FY2017Increasing effectiveness of post-fire treatments is a management priority, such as is emphasized in Secretarial Order #3336 on rangeland fire and restoration, which prescribes a programmatic, longer-term approach that accommodates the layering of different treatments in sagebrush-steppe rangelands. The phasing of treatments by applying them in different post-fire years is an important part of wildfire response that, along with timing of livestock grazing resumption, likely affects overall project success - but is yet under studied. This projects objective is to determine the incremental gains in increasing desirable perennials and decreasing exotic annual grasses with the phasing of land management actions in the 1st to 5th year following wildfire. The research team will focus on two combinations of treatments: spraying herbicide to reduce exotic annuals in post-fire year 1 (in or spring), then drill seeding to increase perennial bunchgrasses in year 2, or using the opposite sequence of drill seeding in year 1 followed by spraying in year 2. The team will use two approaches, one extensive and the other intensive, focusing on one burned area. The first approach will collate all available BLM reports on post-fire herbicide and seedings in sagebrush steppe throughout the western US in recent decades, and perform a meta-analysis on how different herbicide and seeding patterns affect bunchgrass recovery and annual grasses, as rated by the BLM in projects. The second approach will utilize an exceptional managers experiment that was recently implemented on the 2015 Soda Wildfire using sound replication and controls at the landscape scale. The impact of resuming grazing in subsequent years on the different treatment phases will also be evaluated on the Soda Fire site using replicated exclosures. Pre-fire vegetation condition, soils, and climate will be evaluated as they help managers determine when, where, and why to apply different treatments after fire. The proposed research will help operationalize concepts for restoring resistance, resilience, and sage grouse habitat, and will produce field tours, webinars, factsheets, and publications on best practices for phasing of herbicide and seeding after wildfire.
