Andrea Stebleton and Stephen Bunting

 

          

Abstract

Prescribed fire is increasingly used for fuels management and ecosystem restoration.  Managers and fuels specialists of the Great Basin are often required to estimate fuel loadings to predict fire behavior, recommend fuel treatments, or restore an area to its natural fire regime.  Because of invasive species and woodland encroachment, there have been extensive changes in the fire regimes of sagebrush steppe over the past 150 years.  After two years of pre-treatment sampling across six states of the Great Basin, the Sagebrush Steppe Treatment and Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) measured many variables including vegetation, soils, hydrology, wildlife, and fuels.  These data will be instrumental in assessing the effectiveness of prescribe burning, chemical and mechanical treatments and provide a better estimate of the vegetation and fuels that currently exist on the sites. The ‘Guide for Quantifying Fuels in the Sagebrush Steppe and Juniper Woodlands of the Great Basin’ assimilates the SageSTEP pretreatment vegetation and fuels data into an assessment tool that will help users better estimate percent cover, stem density and fuel loadings for their site.  Designed similarly to the Natural Fuels Photo Series, produced by USDA Forest Service Fire and Environmental Research Applications team (FERA), this Guide provides the necessary landscape-level inputs required by fire behavior and fire effects models along with building custom fuelbeds.  Through the use of photographs and tables with the range of values for each vegetation type, a user should be able to quickly appraise their site by fuel stratum.
 

 

Acknowledgements

We recognize Chad Hoffman, University of Idaho, Dr. Karen Launchbaugh, University of Idaho, and Dr. Susan Prichard, University of Washington, for their expertise and input on this guide; the SageSTEP field crews lead by Jeff Burnham, Brad Jessop, Travis Miller, Jamie Ratchford, and Scott Shaff for all the data collection and pictures; Courtney Loomis for his work on variable derivations; Dr. Chris Williams, University of Idaho, for his statistical counsel; Dr. Roger Ottmar, USDA Forest Service, and the FERA team for their expertise; the SageSTEP team and principle investigators for their guidance and support; Summer Olsen for her web design expertise; Annie Brown, BLM Salt Lake City Field Office, Brook Chadwick, BLM Salt Lake City Field Office, Beth Corbin, Wasatch-Cache and Uinta National Forest,  Louisa Evers, Oregon BLM, Albert Flores, Gila National Forest, Sandy Gregory, Nevada Office of Fire and Aviation,  Donald Tschida, Prineville BLM, Rivers Division, and Donovan Walker, Battle Mountain District for their review and suggestions.  This publication is Contribution Number 04 of the Sagebrush Steppe Treatment and Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) supported by funds from the U.S. Joint Fire Science Program.  This is contribution number 1036 of the Idaho Forest, Wildlife and Range Experiment Station, University of Idaho, Moscow.