Monitoring for adaptive management of burned sagebrush-steppe rangelands: addressing variability and uncertainty on the 2015 Soda Megafire
Matthew J. Germino, Péter Torma, Matthew R. Fisk, Cara Applestein
Abstract
Use of adaptive management supported by robust monitoring is vital to solving severe rangeland problems, such as the exotic annual grass invasion and fire cycle in sagebrush-steppe rangelands. Uncertainty in post-fire plant-community composition and plant response to treatments poses a challenge to land management and research but can be addressed with a high density of observations over short time frames. The monitoring for adaptive management of the 2015 Soda Megafire area (113,000 Ha) sampled up to 2000 observation plots in each of five post-fire years, and provided important insights on challenges, solutions, and insights that can be applied to monitoring future burned areas.