Fire Regimes
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This study provides quantitative evidence linking long-term declines of sage-grouse to chronic effects of wildfire. Projected declines may be slowed or halted by targeting fire suppression in remaining areas of intact sagebrush with high densities of breeding sage-grouse.
Access data review.
The purpose of the Data Product Review website is to provide a place where people can work through a review process of various LANDFIRE data products and a method for submitting feedback and suggestions on a number of LANDFIRE data products in a guidebook structure. The site is based on a content management platform with structured content for a dynamic web experience. The feedback and suggestions will be reviewed both within and external to LANDFIRE and potentially improve future mapping updates and remaps.
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The Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy outlined the need for coordinated, science-based adaptive management to achieve long-term protection, conservation, and restoration of the sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystem. A key component of this management approach is the identification of knowledge gaps that limit implementation of effective strategies to meet current management challenges. The tasks and actions identified in the Strategy address several broad topics related to management of the sagebrush ecosystem. This science plan is organized around these topics and specifically focuses on fire, invasive plant species and their effects on altering fire regimes, restoration, sagebrush and greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), and climate and weather.
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This research suggests that widespread environmental change within sagebrush ecosystems, especially the fire-cheatgrass cycle (e.g., invasion of cheatgrass and increased fire frequency) and human land disturbances, are directly and indirectly influencing ground squirrels and badgers.
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This New York Times article reports on the lengthening fire season in the western US and beyond. From the article: Fires, once largely confined to a single season, have become a continual threat in some places, burning earlier and later in the year, in the United States and abroad. They have ignited in the West during the winter and well into the fall, have arrived earlier than ever in Canada and have burned without interruption in Australia for almost 12 months.
Access FEIS database.
The FEIS database provides access to more than 1,200 species reviews, 150 fire studies, and is now producing fire regime syntheses. This suite of products provides information on plant, lichen, and wildlife species’ life history, ecology, and relationship to fire and detailed descriptions of site characteristics, burning conditions, fire behavior, and fire effects. This spatially searchable database was developed by the USDA-FS, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory, Missoula, Montana.
Access LANDFIRE tools.
LANDFIRE is a shared program between the wildland fire management programs of the USDA-FS and DOI, providing landscape scale geo-spatial products to support cross-boundary planning, management, and operations. It provides over 20 national geo-spatial layers (e.g. vegetation, fuel, disturbance, etc.), databases, and ecological models that are available to the public for the US and insular areas.
View an introductory LANDFIRE video.
View report.
This report provides a strategic approach for conservation of sagebrush ecosystems and greater sage-grouse that focuses specifically on habitat threats caused by invasive annual grasses and altered fire regimes. It uses information on (1) factors that influence sagebrush ecosystem resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive annual grasses and (2) distribution, relative abundance, and persistence of sage-grouse populations to develop management strategies at both landscape and site scales.
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In this study, researchers compiled landscape-scale evidence of historical fire severity patterns in the ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests from published literature sources and stand ages available from the Forest Inventory and Analysis program in the USA. The consensus from this evidence is that the traditional reference conditions of low-severity fire regimes are inaccurate for most forests of western North America. Instead, most forests appear to have been characterized by mixed-severity fire that included ecologically significant amounts of weather-driven, high-severity fire.
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This review examines the effects of disturbances, such as grazing, and changes in climate on resilience and resistance of cold desert shrublands that span temperature and precipitation gradients across the western United States. It demonstrates how to use information about cold desert resilience and resistance to help manage this ecosystem and describes the benefits of using protection, prevention, restoration, and monitoring strategies to determine priority management areas and appropriate management actions.