Fuels & Fuel Treatments
View article.
The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of recent prescribed fires, resource benefit fires, and repeated fires in ponderosa pine forests, as well as recent resource benefit fires in pinyon-juniper woodlands. Results are pertinent to fire and fuels managers throughout the southwestern United States who utilize prescribed and resource benefit fire to reduce fuel loads and restore historical forest conditions.
View news release.
This USFS news release reports on the largest ever study of fuel treatment effectiveness, where USFS researchers found that intense thinning treatments leaving 50 and 100 trees/acre are the most effective in reducing the probability of crown fires in the dry forests of the western United States.
View guide.
This guide assimilates post-treatment vegetation and fuels data from Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) study sites across six Great Basin states into an assessment tool that can help managers better estimate percent cover, stem density and fuel loadings for post-treatment sites. The post-treatment Guide uses photographs and tables to provide the range of values for each vegetation type allowing users to quickly appraise a site by fuel stratum using an ocular estimate.
View synthesis.
This synthesis addresses seven major conservation practices and two crosscutting issues: prescribed grazing, prescribed burning, brush management, range planting, riparian herbaceous cover, upland wildlife habitat management, herbaceous weed control, landscape analysis, socioeconomics and ecosystem services.
View guide.
This is an online guide to legal and institutional resources intended to serve as a starting point to help public and private land managers figure out which considerations are most relevant to the implementation of vegetation treatments in Great Basin states.
View synthesis.
This report provides managers with the current state of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of fuel treatments for mitigating severe wildfire effects. A literature review examines the effectiveness of fuel treatments that had been previously applied and were subsequently burned through by wildfire in forests and rangelands. A case study focuses on WUI fuel treatments that were burned in the 2007 East Zone and Cascade megafires in central Idaho. Both the literature review and case study results support a manager consensus that forest thinning followed by some form of slash removal is most effective for reducing subsequent wildfire severity.
View synthesis.
This synthesis contains 14 chapters that cover fire and forests, machinery, erosion processes, water yield and quality, soil and riparian impacts, aquatic and landscape effects, and predictive tools and procedures. These chapters provide an overview of our current understanding of the cumulative watershed effects of fuel management in the western United States.
View guide.
This guide is based on vegetation and fuels data collected by Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) researchers at study sites in six states throughout the Great Basin for two years prior to implementing land management treatments. It is divided into four sub-guides (one sagebrush and three woodland) based on regional differences in site physiognomy and ecology: sagebrush steppe, pinyon-juniper, Utah juniper, and western juniper.
View field guide.
This field guide provides substantial evidence that pinon-juniper woodlands have experienced major expansion in their distribution since the late 1800s by encroaching into surrounding landscapes once dominated by shrubs and herbaceous vegetation. Both infilling and expansion affects soil resources, plant community structure and composition, water and nutrient cycles, forage production, wildlife habitat, biodiversity, and fire patterns across the landscape. Another impact is the shift from historic fire regimes to larger and more intense wildfires that are increasingly determining the future of this landscape.
Visit the SageSTEP website, for links to all past newsletters.