Post-fire Environment & Management
In this webinar, Jeff Ott, Research Geneticist and Steve Monsen, Botanist with the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station discuss methods for large-scale restoration following fire in the Great Basin and aerial seeding and broadcast seeding methods.
This webinar presents findings from SageSTEP scientists, who have collected 6 years of post-treatment data from 20 sites throughout the Great Basin, and now have a fairly certain understanding of short-term vegetation response to fire and mechanical treatments on about half of those sites. While post-treatment recovery to a more desirable condition is evident at some sites (i.e. more bunchgrasses), the warmer and drier sites continue to be dominated by exotic annual grasses.
This webinar discusses the Upper Snake Sagebrush Seed Collection Contract and Shoshone Native Plant Material Development, which is important to the production of local native seed and rehabilitation treatment resiliency in the face of extreme weather events, increasing fire frequency and severity, and for restoring and improving habitat for sagebrush-obligate wildlife species. Webinar presenters were Ben Dyer, Fire Ecologist, Upper Snake Field Office, and Danelle Nance, Natural Resource Specialist, Shoshone Field Office BLM.
In this webinar, Heidi Newsome, Wildlife Biologist, USFWS, Hanford Reach National Monument, discusses the performance (survival, health) and economic costs of using seedling planting as a method to rehabilitate habitat impacted by wildfire.
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At this workshop the four elements and how they each contribute to fire and land management were compared. Presenters and organizers represented a diverse set of fire stakeholders from federal, state, local, and private fire-related organizations.
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U.S. Geological Survey scientists analyzed a collection of climate, fire and erosion models for 471 large watersheds throughout the western U.S. They found that by 2050, the amount of sediment in more than one-third of watersheds could at least double. In nearly nine-tenths of the watersheds, sedimentation is projected to increase by more than 10 percent.
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Abstracts of Recent Papers on Range Management in the West. Prepared by Charlie Clements, Rangeland Scientist, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Reno, NV
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The After Fire Toolkit and Information website is where managers, landowners, or communities can find guidance for assessing and preventing potential damage due to post-fire flooding and related events. Browse this site to find information on the research, methods, and tools available for measuring and reducing risks associated with post-fire flooding, debris flows and sedimentation.
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This study investigated the relative importance of site productivity and seasonal climate in explaining the variance in recovery time for 36 fires, comprising a fire chrono-sequence (from 1971 to 2007) for the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. A. t. vaseyana recovery was positively related to precipitation in the cool season immediately following fire, likely because deep soil-water recharge that persists throughout the growing season enhances first-year seedling survival. Percentage sand fraction positively correlated with recovery rate yet negatively correlated with live cover in unburnt stands. Our data support the hypothesis that post-fire recovery rate of A. t. vaseyana depends on the climatically controlled ephemerality of the regeneration niche, as is likely true for many arid-land shrub species.
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Fire is a strong driver of changes in montane forest structure in California’s Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade mountain ranges, which provide much of the snowpack and associated water storage for the state of California. A recent study by Stevens presented one of the first direct investigations in California of how fire can influence snowpack depth.