Synthesis / Tech Report
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While news headlines were quick to capture the “cost” of firefighting, suppression represents only a fraction of the true cost of wildfire. There are huge impacts to air quality and health, school athletics, travel and tourism, employment and the economy, transportation, and iconic Oregon economic sectors such as the state’s wine and timber industries. No single state agency is charged with documenting these costs, so the Oregon Forest Resources Institute set out to gather what information is currently available, from media reports, individual interviews and hard-nosed research.
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Adaptation strategies for rangeland vegetation focus on increasing resilience of rangeland ecosystems, primarily through non-native species control and prevention. Ecologically based non-native plant management focuses on strategies to repair damaged ecological processes that facilitate invasion, and seeding of desired natives can be done where seed availability and dispersal of natives are low. Proactive management to prevent establishment of non-native species is also critical (early detection-rapid response), including tactics such as weed-free policies, education of employees and the public, and collaboration among multiple agencies to control weeds. Livestock grazing can also be managed through the development of site-specific indicators that inform livestock movement guides and allow for maintenance and enhancement of plant health.
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This report is intended to provide an initial assessment of both the potential effectiveness of fuel breaks and their ecological costs and benefits. To provide this assessment, the report examined prior studies on fuel breaks and other scientific evidence to address three crucial questions:
- How effective are fuel breaks in reducing or slowing the spread of wildfire in arid and semi-arid shrubland ecosystems?
- How do fuel breaks affect sagebrush plant communities?
- What are the effects of fuel breaks on the greater sage-grouse, other sagebrush obligates, and sagebrush-associated wildlife species?
It also provides an overview of recent federal policies and management directives aimed at protecting remaining sagebrush and greater sage-grouse habitat; describe the fuel conditions, fire behavior, and fire trends in the Great Basin; and suggest how scientific inquiry and management actions can improve our understanding of fuel breaks and their effects in sagebrush landscapes.
In October 2017, after a review of the 2015 Federal plans relative to State sage-grouse plans, in accordance with Secretarial Order 3353, the BLM issued a notice of intent to consider whether to amend some, all, or none of the 2015 land use plans. At that time, the BLM requested the USGS to inform this effort through the development of an annotated bibliography of sage-grouse science published since January 2015 and a report that synthesized and outlined the potential management implications of this new science. Development of the annotated bibliography resulted in the identification and summarization of 169 peer-reviewed scientific publications and reports. The USGS then convened an interagency team (hereafter referred to as the “team”) to develop this report that focuses on the primary topics of importance to the ongoing management of sage-grouse and their habitats.
The team developed this report in a three-step process. First, the team identified six primary topic areas for discussion based on the members’ collective knowledge regarding sage-grouse, their habitats, and threats to either or both. Second, the team reviewed all the material in the Annotated Bibliography of Scientific Research on Greater Sage-Grouse Published since January 2015 to identify the science that addressed the topics. Third, team members discussed the science related to each topic, evaluated the consistency of the science with existing knowledge before 2015, and summarized the potential management implications of this science. The six primary topics identified by the team were:
- Multiscale habitat suitability and mapping tools
- Discrete anthropogenic activities
- Diffuse activities
- Fire and invasive species
- Restoration effectiveness
- Population estimation and genetics
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This study evaluated spatio-temporal patterns of fire in piñon and juniper land cover types from the National Gap Analysis Program using Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS 2016) data (1984 through 2013) for Northern and Southern Intermountain and Central and Southern Rocky Mountain geographic regions. It also examined differences in total area burned, fire rotation, fire size, fire number, and fire season among: 1) the four geographic regions; 2) the EPA level III ecoregions that occur within each geographic region; and 3) the piñon and juniper land cover types (woodlands, savannas, and shrublands) and other land cover types that occur within each geographic region and level III ecoregion. We found that area burned during the 30-year period, number of fires each year, and fire size followed a strong geographic pattern: Northern Intermountain > Southern Intermountain > Southern Rocky Mountain > Central Rocky Mountain. Area burned within piñon and juniper land cover types increased significantly during the 30-year period across the study area overall and for each geographic region, except the Southern Intermountain.
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Spatial wildfire suppression costs regressions have been re-estimated at a more disaggregated level for the nine Geographic Area Coordination Center (GACC’s) regions using five years of data for fires involving National Forests. Results of these revised regression determined that only in the California GACCs did mechanical fuel treatment reduce wildfire suppression costs. However, the results of our second major hypothesis tests that fuel treatments, by making wildfires less damaging and easier to control, may reduce property damages (i.e., structures—barns, out buildings, etc. and residences lost) seems to be confirmed for acres treated with prescribed burning. In four out of the seven GACC regions prescribed burning lowered the number of structures damaged by wildfire. The results for mechanical fuel treatment were more mixed, with a significant negative effect in reducing property damages in two of the three regions with a significant coefficient on mechanical fuel treatment. These results are consistent with past research that suggests that for fuel treatments to reduce wildfire suppression costs it may be necessary to substantially increase the amount of area treated.
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We examined the effect of livestock grazing and previous wildfire events on fuel load in southeastern Idaho as part of a wildfire risk-livestock interaction study. Fuel load was estimated using ordinal fuel load classes at 128 sample sites stratified by current livestock grazing and documented wildfire occurrence (1939-2000). Fifty-nine percent of previous wildfire sites had a documented fire within the past 2 years. Livestock grazing was the most effective means to reduce fuel load compared to recent wildfire and livestock grazing with previous wildfire. Livestock grazing provides a viable management tool for fuel load reduction prescriptions that avoids the negative effect of extreme fire intensity where fuel load is high.
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Much of the Murphy Wildland Fire Complex burned under extreme fuel and weather conditions that likely overshadowed livestock grazing as a factor influencing fire extent and fuel consumption in many areas where these fires burned. Differences and abrupt contrast lines in the level of fuels consumed were affected mostly by the plant communities that existed on a site before fire. A few abrupt contrasts in burn severity coincided with apparent differences in grazing patterns of livestock, observed as fence-line contrasts. Fire modeling revealed that grazing in grassland vegetation can reduce surface rate of spread and fire-line intensity to a greater extent than in shrubland types. Under extreme fire conditions (low fuel moisture, high temperatures, and gusty winds), grazing applied at moderate utilization levels has limited or negligible effects on fire behavior. However, when weather and fuel-moisture conditions are less extreme, grazing may reduce the rate of spread and intensity of fires allowing for patchy burns with low levels of fuel consumption.
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Targeted livestock grazing must be carefully implemented and monitored to meet fuels management objectives on an annual and long-term basis. Grazing to reduce fuels on a landscape must be both strategic and surgical. Surgical means that targeted livestock grazing will be done to the level and limited to the minimum area needed to meet fuel and landscape or project management objectives within BLM’s regulatory framework. Therefore, sound project planning is essential.
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Herbivory and fire are natural interacting forces contributing to the maintenance of rangeland ecosystems. Wildfires in the sagebrush dominated ecosystems of the Great Basin are becoming larger and more frequent, and may dramatically alter plant communities and habitat. This synthesis describes what is currently known about the cumulative impacts of historic livestock grazing patterns and short-term effects of livestock grazing on fuels and fire in sagebrush ecosystems. Over years and decades grazing can alter fuel characteristics of ecosystems. On a yearly basis, grazing can reduce
the amount and alter the continuity of fine fuels, potentially changing wildlife fire spread and intensity. However, how grazing-induced fuel alterations affect wildland fire depends on weather conditions and plant community characteristics. As weather conditions become extreme, the influence of grazing on fire behavior is limited, especially in communities dominated by woody plants.