The invasive grass-fire cycle in the western US is one of the most difficult and complex socio-ecological problems facing natural resource managers. The Department of Interior is committed to the task of slowing and managing the invasive grass-fire cycle in sagebrush steppe, where property, livelihoods, and entire ecosystems are at risk. To manage this crisis, the government recently proposed to construct about 17,700 kilometers of fuel breaks and millions of hectares of fuel reduction treatments in six western states. Using the Land Treatment Digital Library, USGS researchers created a spatial analysis of seeding treatments and subsequent wildfire from 1990-2019, in order to assess the importance of this effort from the perspective of protecting previous rehabilitation and restoration seeding investments, including over 3,400 seedings covering about 24,540 square kilometers.
This dashboard is a supplement to the publication summarizing that analysis: “Protecting Restoration Investments from the Cheatgrass-fire Cycle in Sagebrush Steppe.” Seedings from the Land Treatment Digital Library that fall within the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) Fuels Reduction and Rangeland Restoration in the Great Basin Analysis Area implemented between 1990-2019 are included in these visualizations. For more background and detailed descriptions, see the link to the paper under Publications below.
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If you are unable to access or download a product, email fresc_outreach@usgs.gov a request, including the full citation, or call (541) 750-1030.
Land Treatment Exploration Tool
Land Treatment Digital Library
If you are unable to access or download a product, email fresc_outreach@usgs.gov a request, including the full citation, or call (541) 750-1030.
USGS Land Treatment Digital Library Data Release: A centralized archive for land treatment tabular and spatial data (ver. 6.0, August 2023)
Combined wildfire datasets for the United States and certain territories, 1878-2019
If you are unable to access or download a product, email fresc_outreach@usgs.gov a request, including the full citation, or call (541) 750-1030.
Protecting restoration investments from the cheatgrass-fire cycle in sagebrush steppe
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- Science
If you are unable to access or download a product, email fresc_outreach@usgs.gov a request, including the full citation, or call (541) 750-1030.
Land Treatment Exploration Tool
The Land Treatment Exploration Tool provides a practical resource for managers who are planning restoration and rehabilitation actions on public lands. The tool generates a variety of spatial products while being user friendly for all levels of GIS expertise, even to those with little or no experience.Land Treatment Digital Library
The LTDL was created by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to catalog information about land treatments on Federal lands in the western United States for all interested parties. The flexible framework of the library allows for the storage of a wide variety of data in different formats. The LTDL currently stores previously established land treatments or what often are called legacy data. The project... - Data
If you are unable to access or download a product, email fresc_outreach@usgs.gov a request, including the full citation, or call (541) 750-1030.
USGS Land Treatment Digital Library Data Release: A centralized archive for land treatment tabular and spatial data (ver. 6.0, August 2023)
Across the country, public land managers make hundreds of decisions each year that influence landscapes and ecosystems within the lands they manage. Many of these decisions involve vegetation manipulations known as land treatments. Land treatments include activities such as removal or alteration of plant biomass, seeding burned areas, and herbicide applications. Data on these land treatments histoCombined wildfire datasets for the United States and certain territories, 1878-2019
This dataset is comprised of four different zip files. Zip File 1: A combined wildfire polygon dataset ranging in years from 1878-2019 (142 years) that was created by merging and dissolving fire information from 12 different original wildfire datasets to create one of the most comprehensive wildfire datasets available. Attributes describing fires that were reported in the various source data, incl - Publications
If you are unable to access or download a product, email fresc_outreach@usgs.gov a request, including the full citation, or call (541) 750-1030.
Protecting restoration investments from the cheatgrass-fire cycle in sagebrush steppe
The US federal government has recently committed to the difficult task of slowing and managing the invasive grass-fire cycle in sagebrush steppe, where property, livelihoods, and entire ecosystems are at risk. To safely manage this crisis, the government recently proposed to construct about 17,700 km of fuel breaks and millions of hectares of fuel reduction treatments in six western states. A chalAuthorsDavid Pilliod, Michelle Jeffries, Justin L. Welty, Robert Arkle