Webinar
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In this webinar, Dr. Kimberley Davis examined the effects of climate on post-fire conifer regeneration and subsequent seedling and tree growth. She and her colleagues focused on lower elevation ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir forests to identify the climate conditions that are necessary for these species to regenerate and grow following fire. Their study found that changing climate conditions are making it increasingly difficult for tree seedlings to regenerate after fire, suggesting that fires may cause conversions to non-forest vegetation in the hottest and driest areas. Dr. Davis also discussed how disturbances that reduce canopy cover, such as wildfire, may alter microclimate conditions.
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This presentation will focus on findings from JFSP-supported graduate research on post-fire conifer establishment following recent wildfires in eastern Oregon’s Blue Mountains. Given shifting climate and wildfire regimes, managers and researchers seek information on forest resilience and recovery trajectories. Understanding establishment and growth rates post-fire is pertinent both to fuels management planning, in cases of overabundant regeneration, as well as to decisions surrounding replanting for sites with limited post-fire regeneration. The presentation will summarize current knowledge on the relative influence of site-level versus climatic factors affecting regeneration in western North America, and present data from the Blue Mountains ecoregion.
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Whitebark pine is an iconic, five-needle, high-elevation pine whose existence is threatened by an exotic rust, mountain pine beetles, fire suppression, and climate change. Its distribution is limited to western North America and populations have declined 90% in recent decades. Whitebark pine is shade intolerant and depends on wildfire to reset the “successional clock”. Regeneration occurs mainly through germination of un-retrieved seeds planted by Clark’s Nutcrackers on burns following wildfires, however natural regeneration does not always follow wildfires or prescribed burning. Thousands of nursery seedlings are being planted across the landscape to compensate for losses, however survival rates are often low. This webinar will examine the potential use of native ectomycorrhizal fungi to improve seedling survival by describing the methods and results of greenhouse and field studies from Montana.
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The increasing frequency and severity of fire and drought events have negatively impacted the capacity and success of reforestation efforts in many dry, western forests. Challenges to reforestation include the size, cost, and safety concerns of replanting large areas with standing dead trees, and high seedling and sapling mortality rates due to water stress, competing vegetation, and repeat fires that burn young stands. Resources for management are increasingly limited, reducing the capacity for young plantations to develop early resilience to fire, drought, and bark beetle stress. This talk summarizes recent research on the conditions under which current standard reforestation practices are no longer tenable, and provides suggestions on how these practices might be modified to improve their success.
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Join the webinar that walks through processes to register for a Conservation Efforts Database User Profile and how we enter information using the ‘single-record’ entry option. Lastly, we’ll touch on the role of ‘approving officials’, how to select them within your agency or organization, and the associated responsibilities.
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In this webinar, the Conservation Efforts Database Team guides you through the process to populate the Batch Upload Template with information from existing databases/datasets. We’ll also discuss ‘Approving Officials’, their role, and how to select one for your agency or organization.
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Restoration of severely burned forest lands is limited in the southwestern US primarily due to a lack of research and resources. For those areas that have been reforested, there has been little success with an average of only 20% survival of planted seedlings. Major limitations to the establishment of tree seedlings are exposure to harsh abiotic factors, poor soil conditions such as reduced water holding capacities and fertility, animal damage, and competing vegetation, all of which limit basic physiological and growth processes in plants. However, there are different approaches, both in forest tree nursery production and during active reforestation planting operations, that could remediate one or more of these limitations. Success for any forest planting effort begins with the “Target Plant Concept” (TPC), which is defined as those morphological and physiological attributes of a nursery grown plant that will result in successful establishment and productivity on specific outplanting sites, such as the harsh, dry environments of the Southwest. This concept is the basis for all research conducted at the John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center with New Mexico State University.
Recording of Part I (2/20)
Recording of Part II (2/21)
The SageSuccess Project, a joint USGS, BLM, and USFWS effort, examines the factors contributing to big sagebrush establishment across the range of sage-grouse. In two webinars, USGS researchers will present major findings of studies on restoration, resistance and resilience, soils, population dynamics, and more.
SageSuccess Project findings were presented over two days by 6 presenters.
2/20 –
History, Study Design, and Partnerships of the SageSuccess Project: David Pilliod
The SageSuccess project required considerable planning and partnership building and coordination. Early partner engagement and flexibility were key to our success. This presentation sets the stage for why and how the project formed, what lessons we learned along the way, and where the science may take us next.
Big Picture Considerations for Sagebrush Restoration: Matt Germino
Sagebrush ecosystems, while often perceived as homogenous “seas” of shrubs, exhibit striking variation within and among sites. Heterogeneity exists over time and across space due to weather, climatic, topographic, and edaphic factors. In addition to this variability is remarkable genetic diversity within sagebrush and its associated species. This variability presents challenges and opportunities for sagebrush restoration.
Is Resistance & Resilience a Useful Predictive Tool? Robert Arkle
Ecological resistance and resilience to disturbance and subsequent invasion is becoming a cornerstone of conservation management in the Great Basin. However, whether this theory works in practice is largely untested at broad spatial and temporal scales. R & R theory was evaluated from field data from over 200 post-wildfire rehabilitation sites sampled from 1–35 years post-treatment throughout the Great Basin.
2/21 –
Gradients in Sagebrush Recovery after Fire are Associated with Soil and Biocrust Characteristics: Dave Barnard
The influence of soil properties on the recovery of sagebrush canopy structure after fire is not well documented. In this study, we investigated associations between soil depth, texture, and surface characteristics and the recovery of sagebrush canopy structure. We show that a diversity of associations exists and that soil characteristics such as depth and structure can surpass precipitation in terms explaining post-fire sagebrush responses.
Population Trajectories of Sagebrush after Restoration: Connecting Pattern and Process: Bob Shriver
It’s assumed that in the absence of drought, invasive species, or other disturbance, populations should recover soon after restoration, but there is little data to support this. When we examined the population dynamics of restoration, we found sagebrush populations declined for decades following seeding, even in the absence of environmental change. It took an average of 20 years to see increases in sagebrush cover. Much of this prolonged recovery can be linked to the sagebrush life history.
To Plant or to Seed? A Good Question: Dave Pyke
Sagebrush restoration typically takes two forms: seeding or transplanting. Transplants can bypass some of the roadblocks to establishment that seedings face. However, growth can sometimes be a challenge with transplanted species growing poorer than seeded species. We examine canopy and height growth of seeded and transplanted sagebrush across the Great Basin. Transplants have an early growth advantage in the first three to five years, but seeded plants eventually match the growth of transplants.
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Wildland firefighters are exposed to wood smoke, which contains hazardous air pollutants, during wildland fire management assignments across the U.S. each year. In this webinar, Kathleen Navarro, PhD, presented on a recent Joint Fire Science Program study estimating the lifetime risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease from exposure to particulate matter (PM) from smoke. This analysis combined measured PM exposures on wildfires, estimated wildland firefighter breathing rates, and an exposure disease relationship for PM to estimate mortality of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality from lifetime exposure to PM. In addition, Zone Fuels AFMO, Megan Martinez, reviewed previous smoke research, as well as field-based experiences with successes and challenges of implementing smoke exposure mitigations.
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New fire management paradigms are emerging that recognize fire is inevitable, and in many cases desirable. During this webinar you will be introduced to a new process for spatial fire planning using tools such as Potential Control Line atlases (PCLs), Quantitative wildfire Risk Assessments (QRAs), and Suppression Difficulty Index (SDI). Chris Dunn, Oregon State Univ, will demonstrate how these tools can align wildfire management decisions and actions, from the development of strategic wildfire response zones to in situ wildfire response decisions that balance operational success, firefighter safety and values at risk.