Post-fire Mastication Effects on Shrub Regrowth

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Post-fire Mastication Effects on Shrub Regrowth

In California’s dry mixed conifer forests, increasingly large high severity wildfires threaten to convert significant areas of forested land into shrub dominated landscapes in the absence of active reforestation, including control of competing vegetation. Previous studies have found that salvage logging and other methods used to prepare a site for reforestation may reduce shrub cover after wildfire. This study investigated the effect of masticated fuel depth on shrub growth where salvage logging and mastication followed high severity wildfire.

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Prescription Burning Reduces Alien Grasses in Native Grassland Restoration

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Prescription Burning Reduces Alien Grasses in Native Grassland Restoration

In Southern California, native bunchgrass communities dominated by Stipa pulchra are widely distributed in the state but often share dominance with non-native annual grasses. Restoration of these grasslands is focused on altering the balance of native to non-native grasses to favor the native perennial grasses. This study investigated the impact of burning on vegetation recovery.

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Status of Knowledge Synthesis for Desert Habitat Restoration and Post-Fire Rehabilitation

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Status of Knowledge Synthesis for Desert Habitat Restoration and Post-Fire Rehabilitation

Supported by the Clark County (Nevada) Desert Conservation Program and the California Fire Science Consortium, we completed a status of knowledge synthesis of restoration practices aimed at enhancing recovery of damaged habitats in the Mojave and western Sonoran Desert, some of the driest locations in North America.

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Long-Term Change in Desert Annuals during Restoration, Joshua Tree National Park

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Long-Term Change in Desert Annuals during Restoration, Joshua Tree National Park

It is not well understood whether desert plantings can facilitate recruitment of other natives (or mainly just non-natives), or whether facilitation changes through time as a restoration site matures. To address these uncertainties, we partnered with the National Park Service to study plant community change below planted perennials and in interspaces (areas between perennials) during 12 years (2009-2020) in Joshua Tree National Park, California, in the southern Mojave Desert.

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Tree recruitment over centuries: influences of climate and wildfire

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Tree recruitment over centuries: influences of climate and wildfire

This study uses tree cores gathered at three 4-hectare plots to make inferences about temporal aspects of tree recruitment in pine-dominated ecosystems of the California Sierra Nevada and the Sierra San Petro Martir in northwestern Mexico.

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Mega-disturbances & declining mature forest habitat

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Mega-disturbances & declining mature forest habitat

In this paper, the authors quantify change in the extent of mature conifer forests in the southern Sierra Nevada of California during 2011-2020, a decade and ecoregion characterized by compounding severe wildfires and drought follow prolonged fire exclusion.

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Techniques for restoring damaged Mojave and western Sonoran habitats, including those for threatened desert tortoises and Joshua trees.

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Techniques for restoring damaged Mojave and western Sonoran habitats, including those for threatened desert tortoises and Joshua trees.

Abella, S.R., K.H. Berry, and S. Ferrazzano. 2023. Techniques for restoring damaged Mojave and western Sonoran habitats, including those for threatened desert tortoises and Joshua trees. Desert Plants 38:4-52.

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Mountain quail: the lucky beneficiaries of high-severity fire

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Mountain quail: the lucky beneficiaries of high-severity fire

This study uses bio-acoustical monitoring to characterize the habitat of mountain quail in the California Sierra Nevada. Findings include that high severity wildfires may promote vegetation structures that are beneficial for mountain quail.

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Shaded fuel breaks create wildfire-resilient forest stands in the Sierra Nevada

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Shaded fuel breaks create wildfire-resilient forest stands in the Sierra Nevada

This study leveraged data collected from 20-year-old forest monitoring plots within fuel treatment units that captured a range of wildfire occurrence (i.e., not burned, burned once, or burned twice) following application of initial thinning treatments and prescribed fire.

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What Makes Wildfires Destructive in California? Study Points to Distance to Human Development and Fire Weather.

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What Makes Wildfires Destructive in California? Study Points to Distance to Human Development and Fire Weather.

A new paper by USGS and partners investigated why some California wildfires are destructive and others are not.

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The effects of prolonged drought on vegetation dieback and megafires in southern California chaparral: Research Brief

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The effects of prolonged drought on vegetation dieback and megafires in southern California chaparral: Research Brief

In a new study, USGS scientists and partners have found extensive drought-caused dieback in Southern California shrublands that subsequently burned in large wildfires.

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California wildland fires burning mostly in non-forests: Research Brief

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California wildland fires burning mostly in non-forests: Research Brief

Wildfires in California burn across a broad diversity of land cover types with different implications for each unique ecosystem. This paper shows that most of California’s recent wildfires burn outside of forests and forest management is just one piece of a very large, very nuanced problem.

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Winter burning opportunities in the Sierra Nevada: Research Brief

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Winter burning opportunities in the Sierra Nevada: Research Brief

With narrowing and potentially non-existent opportunities during other times of year, winter may currently be the most realistic and advantageous time to conduct prescribed burns. This study evaluated the effectiveness and feasibility of winter burning to demonstrate its potential utility in mixed conifer forests.

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Managing fuel profiles in high severity burns: Research Brief

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Managing fuel profiles in high severity burns: Research Brief

This study measured wildland fuels (shrubs, downed logs, and fine woody debris) eleven years after high-severity fire converted a Sierra mixed-conifer forest to shrub-dominant vegetation. The findings of this study suggest that site preparation and vegetation control is an effective tool to reduce fuel loads and continuity of live and downed woody fuels in early seral environments created by high-severity fire.

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Roles of NGOs in wildfire relief and recovery: Research Brief

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Roles of NGOs in wildfire relief and recovery: Research Brief

Local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play important roles in community wildfire relief and recovery. This paper identifies challenges and opportunities for local NGOs involved in wildfire recovery drawing on three case studies from recent wildfires in Northern California.

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