The 2008 Joint Meeting of the Society for Range Management and the America Forage and Grassland Council.

Thursday, January 31, 2008 - 9:00 AM

Post Wildfire Seeding-Is It Worth Costs and Efforts

Lee E. Hughes, Bureau of Land Management, Arizona Strip District, 345 E Riverside Dr, St. George, UT 84790

In an effort to ascertain if post-fire seeding is worth all the work, time and money spent on same, some old fires were observed and transects were run to determine whether species frequency or composition reflects success of seeded species and or of the existing seed bank’s native species.

In the effort, I looked at two 60+ year old burns, several 20-30 year old burns and a large- near-10-year-old-burn on the Arizona Strip. Most of the burns were aerial seeded and some were not seeded. Frequency and dry weight rank transects were run in all the areas. 

There were seedings that were initially successful and other seedings that had no success in establishing seeded species. What the trend data or new data show are that in all cases, native grasses, but, mostly forbs and shrubs totally dominate the burned areas twenty and more years after being burned. Exotic annual grasses were reduced in quantity in most of these areas but were still abundant on wet years. During drier years annual bromes are near non-existent. Soil stability was not a problem in any of the areas after the burns.


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