What to do after a wildfire—particularly, whether to apply seed—has been a debated by the Forest Service, Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams, and others. In an effort to establish vegetation quickly and anchor the soil before the rainy season hits, the obvious choice in many cases has been to seed the burned area as quickly as possible. Planting native species is also believed to limit the opportunity for invasive plants to take get a foothold.
In some areas, however, hydromulching without seed has been successfully used instead, often with berms and other sediment control measures on hillsides to prevent soil loss.
Recent studies by the Agricultural Research Service shed more light on when seeding is most effective, how it’s best done, and when to let nature take its course instead. The success of postfire reseeding was studied at four burn sites in Oregon covering about 300,000 acres overall. As this ARS article describes, native species including desert wheatgrass, western wheatgrass, basin wildrye, Snake River wheatgrass, Sandberg bluegrass, Siberian wheatgrass, yarrow, and blue flax were planted using various methods, with and without irrigation and weeding.
One conclusion: At least in the Oregon environment, weeding and watering didn’t make much difference. (A different experiment, reported in the same article, showed good success using hydrogels to establish native grasses planted during the dry season in arid environments.)
And, although native plants such as sagebrush burned during the fires at the Oregon sites, other fast-growing native plants established themselves more readily than invasive plants like cheatgrass. “Taken together, these findings suggest that it could be time to revamp traditional approaches to postfire rangeland restoration, starting with assessments of whether reseeding is even necessary,” the article states.
Upcoming Forester University Webinars
January 26th, 2012
5 Steps to Creating a Successful Public Outreach Campaign
Change starts with people. Whether your focus is stormwater pollution, energy conservation, pavement restoration, or recycling, a successful public outreach campaign resonates with your target audience and leads to long-lasting behavior change. Join Erica Hooper of SGA to explore a proven 5-step approach to crafting a successful outreach campaign based on real-world examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Read more…
February 2nd, 2012
Advanced Stormwater Treatment: Dissolved Pollutants
How effective are your stormwater treatments in capturing dissolved loads? With an average of 45% of the phosphorus load and up to 50% of the metal load transported through treatment practices to receiving waters in dissolved form, advanced treatment is imperative. Join Andrew Erickson to explore cost-effective, field-tested methods to capture stormwater dissolved pollutants and optimize stormwater treatment performance. We’ll explore several field applications and data demonstrating significant improvements in dissolved pollutant fraction capture. Read More...