to provide practitioners with sufficient information to begin cooperative landscape planning efforts.

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Scanning the future of wildfire: Resilience ahead…whether we like it or not?

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A recent research project brought together futures researchers and wildfire specialists to envision what the future holds for wildfire impacts and how the wildfire community may respond to the complex suite of emerging challenges. The consensus of the project’s foresight panel suggests that an era of resilience is ahead: but that this resilience may come either with a very high cost (after some kind of collapse), in a more systematic way (that is, if the wildfire community plans for, and fosters, resilience), or something in between. In any projected future scenario, the panel suggests that the end of the fire suppression paradigm is imminent and that a new paradigm—one that fosters natural resilience of the system, along with natural wildfire—is arising. A central question emerges from this work: How will the wildfire community respond to this tipping point?

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