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View report.
This document represents a synthesis of existing knowledge on wildlife responses to fire and fire-surrogate treatments, presented in a useful, management-relevant format. Based on scoping meetings and dialogue with public lands managers from throughout the United States, we provide detailed, species-level, summary tables for project biologists and fire managers trying to anticipate the effects of fire and fire-surrogate treatments on local wildlife species.
View webinar recording.
This webinar highlights a project examining how projected changes in fire regimes and fire and fuels treatments may affect habitat quality for and probability of occupancy of sensitive-status breeding birds. Statistical change-point analyses will be used to detect any abrupt, nonlinear temporal changes-thresholds-in projected vegetation cover, habitat quality, and occupancy. Detection of ecological thresholds, if they exist, may suggest fuels treatments and restoration actions that will decrease the probability of entering into or remaining within undesirable ecological states. Webinar speakers are: Erica Fleishman, University of California Davis, and Jimi Gragg, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.
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Irrigation trials were conducted over multiple years for two perennial Eriogonum species, E. umbellatum and E. heracleoides. Averaged over 11 years, seed yield of E. umbellatum was maximized by 209 mm/year of spring precipitation plus irrigation. Averaged over 6 years, seed yield of E. heracleoides was maximized by 126 mm/year of applied water. Both species required relatively small amounts of irrigation to help assure seed yield, and the irrigation needed for E. umbellatum could be adjusted by taking spring precipitation into account.
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This study used a coupled ecohydrologic and fire regime model to examine how climate change and CO2 scenarios influence fire regimes. In this semiarid watershed, we found an increase in burned area and burn probability in the mid-21st century (2040s) as the CO2 fertilization effect on vegetation productivity outstripped the effects of climate change-induced fuel decreases, resulting in greater fuel loading. However, by the late-21st century (2070s), climatic warming dominated over CO2 fertilization, thus reducing fuel loading and burned area. Fire regimes were shown to shift from flammability- to fuel-limited or become increasingly fuel-limited in response to climate change. We identified a metric to identify when fire regimes shift from flammability- to fuel-limited: the ratio of the change in fuel loading to the change in its aridity. The threshold value for which this metric indicates a flammability versus fuel-limited regime differed between grasses and woody species but remained stationary over time. Our results suggest that identifying these thresholds in other systems requires narrowing uncertainty in exogenous drivers, such as future precipitation patterns and CO2 effects on vegetation.
Talk 1: Mary Rowland, Research Wildlife Biologist, U.S. Forest Service; and Sandy DeBano, Associate Professor – Invertebrate Ecology, Oregon State University: Native Bees and Large Mammals: Vertebrate – Invertebrate Interactions in Riparian Natural Areas
Talk 2: Thomas Kaye, Executive Director and Senior Ecologist at the Institute for Applied Ecology: Partnering with Pollinators: Prairie Restoration to Support Diverse Pollinating Insects
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To assess the effects of aerial and drill seeding on plant community trajectories, fuel composition, and fire regimes, this study collected geospatial datasets spanning 209,000 ha of sagebrush steppe on BLM land in southern Idaho. In the field, 68 sites were sampled for fuel and plant community composition in 2014 and 2015 across areas that had burned 1-6 times and had no, aerial, drill, or aerial + drill seeding. The study found that 1) fire and rehabilitation shaped plant communities, 2) drill seeding after multiple fires in dry, low elevation sites prevented conversion to cheatgrass-dominated systems, 3) drill seeded sites had fewer fires and increased in fire frequency more slowly than aerial seeded sites, 4) the on-the-ground conditions that led to the decision to aerially seeding after a fire led to more frequent and numerous fires.
Access the videos ranging from about 1:30-10:00 in length.
Description: To ensure as many of you, the suppliers, end-users, industry, government and NGO’s have an opportunity to learn and speak first hand with some of the authors of the Native Seed Standards, we welcome you to dial into our launch event. This is your chance to find out what the Standards mean for you and to ask the experts about how they can be used.
Presenters: Kingsley Dixon, Moderator; Peggy Olwell, Bureau of Land Management; Gil Waibel, representing ISTA;
Panel: Simone Pedrini; Nancy Shaw, Olga Kildisheva, Stephanie Frischie, Gil Waibel, Danilo Ignacio Urzedo
View research brief.
This research brief summarizes a series of interviews with land managers who make decisions about post-fire rehabilitation and restoration. These interviews explored barriers to improving post-fire recovery that included: policies and funding cycles that constrain managers’ ability to monitor and re-treat effectively, pressure and legal action from interest groups, pressure from concerned public/neighbors, climate change, and
ecological debates such as native vs. non-native species use. These identified barriers provide a social-political-ecological framework that may influence on-the-ground manager decisions after wildfires in the Great Basin.