Post-Fire Monitoring

City of Rocks National Reserve and Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve are lands managed by the National Park Service that contain ecologically valuable stands of sagebrush and unique forest communities that are at risk due to wildfire and invasion by exotic annual grasses. We are working to determine the extent of invasion and to provide park managers with wildfire risk assessments...

In an era of rapid land use changes and shifting climates, it is imperative that land managers and policymakers have actionable and current information available for decision processes. In this work, we seek to meet these needs through new data products and decision support tools built on digital soil mapping, new vegetation cover maps, agency inventory and monitoring data sets, and cutting-edge...

We are investigating ecosystem transitions and thresholds in the sagebrush steppe, studying factors influencing the shift from native to invaded plant communities after disturbances like fire. Our research tests region-wide resistance and resilience models, focusing on real-world recovery patterns, pre-fire conditions, plant succession, and land management treatments.

Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey are developing a strategic framework for assessing and monitoring the impacts of fuel breaks in sagebrush ecosystems of the western U.S. Fuel breaks are increasingly being used to reduce the threat of wildfire, but more information on their efficacy and impacts on wildlife habitat and exotic annual grass invasion is needed.

Large wildfires have increased in size and frequency in the western United States over the past several decades. This has led to increased soil erosion and the transport of sediment containing nutrients into streams and reservoirs. Excess nutrients typically lead to the increased production of algae which can then lead to low levels of dissolved oxygen. This degrades the habitat for fish and...

USGS WERC’s Dr. Karen Thorne and her research team are using drone imagery to understand how the 2018 Carr Fire affected ecosystems and cultural resources. The study, a collaboration with the National Park Service (NPS), focuses on Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in northern California. The drone images will help the WERC researchers identify changes in topography, cultural sites, debris...

EROS, alongside the USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC), offers rapid delivery of satellite imagery in the form of Burned Area Reflectance Classifications (BARC) and other data to the Forest Service’s Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) program.

Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) track critical attributes of the atmosphere, oceanic, and terrestrial systems over time-scales appropriate for analyzing their relationships with climate change. As part of a larger Climate Data Record (CDR) and ECV project, scientists at GECSC are leading the development and validation of the Burned Area ECV algorithm. This algorithm automatically extracts...