Invasive Plants We Study: Brome
Active
By Biological Threats and Invasive Species Research Program
October 2, 2022
Brome is an invasive plant.
Brome Research
Brome Research
Cheatgrass and Medusahead
Invasive annual grasses, such as cheatgrass ( Bromus tectorum) and medusahead ( Taeniatherum caput-medusae), are one of the most significant stressors to rangeland ecosystems in the western U.S. Their expansion and dominance across this area are the most damaging ecosystem agents on this iconic landscape.
An adaptive management framework to control invasive annual brome grasses in Northern Great Plains parks (ABAM)
Invasion by annual brome grasses (cheatgrass and Japanese brome) and other exotic annual grasses into National Park Service units (parks) in the Northern Great Plains (NGP) impacts park ecological and historical landscape integrity. The Annual Brome Adaptive Management (ABAM) decision support tool (DST) was built to support vegetation management decision making, particularly regarding these...
What role does prescribed fire play in managing annual bromes in Northern Great Plains grasslands?
Prescribed fire is used in grasslands throughout the Northern Great Plains National Park Service units (parks) to manage fuel loads, control nonnative species, and maintain a vital ecosystem process. Questions about its effects in areas with invasive annual brome grasses require answers to ensure its application produces desired results. Using an experimental approach at two parks in South Dakota...
Desert Tortoise Ecology, Health, Habitat, and Conservation Biology
The desert tortoise is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. USGS WERC scientists, along with project partners have been conducting long-term analyses on how changes in the southwestern deserts of the United States can affect desert tortoise populations. Dr. Todd Esque and his team are investigating how habitat disturbances and restoration projects influence tortoise populations...
Wildland Fire Science in Forests and Deserts
Fuel conditions and fire regimes in western forests and deserts have been altered due to past land management, biological invasions, and recent extreme weather events and climate shifts. These changes have created extreme fire risk to local and regional communities, threatening their economic health related to wildland recreation, forest production, livestock operations, and other uses of public...
Explore our science using the data below.
Presence and abundance data and models for four invasive plant species
We developed habitat suitability models for four invasive plant species of concern to Department of Interior land management agencies. We generally followed the modeling workflow developed in Young et al. 2020, but developed models both for two data types, where species were present and where they were abundant. We developed models using five algorithms with VisTrails: Software for...
Vegetation Composition and Management History Data (2015-2019) from Experimental Plots at Badlands NP, Wind Cave NP, and Scotts Bluff NM Used to Develop the ABAM Model
Plant species cover and richness data were collected in experimental plots at three sites: one at Badlands National Park (BADL), South Dakota, one at Scotts Bluff National Monument (SCBL), Nebraska, and one at Wind Cave National Park (WICA), South Dakota. At the Badlands and Scotts Bluff sites, data were collected in the summers of 2015 and 2017-2020 in 50 x 50-m plots with one of five...
Invasive Plant Cover in the Mojave Desert, 2009 - 2013 (ver. 2.0, April 2021)
We assessed the impacts of co-occurring invasive plant species on fire regimes and postfire native communities in the Mojave Desert, western USA by analyzing the distribution and co-occurrence patterns of three invasive annual grasses known to alter fuel conditions and community structure: Red Brome (Bromus rubens), Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), and Mediterranean grass (Schismus spp...
INHABIT species potential distribution across the contiguous United States
We developed habitat suitability models for invasive plant species selected by Department of Interior land management agencies. We applied the modeling workflow developed in Young et al. 2020 to species not included in the original case studies. Our methodology balanced trade-offs between developing highly customized models for a few species versus fitting non-specific and generic models...
Plant community data for annual brome management experimental plots in grasslands of Badlands National Park, South Dakota, and Scotts Bluff National Monument, Nebraska, 2015-2018
Plant cover data were collected in experimental plots at two sites, one at Badlands National Park, South Dakota, and one at Scotts Bluff National Monument, Nebraska. At each site, 40 50 x 50 m plots were assigned randomly to one of the following treatments: control (no action), burn-only (prescribed fire in fall 2016), burn+herbicide (prescribed fire followed by imazapic application in...
Early Season Invasives Mapping 2001 - 2010, Washington County, Utah, USA
Invasive annual plants such as red brome (Bromus rubens), cheatgrass (B. tectorum), and African mustard (Malcomia africana) can have profound impacts on dryland ecosystems. Potential impacts include the alteration of fuel loads and fire regimes, as well as the competitive displacement of native plant populations. Both of these impacts can significantly degrade habitat quality for...
Explore our science using the publications below.
Filter Total Items: 20
Adaptive management framework and decision support tool for invasive annual bromes in seven Northern Great Plains National Park Service units
National Park Service (NPS) units in the northern Great Plains (NGP) were established to preserve and interpret the history of the United States, protect and showcase unusual geology and paleontology, and provide a home for vanishing large wildlife. A unifying feature among these national parks, monuments, and historic sites is northern mixed-grass prairie, which not only provides...
Authors
Amy Symstad, Heather Baldwin, Max Post van der Burg
Fire controls annual bromes in northern great plains grasslands—Up to a point
Concern about the impacts of two invasive annual brome grasses (cheatgrass and Japanese brome, Bromus tectorum L. and B. japonicus Thunb. ex Murray) on the mixed-grass prairie of North America's northern Great Plains (NGP) is growing. Cheatgrass is well known west of the NGP, where replacement of fire-intolerant, native sagebrush steppe by fire-prone, exotic annual grasslands is...
Authors
Amy Symstad, Deborah A. Buhl, Daniel J Swanson
Weed-suppressive bacteria fail to control bromus tectorum under field conditions
The exotic winter annual grass Bromus tectorum L. (downy brome or cheatgrass) infests millions of hectares of western rangelands. Weed-suppressive bacteria (ACK55 and D7 strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens Migula 1895) have been shown to reduce B. tectorum populations in eastern Washington. Unfortunately, outside of Washington, little is known about the efficacy of these or other weed...
Authors
Kurt O Reinhart, Chris H Carlson, Kevin P Feris, Matthew Germino, Clancy J Jandreau, Brynne E. Lazarus, Jane M. Mangold, Dave W Pellatz, Philip Ramsey, Matthew J. Rinella, Morgan Valliant
Negative impacts of invasive plants on conservation of sensitive desert wildlife
Habitat disturbance from development, resource extraction, off-road vehicle use, and energy development ranks highly among threats to desert systems worldwide. In the Mojave Desert, United States, these disturbances have promoted the establishment of nonnative plants, so that native grasses and forbs are now intermixed with, or have been replaced by invasive, nonnative Mediterranean...
Authors
K. Kristina Drake, Lizabeth Bowen, Kenneth E. Nussear, Todd C. Esque, Andrew J. Berger, Nathan Custer, Shannon C. Waters, Jay D. Johnson, A. Keith Miles, Rebecca L. Lewison
Preserving prairies: Understanding temporal and spatial patterns of invasive annual bromes in the Northern Great Plains
Two Eurasian invasive annual brome grasses, cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and Japanese brome (Bromus japonicus), are well known for their impact in steppe ecosystems of the western United States where these grasses have altered fire regimes, reduced native plant diversity and abundance, and degraded wildlife habitat. Annual bromes are also abundant in the grasslands of the Northern Great...
Authors
Isabel Ashton, Amy J. Symstad, Christopher Davis, Daniel J. Swanson
Soil Seed Bank Responses to Postfire Herbicide and Native Seeding Treatments Designed to Control Bromus tectorum in a Pinyon–Juniper Woodland at Zion National Park, USA
The continued threat of an invasive, annual brome (Bromus) species in the western United States has created the need for integrated approaches to postfire restoration. Additionally, the high germination rate, high seed production, and seed bank carryover of annual bromes points to the need to assay soil seed banks as part of monitoring programs. We sampled the soil seed bank to help...
Authors
Matthew L. Brooks, graduate student Hondo Brisbin, Associate Professor Andrea Thode, graduate student Karen Weber
Native Prairie Adaptive Management: a multi region adaptive approach to invasive plant management on Fish and Wildlife Service owned native prairies
Much of the native prairie managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of the northern Great Plains is extensively invaded by the introduced cool-season grasses, smooth brome (Bromus inermis) and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis). Management to suppress these invasive plants has had poor to inconsistent success. The central challenge to...
Authors
Jill J. Gannon, Terry L. Shaffer, Clinton T. Moore
Forty years of vegetation change on the Missouri River floodplain
Comparative inventories in 1969 and 1970 and in 2008 of vegetation from 30 forest stands downstream of Garrison Dam on the Missouri River in central North Dakota showed (a) a sharp decline in Cottonwood regeneration; (b) a strong compositional shift toward dominance by green ash; and (c) large increases in invasive understory species, such as smooth brome, reed canary grass, and Canada...
Authors
W. Carter Johnson, Mark D. Dixon, Michael L. Scott, Lisa Rabbe, Gary Larson, Malia Volke, Brett Werner
An adaptive approach to invasive plant management on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-owned native prairies in the Prairie Pothole Region: decision support under uncertainity
Much of the native prairie managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is extensively invaded by the introduced cool-season grasses smooth brome (Bromus inermis) and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis). The central challenge to managers is selecting appropriate management actions in the face of biological and environmental uncertainties. We...
Authors
Jill J. Gannon, Clinton T. Moore, Terry L. Shaffer, Bridgette Flanders-Wanner
A Chronosequence Feasibility Assessment of Emergency Fire Rehabilitation Records within the Intermountain Western United States - Final Report to the Joint Fire Science Program - Project 08-S-08
Department of the Interior (DOI) bureaus have invested heavily (for example, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spent more than $60 million in fiscal year 2007) in seeding vegetation for emergency stabilization and burned area rehabilitation of non-forested arid lands over the past 10 years. The primary objectives of these seedings commonly are to (1) reduce the post-fire dominance...
Authors
Kevin C. Knutson, David A. Pyke, Troy A. Wirth, David S. Pilliod, Matthew L. Brooks, Jeanne C. Chambers
An emerging crisis across northern prairie refuges: Prevalence of invasive plants and a plan for adaptive management
In the northern Great Plains, native prairies managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) can be pivotal in conservation of North America's biological diversity. From 2002 to 2006, we surveyed 7,338 belt transects to assess the general composition of mixed-grass and tallgrass prairie vegetation across five "complexes" (i.e., administrative groupings) of national wildlife...
Authors
T.A. Grant, B. Flanders-Wanner, T.L. Shaffer, R.K. Murphy, G.A. Knutsen
Fire and nonnative invasive plants in the central bioregion
The Central bioregion is a vast area, stretching from Canada to Mexico and from the eastern forests to the Rocky Mountains, dominated by grasslands and shrublands, but inclusive of riparian and other forests. This bioregion has been impacted by many human induced changes, particularly relating to agricultural practices, over the past 150 years. Also changed are fire regimes, first by...
Authors
James B. Grace, Kristin Zouhar
Brome is an invasive plant.
Brome Research
Brome Research
Cheatgrass and Medusahead
Invasive annual grasses, such as cheatgrass ( Bromus tectorum) and medusahead ( Taeniatherum caput-medusae), are one of the most significant stressors to rangeland ecosystems in the western U.S. Their expansion and dominance across this area are the most damaging ecosystem agents on this iconic landscape.
An adaptive management framework to control invasive annual brome grasses in Northern Great Plains parks (ABAM)
Invasion by annual brome grasses (cheatgrass and Japanese brome) and other exotic annual grasses into National Park Service units (parks) in the Northern Great Plains (NGP) impacts park ecological and historical landscape integrity. The Annual Brome Adaptive Management (ABAM) decision support tool (DST) was built to support vegetation management decision making, particularly regarding these...
What role does prescribed fire play in managing annual bromes in Northern Great Plains grasslands?
Prescribed fire is used in grasslands throughout the Northern Great Plains National Park Service units (parks) to manage fuel loads, control nonnative species, and maintain a vital ecosystem process. Questions about its effects in areas with invasive annual brome grasses require answers to ensure its application produces desired results. Using an experimental approach at two parks in South Dakota...
Desert Tortoise Ecology, Health, Habitat, and Conservation Biology
The desert tortoise is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. USGS WERC scientists, along with project partners have been conducting long-term analyses on how changes in the southwestern deserts of the United States can affect desert tortoise populations. Dr. Todd Esque and his team are investigating how habitat disturbances and restoration projects influence tortoise populations...
Wildland Fire Science in Forests and Deserts
Fuel conditions and fire regimes in western forests and deserts have been altered due to past land management, biological invasions, and recent extreme weather events and climate shifts. These changes have created extreme fire risk to local and regional communities, threatening their economic health related to wildland recreation, forest production, livestock operations, and other uses of public...
Explore our science using the data below.
Presence and abundance data and models for four invasive plant species
We developed habitat suitability models for four invasive plant species of concern to Department of Interior land management agencies. We generally followed the modeling workflow developed in Young et al. 2020, but developed models both for two data types, where species were present and where they were abundant. We developed models using five algorithms with VisTrails: Software for...
Vegetation Composition and Management History Data (2015-2019) from Experimental Plots at Badlands NP, Wind Cave NP, and Scotts Bluff NM Used to Develop the ABAM Model
Plant species cover and richness data were collected in experimental plots at three sites: one at Badlands National Park (BADL), South Dakota, one at Scotts Bluff National Monument (SCBL), Nebraska, and one at Wind Cave National Park (WICA), South Dakota. At the Badlands and Scotts Bluff sites, data were collected in the summers of 2015 and 2017-2020 in 50 x 50-m plots with one of five...
Invasive Plant Cover in the Mojave Desert, 2009 - 2013 (ver. 2.0, April 2021)
We assessed the impacts of co-occurring invasive plant species on fire regimes and postfire native communities in the Mojave Desert, western USA by analyzing the distribution and co-occurrence patterns of three invasive annual grasses known to alter fuel conditions and community structure: Red Brome (Bromus rubens), Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), and Mediterranean grass (Schismus spp...
INHABIT species potential distribution across the contiguous United States
We developed habitat suitability models for invasive plant species selected by Department of Interior land management agencies. We applied the modeling workflow developed in Young et al. 2020 to species not included in the original case studies. Our methodology balanced trade-offs between developing highly customized models for a few species versus fitting non-specific and generic models...
Plant community data for annual brome management experimental plots in grasslands of Badlands National Park, South Dakota, and Scotts Bluff National Monument, Nebraska, 2015-2018
Plant cover data were collected in experimental plots at two sites, one at Badlands National Park, South Dakota, and one at Scotts Bluff National Monument, Nebraska. At each site, 40 50 x 50 m plots were assigned randomly to one of the following treatments: control (no action), burn-only (prescribed fire in fall 2016), burn+herbicide (prescribed fire followed by imazapic application in...
Early Season Invasives Mapping 2001 - 2010, Washington County, Utah, USA
Invasive annual plants such as red brome (Bromus rubens), cheatgrass (B. tectorum), and African mustard (Malcomia africana) can have profound impacts on dryland ecosystems. Potential impacts include the alteration of fuel loads and fire regimes, as well as the competitive displacement of native plant populations. Both of these impacts can significantly degrade habitat quality for...
Explore our science using the publications below.
Filter Total Items: 20
Adaptive management framework and decision support tool for invasive annual bromes in seven Northern Great Plains National Park Service units
National Park Service (NPS) units in the northern Great Plains (NGP) were established to preserve and interpret the history of the United States, protect and showcase unusual geology and paleontology, and provide a home for vanishing large wildlife. A unifying feature among these national parks, monuments, and historic sites is northern mixed-grass prairie, which not only provides...
Authors
Amy Symstad, Heather Baldwin, Max Post van der Burg
Fire controls annual bromes in northern great plains grasslands—Up to a point
Concern about the impacts of two invasive annual brome grasses (cheatgrass and Japanese brome, Bromus tectorum L. and B. japonicus Thunb. ex Murray) on the mixed-grass prairie of North America's northern Great Plains (NGP) is growing. Cheatgrass is well known west of the NGP, where replacement of fire-intolerant, native sagebrush steppe by fire-prone, exotic annual grasslands is...
Authors
Amy Symstad, Deborah A. Buhl, Daniel J Swanson
Weed-suppressive bacteria fail to control bromus tectorum under field conditions
The exotic winter annual grass Bromus tectorum L. (downy brome or cheatgrass) infests millions of hectares of western rangelands. Weed-suppressive bacteria (ACK55 and D7 strains of Pseudomonas fluorescens Migula 1895) have been shown to reduce B. tectorum populations in eastern Washington. Unfortunately, outside of Washington, little is known about the efficacy of these or other weed...
Authors
Kurt O Reinhart, Chris H Carlson, Kevin P Feris, Matthew Germino, Clancy J Jandreau, Brynne E. Lazarus, Jane M. Mangold, Dave W Pellatz, Philip Ramsey, Matthew J. Rinella, Morgan Valliant
Negative impacts of invasive plants on conservation of sensitive desert wildlife
Habitat disturbance from development, resource extraction, off-road vehicle use, and energy development ranks highly among threats to desert systems worldwide. In the Mojave Desert, United States, these disturbances have promoted the establishment of nonnative plants, so that native grasses and forbs are now intermixed with, or have been replaced by invasive, nonnative Mediterranean...
Authors
K. Kristina Drake, Lizabeth Bowen, Kenneth E. Nussear, Todd C. Esque, Andrew J. Berger, Nathan Custer, Shannon C. Waters, Jay D. Johnson, A. Keith Miles, Rebecca L. Lewison
Preserving prairies: Understanding temporal and spatial patterns of invasive annual bromes in the Northern Great Plains
Two Eurasian invasive annual brome grasses, cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and Japanese brome (Bromus japonicus), are well known for their impact in steppe ecosystems of the western United States where these grasses have altered fire regimes, reduced native plant diversity and abundance, and degraded wildlife habitat. Annual bromes are also abundant in the grasslands of the Northern Great...
Authors
Isabel Ashton, Amy J. Symstad, Christopher Davis, Daniel J. Swanson
Soil Seed Bank Responses to Postfire Herbicide and Native Seeding Treatments Designed to Control Bromus tectorum in a Pinyon–Juniper Woodland at Zion National Park, USA
The continued threat of an invasive, annual brome (Bromus) species in the western United States has created the need for integrated approaches to postfire restoration. Additionally, the high germination rate, high seed production, and seed bank carryover of annual bromes points to the need to assay soil seed banks as part of monitoring programs. We sampled the soil seed bank to help...
Authors
Matthew L. Brooks, graduate student Hondo Brisbin, Associate Professor Andrea Thode, graduate student Karen Weber
Native Prairie Adaptive Management: a multi region adaptive approach to invasive plant management on Fish and Wildlife Service owned native prairies
Much of the native prairie managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of the northern Great Plains is extensively invaded by the introduced cool-season grasses, smooth brome (Bromus inermis) and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis). Management to suppress these invasive plants has had poor to inconsistent success. The central challenge to...
Authors
Jill J. Gannon, Terry L. Shaffer, Clinton T. Moore
Forty years of vegetation change on the Missouri River floodplain
Comparative inventories in 1969 and 1970 and in 2008 of vegetation from 30 forest stands downstream of Garrison Dam on the Missouri River in central North Dakota showed (a) a sharp decline in Cottonwood regeneration; (b) a strong compositional shift toward dominance by green ash; and (c) large increases in invasive understory species, such as smooth brome, reed canary grass, and Canada...
Authors
W. Carter Johnson, Mark D. Dixon, Michael L. Scott, Lisa Rabbe, Gary Larson, Malia Volke, Brett Werner
An adaptive approach to invasive plant management on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-owned native prairies in the Prairie Pothole Region: decision support under uncertainity
Much of the native prairie managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is extensively invaded by the introduced cool-season grasses smooth brome (Bromus inermis) and Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis). The central challenge to managers is selecting appropriate management actions in the face of biological and environmental uncertainties. We...
Authors
Jill J. Gannon, Clinton T. Moore, Terry L. Shaffer, Bridgette Flanders-Wanner
A Chronosequence Feasibility Assessment of Emergency Fire Rehabilitation Records within the Intermountain Western United States - Final Report to the Joint Fire Science Program - Project 08-S-08
Department of the Interior (DOI) bureaus have invested heavily (for example, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) spent more than $60 million in fiscal year 2007) in seeding vegetation for emergency stabilization and burned area rehabilitation of non-forested arid lands over the past 10 years. The primary objectives of these seedings commonly are to (1) reduce the post-fire dominance...
Authors
Kevin C. Knutson, David A. Pyke, Troy A. Wirth, David S. Pilliod, Matthew L. Brooks, Jeanne C. Chambers
An emerging crisis across northern prairie refuges: Prevalence of invasive plants and a plan for adaptive management
In the northern Great Plains, native prairies managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) can be pivotal in conservation of North America's biological diversity. From 2002 to 2006, we surveyed 7,338 belt transects to assess the general composition of mixed-grass and tallgrass prairie vegetation across five "complexes" (i.e., administrative groupings) of national wildlife...
Authors
T.A. Grant, B. Flanders-Wanner, T.L. Shaffer, R.K. Murphy, G.A. Knutsen
Fire and nonnative invasive plants in the central bioregion
The Central bioregion is a vast area, stretching from Canada to Mexico and from the eastern forests to the Rocky Mountains, dominated by grasslands and shrublands, but inclusive of riparian and other forests. This bioregion has been impacted by many human induced changes, particularly relating to agricultural practices, over the past 150 years. Also changed are fire regimes, first by...
Authors
James B. Grace, Kristin Zouhar