Fire History

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Historic fire frequency in mountain big sagebrush communities of the eastern Great Basin and Colorado Plateau

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This report found that big sagebrush recovery following fire over a broad regional scale suggests an average recovery time of 25 to 35+ years. However, there was much variation in recovery rate associated with the timing of precipitation relative to the particular fire event. We found that precipitation in the pre-fire growing season was positively related to post-fire recovery of mountain big sagebrush, and that precipitation in the late winter following fire was similarly positively related to recovery rate.

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SageSTEP – Sagebrush steppe treatment evaluation project

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SageSTEP is a long-term multidisciplinary experiment evaluating methods of sagebrush steppe restoration in the Great Basin.

You can find and access information on this project’s:

  • Land management treatments
  • Treatment effects on vegetation and fuels; soils and biogeochemistry; water runoff and erosion; wildlife and insects
  • The economics and human perspectives of management treatments
  • Association with climate change
  • Research findings thus far and project future
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Synthesis of knowledge: Fire history and climate change

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This synthesis includes 9 chapters covering: the current status of climate change science; the importance of fire regimes for understanding climate change impacts; the interrelationships among ecosystems, climate and fuels; the importance of understanding variability, change, scale and pattern for interpreting climate-fire interaction; fire history and climate change from an ecosystem perspective; scientific progress we can expect in the upcoming decade; some recommendations for managers for using fire history to inform their decision making under 21st Century climate change, and concluding thoughts.

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Managing fire and fuels in a warmer climate

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This paper provides a historical perspective on fire in the Pacific Northwest. A warmer climate could bring more fire to the westside of the Cascade Range where summers are typically dry and will probably become drier. We can also expect longer fire seasons. The biggest concern for the future will be an increase in extreme weather events, which can lead to conditions that produce large and rapidly spreading wildfire.

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