11/12/08

Welcome

Melissa McMaster, a graduate student at Northern Arizona University, is currently leading this effort to collect monitoring data within the Warm Fire that will clarify the consequences of intense fire in northern Arizona ponderosa pine forests and provide data important in ongoing discussions about post-fire rehabilitation.  The focus of her thesis will be on the understory vegetation response and particularly, the effects of a reseeding/restoration effort where the Burned Area Emergency Response team seeded with a non-native grass, Lolium multiflorum. 

                Forest managers often employ restoration activities like re-seeding to control erosion for community protection and ecological health, however the long term implications of this practice have been minimally studied.  With funding from the Joint Fire Science Program, we have completed two seasons of assessment with a total of 100 plots spread throughout the high severity portions of both the wildland and WFU sections of the fire, low severity areas and controls outside the burn.  This research will characterize understory vegetation response (plant community, percent cover of vegetation, diversity and density) across the ponderosa pine forests in the Warm Fire. 

Where we work:

Plots spread across the Warm fire

Plot design and a typical scene

Background on the Warm Research on the North Kaibab Plateau

On June 8th, 2006, a lightning strike ignited the Warm fire on the northeastern edge of the Kaibab Plateau.  The fire was managed as a wildland fire use fire for two-and-a-half weeks and resulted in approximately 790 ha (19,500 acres) of predominantly low and moderate severity fire. On June 25th, weather conditions changed considerably, and the Warm fire exceeded its maximum manageable area and was declared a wildland fire.  The fire burned in total approximately 24,000 ha (59,000 acres) with several very large high severity patches. Safety concerns led to a complete evacuation of the north rim of the Grand Canyon, second-guessing of Forest Service policy by the public, and controversy about the costs and benefits of wildland fire vs. alternative forest management techniques – including mechanical thinning and prescribed burning – across the Southwest. As discussions about forest restoration and fire management progressively shift from concerns about wildland-urban interface areas to the management of wildland areas in the Southwest, wildland fire use is becoming an increasingly important tool for land managers.  It is critically important to understand the ecological implications of such fire use, and to apply that knowledge to post-fire rehabilitation activities, as well as to the development of ecologically appropriate landscape approaches to fire management and forest restoration.  Given its isolation, high conservation value, and measurable legacies associated with historic wildlife, forests, and fire, the Kaibab Plateau serves as a compelling location for linking fire effects analyses with landscape-scale approaches to post-fire rehabilitation, and proactive fire management and forest restoration.