Fire and Rangelands

Reduced fire frequency is recognized as a main cause of piñon–juniper (Pinus–Juniperus L.) expansion in western North American sagebrush steppe and grasslands. Piñon–juniper woodland control using prescribed fire and mechanical treatments have increased the past three decades with the goal of restoring sagebrush steppe plant communities.

Restoring fire in fire-adapted ecosystems is necessary to curtail woody plant expansion, enhance biodiversity, and reduce wildfire risks, yet prescribed fire is promoted less by federal agencies than other grassland conservation practices. The U.S.

The sagebrush biome in the western United States is a focus of widespread conservation concern due to multiple interacting threats including larger, more severe wildfires. Given the immense scale of the region and limited resources, prioritizing restoration treatments is essential for optimizing risk reduction and managing for resilient ecosystems.

The sagebrush biome is rapidly deteriorating largely due to the ecosystem threats of conifer expansion, more frequent and larger wildfires, and proliferation of invasive annual grasses. Reversing the impacts of these threats is a formidable challenge.

Invasive annual grasses are often facilitated by fire, yet they can become ecologically dominant in susceptible locations even in the absence of fire. We used an extensive vegetation plot database to model susceptibility to the invasive annual grass cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) in the sagebrush biome as a function of climate and soil water availability variables.

Background

Understanding fire and large herbivore interactions in interior western forests is critical, owing to the extensive and widespread co-occurrence of these two disturbance types and multiple present and future implications for forest resilience, conservation and restoration.

The invasive annual grass, medusahead, infests rangelands throughout the West, from the Columbia Plateau to the California Annual Grasslands and the Great Basin.

Background
Fire modulates herbivore dynamics in open ecosystems. While extensive work demonstrates the interaction between fire and vertebrate grazers, less research describes how grasshopper herbivory dynamics respond to fire.