[PCA] FW: RE: [Ecology] FW: Great Basin ecosystems, pinyon forests and cheatgrassfires

Fri Sep 14 09:17:22 CDT 2007

Greetings All,

It is a pleasure to see this discussion.  I would add that prior to grazing 
in the Great Basin, there was a tremendous destruction of the pinyon forest 
as fuel wood for the silver mining industry's smelters.  See Tom Straka, 
WARD CHARCOAL OVENS' AND NEVADA'S CARBONARI.Environmental History 11 (April 
2006): 344-349. http://www.pinenut.com/straka_eh11.2-1.pdf

These pinyon are very slow growing taking up to 150 years to reach seed 
bearing maturity.  In the mid -60's almost 4 million acres of the pinon 
forest was converted to grazing land in the Southwest. As the deforestation 
occured problems with fire intensified.  As a whole, the response has been 
further deforestation. Currently there is a 70,000 acre treatment plan in 
Nevada, which continues to echo the less trees, less fire approach to 
restoration.  The pinon trees do counter balance the fuel loads, cool the 
earth, hold water in the system and play the keystone role in environmental 
health of the region. Yet, the solutions have been compounding the problem.

I completely agree that the lack of good science has created poor policy in 
the Great Basin, http://www.pinenut.com/badscience.htm

Penny Frazier
Goods From The Woods
www.pinenut.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Larry Morse" <larry.morse.dc at earthlink.net>
To: <native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org>
Cc: <peterson at heritage.nv.gov>
Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 4:33 PM
Subject: [PCA] FW: RE: [Ecology] FW: Great Basin ecosystems and 
cheatgrassfires

>> [Original Message]
>> From: Eric Peterson <peterson at heritage.nv.gov>
>> To: <larry.morse.dc at earthlink.net>; NS Botany List
> <botany at lists.natureserve.org>; NS Ecology List
> <ecology at lists.natureserve.org>
>> Cc: <Robert.Dana at dnr.state.mn.us>; <craig at astreet.com>
>> Date: 9/13/2007 5:17:47 PM
>> Subject: RE: [Ecology] FW: [PCA] Great Basin ecosystems and cheatgrass
> fires
>>
>> Greetings!
>> I'd concur in part with Craig, but add some complexities to the oft told
>> simple pattern: cows eat native grass, cheatgrass fills in.  Primarily,
> I'd
>> agree that grazing has a lot to do with what has happened to the Great
>> Basin.  I'll try to address this as succinctly as possible.
>>
>> Unfortunately, we lack good information (heck, we even lack poor
>> information!) on what the Great Basin really was like prior to the heavy
>> grazing that took off in the second half of the 1800s.
>>
>> I'd suggest two things: (1) biological soil crusts would have been much
> more
>> prevalent and (2) the 'little ice age' may have promoted greater native
>> grass biomass.
>>
>> Grazing at the end of the 1800s and on well into the 1900s was both
>> widespread and much heavier that it is even today.  This would have wiped
>> out much of the soil crusts.  It is quite notable that almost all
> remaining
>> sites with high cover are in dry valley bottoms where lack of water and
> lack
>> of much of any herbaceous plants would have been unattractive to grazers.
>> (The exception being the I80 corridor which was a cattle drive route as
> well
>> as a corridor for other transportation, hence little soil crusts even in
> the
>> driest areas.)
>>
>> Loss of soil crusts, particularly while still within the 'little ice age'
>> may have actually lead to an initial flush of native grasses as the soil
>> surface niche opened up.  This might help explain why so many old 
>> ranchers
>> insist that when their great grand-daddy first brought in cows or sheep,
> the
>> grasses increased.
>>
>> However, the native grasses that [may have] filled in the shrub
> interspaces
>> after the soil crusts were trampled out would have been vulnerable to the
>> over grazing, as well as the boom-and-bust interannual climate variation
> of
>> the Great Basin.  Cheatgrass is particularly well adapted to both soil
>> surface disturbance and interannual climate variation.  All grasses get
>> knocked back a bit in droughts, but cheatgrass, an early-season annual,
>> recovers and reproduces faster than the natives.
>>
>> Although the 'little ice age' may have increased grass cover a little
>> despite the historic presence of soil crusts, I am doubtful that it had a
>> major impact.  Consider: Most data points to rather long fire intervals
> and
>> small scale of fires when they did happen in pre-grazing sagebrush 
>> systems
>> (basin and Wyoming sagebrush that is).  Yet many of the major fires in
>> Nevada and southern Idaho in the last two years have been in areas where
>> there IS VERY LITTLE CHEATGRASS, but the native grasses have left lots of
>> fine fuels.  The native grasses seem to be achieving unnaturally high
>> biomass in wet years.  There is some evidence of large pre-grazing
> wildfires
>> in this area, but we would still need to say something like both of the
> last
>> two summers have reached 100-year events.  My hypothesis: given the lack
> of
>> soil crusts and the gradual reduction in grazing, native grasses are
>> becoming exceptionally abundant in some areas.  (Small caveat: 
>> overgrazing
>> also leads to unnaturally high cover of sagebrush, which can also 
>> increase
>> fire carrying capacity).
>>
>> To finish off the original question that Craig was responding to... once
>> cheatgrass starts to fill in shrub interspaces, a continuous understory 
>> of
>> fine fuels develops, which carries fire much more easily and extensively
>> than native Great Basin shrub systems.  Cheatgrass seed is somewhat
> tolerant
>> of fire and the annual nature of cheatgrass allows it to reinvade burned
>> areas very quickly.  Once reinvaded, the early season growth of this 
>> grass
>> uses much of the available water before natives have much chance even to
>> germinate.  Thus it maintains a monoculture.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -Eric
>> ---
>>
>> Eric B. Peterson, Ph.D.
>> Vegetation Ecologist
>> Nevada Natural Heritage Program
>> Nevada Dept. Conservation and Natural Resources
>> 901 South Stewart Street, suite 5002
>> Carson City, NV 89701
>>
>> 775-684-2906 office
>> 775-750-4628 cell
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ecology-bounces at lists.natureserve.org
>> [mailto:ecology-bounces at lists.natureserve.org] On Behalf Of Larry Morse
>> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 11:01 AM
>> To: NS Botany List; NS Ecology List
>> Subject: [Ecology] FW: [PCA] Great Basin ecosystems and cheatgrass fires
>>
>> Ecology mailing list
>> Encourage group discussion-- reply to: Ecology at lists.natureserve.org
>> http://lists.natureserve.org/mailman/listinfo/ecology
>> _______________________________________________
>>
>>
>> Larry Morse
>> Washington, D.C.
>> larry.morse.dc at earthlink.net
>> (Larry.E.Morse at LEM-Natural-Diversity.com)
>> (202)-543-2488
>> < http://www.lem-natural-diversity.com/ >
>>
>>
>> > [Original Message]
>> > From: Craig Dremann <craig at astreet.com>
>> > To: Robert Dana <Robert.Dana at dnr.state.mn.us>
>> > Cc: <native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org>
>> > Date: 9/11/2007 2:18:27 PM
>> > Subject: [PCA] Great Basin ecosystems and cheatgrass fires
>> >
>> > Robert wrote:
>> >
>> > Will someone please clarify how wildfire in sagebrush steppe kills all
>> > the native perennial vegetation? ...
>> >
>> > Robert Dana
>> > MN DNR
>> > ---------------------------
>> > Dear Robert and All,
>> >
>> > What has happened to the poor, unfortunate Great Basin ecosystem, is
>> > that prior to the 1840s, it was a shrubland with a perennial native
>> > grass understory in the shrub interspaces.
>> >
>> > Between 1840 and modern times, the cattle and sheep grazed out a large
>> > percentage of the perennial grass understory, and from my 1997
>> > Megatransect at http://www.ecoseeds.com/megatransect.html you can see
>> > the percentage that remains in each area that I surveyed:
>> >
>> > Yellowstone NP 89%
>> > Colorado------ 44%
>> > So. Dakota---- 43%
>> > Wyoming------- 40%
>> > Nevada-------- 40%
>> > Utah---------- 34%
>> > Utah---------- 32%
>> > Southern Idaho  6%
>> > California---- <1%
>> >
>> > In the Great Basin, the cheatgrass has been moving in, to fill the
>> > empty spaces between the shrubs where the native grasses used to grow.
>> >
>> > The native perennial grasses originally provided significantly less
>> > fire-fuel than the cheatgrass, and the hotter cheatgrass-fueled fires
>> > are killing the shrubs.
>> >
>> > Once the native shrubs are killed, that beings a snow-balling effect,
>> > where the cheatgrass has more area to move into, etc.
>> >
>> > The unfortunate part of the story, is that there are no longer viable
>> > native grass and forb seeds in the soil-seedbank in many areas where
>> > these fires are occurring.
>> >
>> > What BLM and the other land managers of the Great Basin must do very
>> > soon, is calculate how many years the seeds of the various native
>> > grasses species in the area are viable, let's say 10 years.
>> >
>> > Then once every five years, rest the land during a good-rainfall
>> > season, completely removing all grazing, to allow the native grass
>> > plants to produce seeds, to replenish the soil-seedbank.
>> >
>> > Then the ecosystem will be reseeded for free, with the proper local
>> > genetic material, and you won't have to buy those million pounds or so
>> > of exotic seeds that the government purchases for the Great Basin
>> > public lands every year.
>> >
>> > Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, Redwood City, CA (650) 325-7333
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > native-plants mailing list
>> > native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org
>> >
>>
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