Fact sheet: Post-wildfire restoration of structure, composition, and function in southwestern ponderosa pine and warm-dry mixed-conifer forests.

Post-fire rehabilitation is separated into short-term, emergency stabilization and long-term restoration measures. The Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) program includes emergency treatments to stabilize the burned area, protect public health and safety, and reduce the risk of additional damage to valued resources. As opposed to emergency rehabilitation, ecological restoration focuses on assisting the recovery of characteristic ecological structure, process, and function, which requires an understanding of natural range of variability for these key attributes as well as development of reference conditions to guide management activities. In addition, restoration activities demand long-term commitment and evaluation. Given the altered conditions that can follow high-severity fires, successful restoration to a desired state may be difficult and costly. Areas experiencing high-severity fire often exhibit accelerated soil erosion and subsequent loss of soil productivity; expansions or invasions of non-native plant populations; loss of wildlife habitat; damaged watersheds and degraded water quality to connected streams; and/or vegetation type conversion. Attributes of a restored ecosystem include the reestablishment of resilience, forest structure, composition, function, physical environment, and landscape context and integrity

Fact sheet: Conserving rare plants in national parks and protected areas

Plant species are typically rare due to human activities such as habitat destruction, overharvesting, and introduction of exotic species. These specialized habitat requirements restrict the species to small portions of the landscape or combinations of both (Kruckeberg and Rabinowitz 1985). Protected areas such as national parks frequently are refugia for rare species. However, even when protected from wholesale habitat destruction due to construction or land development, habitat in these protected areas is threatened by many of the same factors such as climate change, fire-regime disruption, and exotic species encroachment (Falk et al. 1996)

Working paper 19: Understory seeding in southwestern forests following wildfire and ecological restoration treatments

Shrubs, grasses, sedges, and forbs form the understory of ponderosa pine and pinyon-juniper ecosystems. They cover the natural openings in these two ecosystems - openings that were much more extensive historically than they are today. While restoration treatments in these ecosystems typically focus on trees, it is also important to restore the natural diversity and productivity of the understory plant community because a healthy understory provides wildlife habitat and fuel for low-intensity fires that maintain forest structure. Restoring a healthy understory may require little or a great deal of effort, depending upon the site conditions and site history.Many sites still support some native understory species, either living or in the seedbank, in which case thinning of overstory trees and conducting some prescribed fires is often enough to promote the growth of a healthy understory. In situations where the treated area is adjacent to a weed-free area with a highly diverse understory, it may be possible to simply let nature reseed the treated site. Still other sites lack native understory species and their seeds, in which case it may be necessary to reintroduce those species as either seeds or seedlings. In this working paper, we cover this last situation - one where active seeding is needed

About Eggs--Eggs in the Diet.

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Issues in forest restoration: Southwest ecological restoration institutes (SWERI) biophysical monitoring workshop report

On October 15-16, 2009, the Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) hosted a workshop in which the participants would 1) build a common understanding of the types of monitoring that are occurring in forested ecosystems of the Southwest; 2) analyze and agree on an efficient, yet robust set of biophysical variables that can be used by land mangers and scientists to monitor the effectiveness of restoration/land treatments; and 3) discuss and develop strategies to overcome common challenges to effective forest monitoring and its integration into land management decision making. An invited group of individuals representing federal and state agencies, environmental non-profits, academic institutions, and consulting firms brought their knowledge and expertise to bear on the three goals of the workshop..

The role of old-growth forests in frequent-fire landscapes

Classic ecological concepts and forestry language regarding old growth are not well suited to frequent-fire landscapes. In frequent-fire, old-growth landscapes, there is a symbiotic relationship between the trees, the understory graminoids, and fire that results in a healthy ecosystem. Patches of old growth interspersed with younger growth and open, grassy areas provide a wide variety of habitats for animals, and have a higher level of biodiversity. Fire suppression is detrimental to these forests, and eventually destroys all old growth. The reintroduction of fire into degraded frequent-fire, old-growth forests, accompanied by appropriate thinning, can restore a balance to these ecosystems. Several areas require further research and study: 1) the ability of the understory to respond to restoration treatments, 2) the rate of ecosystem recovery following wildfires whose level of severity is beyond the historic or natural range of variation, 3) the effects of climate change, and 4) the role of the microbial community. In addition, it is important to recognize that much of our knowledge about these old-growth systems comes from a few frequent-fire forest types

White mountain stewardship program monitoring report

In December 2011, the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University (ERI) contracted with the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest and the White Mountain Stewardship Project (WMS) Monitoring Board to address four of the prioritized ecological monitoring questions developed for the Project. The questions were: 1) Is there a difference between pre-treatment crown fire potential and post-treatment desired fire behavior across selected analysis areas? 2) What proportion of treated acres exhibited a change in Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) from 2004-2014? 3) Are patch sizes of denser (i.e., untreated or lightly treated) areas connected? What is the range of areas and sizes of these patches? 4) Are exotics/invasive species present at landings and burn piles

Working paper 18: Prescribed and wildland use fires in the southwest: Do frequency and timing matter?

Support for the use of prescribed fire and wildland fire use has increased in the Southwest in recent decades. However, the frequency and seasonality of these contemporary fires is typically different than historical fires, which burned during late spring and early summer in the driest and windiest time of the year. Contemporary changes in the landscape, including unprecedented fuel loads and human development in and around forests, now limit the ability to use fire during those times of the year. Most managed fire now occurs outside the windy fire season because it is safer and allows managers to provide greater protection to susceptible cultural or natural resources, such as historic structures or dry snags