Priority Areas for Habitat Restoration Post-Fire in the Virginia Mountains, Nevada (2018)

Publication Date

2022-09-15

Time Period

2018

Roth, C.L., O'Neil, S.T., Coates, P.S., Ricca, M.A., Pyke, D.A., Aldridge, C.L., Heinrichs, J.A., Espinosa, S.P., Delehanty, D.J., and Chenaille, M.P., 2022, Sagebrush restoration following fire disturbance in the Virginia Mountains, Nevada (2018): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P96K6X05.

These data represent areas within the Virginia Mountains that have the highest selection and lowest post-fire survival rates. It is intended to assist land management organizations in their post-fire restoration efforts, allowing them to target areas which sage-grouse actively use in spite of a reduction in habitat quality following a fire. The sagebrush biome spans over 630,000 square kilometers of the western United States. Threats to sagebrush ecosystem structure and function encompass altered wildfire regimes, agriculture, energy development, and anthropogenic impacts such as livestock grazing (i.e., heavy and repeated either constantly or during the growing season. Because of disturbances that disrupt key components such as soil stability and trigger changes to vegetation community states, there is a need for tools that operationalize theoretical concepts of resilience to disturbance and resistance to non-native invasive plants (hereafter, resilience and resistance). Wildfire is the primary natural disturbance in many ecosystems within the biome, particularly those in the Great Basin. Over the past 30 years, more than 8.4 million hectares of sagebrush has been burned by wildfires, and some areas have burned repeatedly. The novel grass-fire cycle is the genesis of a new, altered regime, whereby non-native invasive annual grasses have thrived with disturbance coupled with more weather conditions that favor wildfire and ignition sources. The resulting novel feedback cycle has yielded larger and more frequent wildfires. Severe wildfire is stand-replacing and effectively removes sagebrush canopy from the landscape through direct post-fire mortality, and recovery is further hampered by potentially limited seed banks and high seed mortality, reduced establishment rates, short seed dispersal distances from surviving plants, and slow growth rate and high mortality among post-fire recruits in suboptimal site conditions.

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• USGS Western Ecological Research Center

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