July 30, 2021 • 38 mins
Brad Schultz, professor and Humboldt County Extension educator, discusses the role of fire in Nevada, historically. As an expert in rangeland management, he has looked at wildfire from a “big picture” perspective across the state and across the West.
For more full episode details including the transcript, visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/1819551/episodes/8944203
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Megan Kay (00:27):
Welcome. This is the first episode of The Living with
Fire Podcast. I'm your host,Megan Kay, the Outreach
Coordinator for Living with Fireand I'm joined by my two bosses,
Christina Restaino is here andJamie Roice-Gomes. You guys want
to introduce to introduceyourself?
Christina Restaino (00:46):
Yeah, my name is Christina Restaino. I am
the Director of the Living withFire Program.
Jamie Roice-Gomes (00:50):
Hi everyone.
Jamie Roice-Gomes, Manager ofthe Living with Fire Program.
Megan Kay (00:54):
Awesome. So we're here today to talk about our
interview we did with BradSchultz. He's the extension
educator out in Humboldt Countyfor University of Nevada, Reno
Extension. And he talked with usa while back about the history
of fire. In Nevada range lands.
You guys have had an opportunityto listen to the podcast, well,
I've listened to it a bunchbecause me and Jordan edit it,
(01:15):
so I'm gonna start off with yourguys thoughts. Jamie, want to go
first?
Jamie Roice-Gomes (01:16):
Yeah, I thought it was really
interesting. I didn't realizethat it was a hotly debated
question, when people aretalking about the fire history
on the range here in the GreatBasin, I honestly didn't even
consider that.
Megan Kay (01:29):
Yeah, I didn't realize that. I mean, I didn't
know anything about the scienceof history of fire. So it's
interesting to hear the sort of,the evidence that they have, and
also just a lot of it isspeculative because of which you
guys will hear about later. Whatabout you Christina?
Christina Restaino (01:48):
You know, I thought it was really cool how
he really talked a lot about howthese lands have been managed,
you know, perpetually andconstantly. And you don't really
think about the fact, like,okay, Native Americans were
having a lot of fire. They weregathering fuel and burning for
(02:14):
cooking, for manufacturing,right? It's like, I think more
about okay, staying warm andmaking food, but not like
manufacturing tools and clothingand things like that. And so you
know that just perpetual use offire all the time, and how that
really modified the fuelavailability on the landscape,
(02:37):
and how, with the absence ofthat. You know, what does that
mean for the fuels that we havenow? Right? We have, obviously
have so many fuels, and thishuge fuel issue. But I thought
that was really interesting.
Megan Kay (02:50):
Yeah, it seems to me, and you guys have a science
background, so when you guyswere learning about ecology,
were humans, talked about much?
Christina Restaino (03:00):
Oh, all the time.
Megan Kay (03:01):
All the time? Yeah.
So it's not exactly, it's notso, I don't know. It just seems,
it seems to me, like it's stillkind of like being understood,
though, the historic impact ofhumans in the landscape.
Christina Restaino (03:11):
I think it's often simplified, and I think
that that becomes, you know,it's the the same story. Native
Americans used a lot of fire.
The end. Right? As opposed tolike, well, how are they using
fire, and what times of yearwere they using fire, and what
were they using, what objectiveswere they using it for?
Jamie Roice-Gomes (03:30):
And what were they using to build those fires?
Like they were using sagebrushas the main fuel source. I mean,
I never considered that. Andthen I really thought it was
interesting when Brad brought upthe fact that, I mean, think
about how many campfires getloose today. I mean, if there is
a perpetual use of wildfire outon the landscape from Native
(03:50):
Americans, can you imagine howmany wildfires have gotten loose
then?
Megan Kay (03:53):
Seriously. Yeah, when he just laid out the math, my
brain was like, wow. And that'sjust for Northern Paiute
Shoshone people, which is like,or just Northern Paiute,
Christina Restaino (04:20):
Yeah. And then also, you know, the the
concept of, okay, then NativeAmericans were removed from the
land for the most part. Webrought in grazing, and we
started to develop landscapes.
And then the fine fuels wereremoved because of the grazing,
and then we didn't have anybefore.
(04:41):
fire, right? So it's like, youhave a bunch of fire all the
time. You don't have any fire,and now we have so much fire.
And so, you know, it's the samestory you hear in, you know, in
the Sierra Nevada ecosystems aswell, right? Right where you
have this well, we had fire, andthen we didn't have any fire,
(05:06):
and now we have a lot of fire.
And so, you know, just what arethe different ways that we
modify fuels as humans overtime? And then I love the point
at the end of, you know, wecan't not manage our ecosystems,
for fire, for ecosystemresilience, for climate change,
for any of these big, you know,problems and stressors that we
(05:29):
have because our ecosystems have
Jamie Roice-Gomes (05:32):
Yeah, I love how it ended on that.
always been managed andmanipulated in some way, whether
that be for the positive or thenegative. And so we can't just
step back and leave them aloneat this point, because there's
too, it's too complex.
Christina Restaino (05:49):
I did too.
Megan Kay (05:52):
Yeah, and something that I you know, when you're
learning about, like wildlife inthe ecosystem, you know, it's
you understand that animalshave, you know, we're animals
too, but they you understandthat wildlife have that sort of
symbiotic relationship wherethey are managing their little
habitats as well, and that'shaving an effect on the
(06:14):
ecosystem. But humans like itjust, you know, I'm learning as
well, and my brain is sort offorming to, you know, adapt to
this sort of like field ofstudy, and just the idea of,
yes, okay, humans in thelandscape, it's not just that
we're apart and separate. It'snot just that we should be hands
(06:36):
off and let mother nature do itsthing. It's like we are part of
it, and we always have been. Soyeah, I think that that part
really struck a chord with me,for sure.
Christina Restaino (06:44):
And we live in it and we keep building in
Megan Kay (06:47):
It's in our best interest to make sure that the
it.
outcomes of our land management,you know, strategies are
mutually beneficial to like allspecies. So, yeah, it was, I
mean, that's my little kumbayathing, but it's really, it's
definitely like, I've startedputting the pieces together, you
know, because I think there's alot of slogans, and there's a
(07:11):
lot of, like, cliches aboutnature and stewardship, but then
when you actually understandhumans roles, just in this
context with fire, then youreally, it's, I think it's like,
it helps, kind of like, bindthat all together for me, at
least so, and I hope it will forthe listeners to understand that
(07:31):
humans have always been in theselandscapes, and we're a huge
part of the resilience, likekeeping these things in check.
You know.
Brad Schultz (07:45):
So my name is Brad Schultz, and I'm the extension
educator for the University ofNevada Cooperative Extension
housed in Humboldt County thecity of Winnemucca. I've been in
this position for 20 years now,starting my 21st year, and my
program focus here is largelyrange management. I also do some
work, work with a noxious weedsand agricultural and pasture
(08:06):
settings. Within that context, Ido a lot of work with public
lands grazing issues. I'm on aquite a few different
collaborative planning processesfor different grazing
allotments. Been involved withthe sage-grouse planning issues
since it started here in 2001been working with Barry Perryman
quite a bit on fine fuelsmanagement, using livestock
(08:26):
during season grazing to managefine fuels, to try to reduce
fuel carry over and reduce thesize, intensity and probability
of large catastrophic wildfires.
Megan Kay (08:37):
How would you describe range management?
Brad Schultz (08:40):
So on rangelands, you're doing a type of land,
typically arid lands, notalways, but more often than not,
arid lands. So you're looking atwhat ecological processes,
mechanisms, interactions, affectthe distribution and abundance
of plants, animals, how theyinteract with soils, climate,
(09:02):
the flow of water, nutrientsthrough the system, and then the
management side is, whatspecific actions do you take to
manipulate those resources toachieve specific goals for the
benefit of society?
Megan Kay (09:15):
That's a very good, succinct explanation, and I feel
like I understand it better now.
So I think I'm excited for ourlisteners to hear that.
Brad Schultz (09:25):
And I probably should add people often equate
range management with livestockmanagement, and livestock
management is just one componentof range management. It's not,
livestock grazing is just oneuse of range fence. The two are
not this thing.
Megan Kay (09:38):
So this episoZde is about the history of fire in
Nevada, and I wanted to pickyour brain with your expertise,
and ask if you could paint apicture of what Nevada's range
lands used to look like, presettlement, and compare that to
how they look today.
Brad Schultz (09:51):
That's a really complex question without a
simple answer, and that'sbecause in Nevada, you have a
lot of environmental gradients,climatically, soils and so
forth. And those gradients runfrom the west side of the state
to the east side. Saw summerprecipitation increases as you
go to the east, and it gets alittle colder also north to
(10:13):
south, much colder in the north,very hot in the south. And then
you have elevation gradientsfrom less than 3000 feet to
almost 14,000 feet in parts ofthe state, and each of those
create a very complex landscape.
And all these different factorsreally determine the plant
communities you had out there.
So on, those lower, drier areasthat were formerly lakes and so
(10:37):
forth, you have what we call thesalt desert shrub community,
predominantly shrubs, relativelyfew grasses, except on sand
sheets, where you get a lot ofrice grass and so forth. Very
arid, very dry, very harsh sitesnot occupied by a lot of
prehistoric peoples, most of thetime, unless there were marshes
(10:58):
there the terminus of the riversand so forth. Moving up, you get
into the valleys, the alluvialfans. You start in the middle of
fans, up across these fans. Youcan do another we can call the
sagebrush grass plantcommunities going on to the
hillsides, more sagebrush andgrass, higher elevation, little
cooler, more moisture, much moreproductive. So a very
(11:21):
heterogeneous, very dynamic landscape.
Megan Kay (11:24):
Can I ask you a quick question before we move on? Can
you explain what the role offire was historically?
Brad Schultz (11:29):
Fire was widespread across much of the
sagebrush region. The generalrole of fire is to reduce woody
vegetation, whether it's shrubsor trees, particularly those
that don't sprout from the rootcrown or buds on the roots after
any kind of disturbance.
Sagebrush is a non sprouter mostof our conifer trees are non
sprouters. Aspen does sproutafter fire. Some of a few other
(11:51):
shrubs do as well, but firewould really reduce those shrubs
typically the time of year fireburns, mid summer, late summer
into the fall. Grasses aredormant. Their growing points
are below the ground surface, sothey're perennial bunch grasses.
There were very few annualspresent at that point in time.
These bunch grasses are largelyunaffected by most fires that
(12:13):
would burn that time of year. Sobunch grasses would increase
after a fire, and then overtime, plant succession,
vegetation change that occurs.
The shrubs would slowlyincrease, grasses would start to
decrease. Fire would come backand return that balance. And
across a large landscape, fireswould occur periodically, but at
(12:36):
different places, at differenttimes, and you would get a very
strong mosaic pattern ofpredominant grasses in some
areas, predominantly shrubs inothers, and most of it being a
mix in between that confers alot of benefits to the wildlife
species that occupy ourrangelands in Nevada. There's
probably well over 200 species,when we look at birds and
(12:59):
mammals, and a small set ofthose are what we call sagebrush
obligates. They requiresagebrush, the presence of
sagebrush, at least some pointin time, every year, within
their annual cycle, to survive.
If you don't have thatsagebrush, they either don't
survive or they have incrediblysmall populations. On the other
end, we have a few species thatprefer predominantly grasses.
(13:23):
They're considered grasslandspecies, and most are somewhere
in the middle, that do fairlygood with a reasonably good mix
of sagebrush shrubs and grassestogether, when you get that
mosaic across the landscape, dothat, that fire mechanism that
fire disturbance that occurredperiodically, you would end up
having this broad mix ofdifferent successional classes
(13:47):
that would allow all thosespecies to be present in most
places and not confined to verysmall areas of the landscape.
Megan Kay (13:59):
How often did fire happen?
Brad Schultz (14:01):
That is a very hotly debated question. It's
very difficult to understandthat in Nevada, because the best
way to document fire history isscars on trees, and most of
Nevada has very few long livedtrees. They can document that
fire history going backhundreds, if not thousands of
years. Another part of thatreally gets forgotten is most
(14:25):
people, they're very familiarwith lightning. They know
lightning causes fires. Whateverybody forgets about is the
role of Native Americans on thelandscape. Now, Native American
populations weren't overly highlarge in Nevada, 25,000 or give
or take, depending on whichanthropologist you want to look
(14:46):
at, probably confined to certainareas where water was available
year round, along the mainrivers, the perennial
tributaries, marshes and soforth. But they used fire every
day of the year. 24 hours a day,because fire was was used, not
just for cooking, butmanufacturing that their
clothes, their tools, theimpediments they need, they
(15:09):
needed to survive and so forth.
If you had one fire supportingfour people and a population of
25,000 people, you probably have3000, 6000 campfires burning
every day. Think about how manycampfires escape now, when you
have a lot fewer, and theemphasis on putting them out,
and none of them burn 24 hours aday, so you probably had some
(15:31):
escape fires from that. But theyalso use fire to manage
vegetation, for hunt, to huntanimals. Furs were a primary
source of clothing and so forth.
So they use fire veryextensively to manage landscapes
as well. Undoubtedly, some ofthose got very large, but they
(15:51):
and they used them every year,exactly how big fires got, how
often they got away, how muchthey burn, how they burn is
really quite speculative, but Iwould expect that with the very
patchy environment you had withyour vegetation and so forth,
more grasses, some areas, moreshrubs than others, that fires,
(16:13):
even when they got large, wereburned much patchier when they
burned into grasslands. They'reprobably more likely to go out
at night, where nowadays, whenthey burn at night, often
burning in heavy fuels, shrubsand so forth. So there's enough
fuel to carry those firesthrough the night and burn the
(16:34):
next day.
Megan Kay (16:35):
And so they were likely to go at night because of
like, temperatures and humidity.
Brad Schultz (16:39):
Temperature and humidity, even a little bit of
humidity recovery, we justdidn't have the large fuels.
Basin wildrye might be the onegrass that was an exception,
because it can be a very largeplant with a large roof, crown
and so forth. But there's reallya lot of unknowns within that.
Native American fires wereprobably concentrated in certain
areas, because their populationswere concentrated. And the
(17:01):
farther you moved away fromthat, there was probably less
influence. And then thelightning would have been a
greater role. The full extent ofthat is really an unknown.
Megan Kay (17:21):
84% of wildfires nationwide are caused by people.
If you're planning on headingout and enjoying public lands,
visit nevadafireinfo.org andlearn how you can recreate
responsibly and do your part toprevent wildfires.
So that mosaic pattern you'retalking about, it seems like
(17:43):
that was a key part of thelandscape, and its ability to
withstand fire and not, youknow, to experience periodic
fire without devastatingwildlife and habitats.
Brad Schultz (17:56):
Yeah, I would, you know, and none of this is really
definitive knowledge. It's basedon a lot of ads, a mix of
anecdotal and small scalestudies and looking at patterns
and so forth. But when you hadthat diverse landscape, fuel
loads, vary fuel continuitycarried, and most large fires
(18:19):
are accompanied by at leastlight to moderate and heavy
winds. And when you have thathigh diversity of fuel
continuity and fuel loads, yourwinds are going to they often
get quite square, what we callsquirrely and so forth change
direction a lot. So that's goingto push fire differently than
when you have one continuousfuel. If you were to go out and
look at the Martin fire when itburned a couple years ago across
(18:41):
the Hawaii desert that was onecontinuous stand of sage brush
for mile after mile, very highcover 20, 30% cover or more, no
breaks, no discontinuity in thatfuel. So it allowed one very
long, wide, broad front of afire to move across the entire
(19:02):
southern part of the Hawaiidesert. If that had been broken
up with 100 acres of fine fuelshere, or predominantly grasses
here, 1000 acres there, it wouldhave changed the pattern of that
fire front, and it would haveundoubtedly resulted in a very
different burning pattern,probably more unburned islands.
There are some large, unburnedislands out there now, but it
(19:22):
probably would have been muchdifferent.
Megan Kay (19:24):
That's a good segue into kind of talking about what
the rangeland and the vegetationand the wildlife look like
today, as opposed tohistorically, with that mosaic
pattern.
Brad Schultz (19:36):
In many ways, it's quite different today than it
was prior to settlement byEuropeans, one of the first
things that happened withEuropean settlement was the
massive introduction oflivestock to the Great Basin,
initially cattle, and thenfollowed by sheep. We had
livestock numbers many orders ofmagnitude greater than today.
(19:59):
They graze these areas what wecall season long from the time
the plants turn green in thespring and the snow melted the
entire growing season and clearinto the fall and sometimes the
winter. Grass plants, while theyhave many features that tolerate
grazing, no grass plant iscapable of surviving grazing
(20:22):
that occurs the entire growingseason every year, year after
year. Parallel with that, wasthe introduction of invasive
annual grasses that originatedfrom Europe and Eurasia,
probably as a contaminant in thegrain seed that was brought over
and seeded on the early farms.
Cheatgrass later, Medusaheadnow, Ventenata, is another one
(20:45):
that's coming, but predominantlycheatgrass is one everybody's
familiar with. These slowlystarted to spread across the
landscape, probably initiallyfollowing all the infrastructure
that was developed. This allowedthem to move across the
landscape, and then that startedto interact with a lot of the
other natural non humandisturbances out there.
Megan Kay (21:05):
So cattle production, you outlined how important that
was to the change. But whatabout fire and fire suppression?
And like human just humanssuppressing fire because they're
building houses in there. Howthey have settlements.
Brad Schultz (21:21):
The settlement and the widespread grazing, it
decreased the amount of finefuels. And fine fuels are where
most ignition would occur in thesummertime, from lightning,
Native American burningcompletely went away by about
1900 probably even earlier thanthat. It was, it was almost non
existent. So that source of firewas gone. Settlers, there was
(21:46):
some burning periodically. Butthe the European attitude
towards fire was, fire isgenerally bad on the landscape.
We don't want to burn thingspast history from where they
came from. It's a reflection ofthat, and it's also they're
seeing their forage, potentialforage, go away for a couple of
(22:07):
years when fires burn. So it wasthat.
Megan Kay (22:12):
It was like a matter of survival. They're like, we
can't that's our food sourcestop the fire from.
Brad Schultz (22:18):
So human caused fire initially went way down,
and so you didn't have thesources out there, and you
didn't have the fine fuels toignite as easily and to
initially carry a fire,particularly in non windy
conditions, where you get a lotof small fires, and our large
fires, even prior to settlement,were probably a very small part
(22:41):
of the total number of fires,but they probably burnt the most
acreage. But did it happen everyyear? Every five years, every 10
years? That that's really anunknown will probably never be
answered.
Megan Kay (22:52):
So how often is fire happening now? It seems like
it's, there's a ton of fire.
Brad Schultz (22:58):
So in your lower elevations, where cheatgrass has
become predominant. Fire is muchmore frequent than it used to
be. Some areas, I've seen someareas burn three or four times
since I've been here inWinnemucca, and that was really
common. Where were what most ofour fires were, these heat grass
driven fires before about 2000,2005 since about 2005 I've seen
(23:19):
an increase in our large firesin our mid and upper elevations
that are sage brush driven,shrub driven, most of these
areas have a at least a decentunderstory of perennial grasses
today, and they often come backlargely as perennial grasslands.
But those areas, typically, alot of them, haven't burned in
probably over 100 years, maybeeven much longer. And it's a
(23:39):
combination of this historiclivestock grazing that reduced
those fine fuels early on,followed by a very intensive
fire suppression era starting inthe 1930s that lack of fire,
that lack of disturbance, neverset the shrubs back, never
decreased them across very largeexpenses, hundreds of thousands
of acres, million acres or more,at times, and those shrubs have
(24:02):
slowly increased. You're getting20, 25, 30% shrub cover. And
every one of those sagebrushplants has about 300 different
volatile oils in it that arehighly flammable. So a sagebrush
plant that's three foot tall caneasily put off probably a 9-15
foot length flame, especiallywhen it's windy. And if you have
(24:22):
two to four feet between plants,and you get some wind, it pushes
that flame over from plant toplant. And when you've got 50
miles like you had on the Martinfire of continuous sagebrush
like that, that's highlyflammable in a very dry year
with a good understory of bunchgrasses, and most of it that
fire can move incredibly fastand incredibly far, very
Megan Kay (24:42):
Something that is interesting to me, when we're
talking about the history offire, is, and I keep going back
to what you were talking about,it's a lot of it is largely
speculative, because we it's notlike other ecosystems where you
can study tree rings and scars.
I'm just curious as to becausethis is sort of an ongoing field
of study and topic, how muchdoes understanding the history
(25:04):
of fire play into current landmanagement and how it's
evolving?
Brad Schultz (25:12):
Well, I think what the history of fire in the Great
Basin in sagebrush grass zonetells us is you need some amount
of periodic disturbance that'sgoing to reduce the shrubs for
some period of time and maintainthe bunch grasses, or allow the
bunch grasses to fully occupythe site. But in today's world,
(25:35):
it's really not so much aboutfire as understanding
disturbance and how it affectsthat shrub grass relationship,
you're not going to use fire thesame way the current prior to
settlement. We've got newplayers, more people on the
landscape, more infrastructurethat we don't want to burn.
We've got an invasive speciesthat can respond to it, so it's
not appropriate every place, butdisturbance of some type is is
(25:57):
still going to be needed tomaintain that shrub grass
balance, so that we have what wecall resilient plant
communities. By resilience,we're talking enough bunch
grasses on site that when a fireor some other disturbance
happens, they immediately occupythe site. They remain on the
site to competitively excludethose undesired species and keep
(26:18):
them from taking over more andmore of a landscape. Fires, I
think has a definite role insome areas. We have that good
bunch grass under story and youcan control it. One thing I
don't think we've looked at isusing fire outside the time
frames we've normally done it. Ithink a lot of these sage brush
(26:39):
areas, if you could get theright equipment out there,
helicopters, drip torches inDecember or January, when you've
got six inches of snow on theground, you could burn a lot of
small areas, half acre, quarteracre, couple acres, And a very
(26:59):
patchy environment, and haveabsolutely no effect on that
herbaceous understory and thesoil that hasn't been looked at
at all, but I think there'stremendous opportunity for that.
It might provide opportunitiesin those areas where cheatgrass
is the predominant understoryspecies. I haven't thought about
(27:21):
that as much, but there probablyare potential opportunities
there as well.
Megan Kay (27:32):
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Jamie Roice-Gomes (27:58):
So Brad, the narrative that we hear a lot is
that there's too much fire inthe rangeland ecosystems now,
right? And there's too littlefire in the forest ecosystems.
Can you talk about that a littlebit? Are there? Are there kind
of zones within the RangelandEcosystem where there might be
(28:19):
too little fire versus too muchfire?
Brad Schultz (28:21):
I would say definitely yes. I think a lot of
our mid and upper elevationshave probably, especially those
that haven't burned in the last100 or more years, have probably
had too little fire. And whenyou talk about fire, you can't
just talk about the presence orabsence of fire, but you have to
(28:42):
talk about the size of it. Andwe're not talking about large
scale fires. We're talking abouta lot of small and small has
different connotations todifferent people. A few acres
here, a few acres there, 100acres there, and maybe some in
the 1000-2000 acre, but it's andthen it's also the configuration
(29:04):
of that, you know, 1000 acressquare has much different effect
on how a landscape is used andthe animals that use it. Than
1000 acres, that's a longcorridor, say, 300 feet wide on
average. So, you know, you can'tjust say fire. It's how fire
occurs, the size of it, therelationship of one patch is
(29:26):
burned to another. Fire is avery complex it's not an off on switch.
Unknown (29:32):
And also, what happens, where the fire occurs, the
effects, what conditions Is itburning under? What's the
severity of fire? How does itinfluence the soil, etc, right?
So there's a lot of complexitiesto what the fire does to the
landscape, but it does seem likein our cheatgrass invaded
ecosystems, that's where we'reseeing this re-burn cycle
(29:56):
happening too close together.
Brad Schultz (29:59):
Oh, without a doubt, and a lot of those areas,
this fire was probably on a 50to 75 year return interval. And
you're talking three to fivemaybe 10 years now, and you'll
never get probably the bunchgrasses coming back, and
definitely not the sagebrush andthe non sprouting shrubs. You're
(30:19):
actually seeing an increase inshrubs like horse brush and
rabbit brush that sprout rightafter fire. They have buds on
the root, crown of the rootsthat get regrow stems then they
fire. Is very positive on them.
They respond to it very well,and they're generally undesired
species at a high abundance.
Megan Kay (30:38):
Yeah. I mean the just in the Reno area, like that
Caughlin fire that was, I feellike that, that hill up in
Caughlin ranch burns like everyfive to seven years. It seems
like.
Brad Schultz (30:50):
And I would add that just because an area may
have burned frequently prior tosettlement doesn't mean fire is
the best disturbance mechanismfor managing that landscape now,
a lot of things have changed.
Megan Kay (31:03):
What other disturbance mechanisms are there
that are commonly used.
Brad Schultz (31:09):
Insects and pests.
We have a defoliating moth thatoccurs periodically throughout
the Great Basin, the Aroga moth,and it can defoliate vast areas
of sagebrush.
Megan Kay (31:21):
What does defoliate mean?
Brad Schultz (31:23):
Take the leaves off.
Megan Kay (31:24):
Okay, well that makes sense.
Brad Schultz (31:28):
So they eat the leaves. And sagebrush is
actually a very grazing,intolerant plant. It's most of
the bugs that produce new growthfrom year to year are on the
outer inch of the stems. So ifyou defoliate that part of the
plant, you kill it very easilyand and there are some large
(31:49):
tracks of Northern Nevada thatjust in the last five to 10
years have been defoliated bythese insects. And if they have
a good bunch grass under story,those bunch grasses occupy the
site, you have good resilience,and you have the ability of
sagebrush to slowly return to asite if you don't have bunch
grasses. In the end of story,that's when you start to get the
annual grasses. Some of ourintense, prolonged droughts that
(32:12):
occur periodically candramatically reduce or even kill
off sagebrush in some areas,generally not large tracks, but
it does happen. On the otherextreme, we tend to think wet
years are very, very good andvery beneficial, but you can get
too wet, and that can also be adisturbance. If you get
(32:32):
saturated soils for too long. Insome areas, you can kill a lot
of sagebrush that way as well.
So there's those latitudeflooding, drought typically
occur at smaller scales, butthey are also present on the
landscape.
Megan Kay (32:50):
And then so in other ecosystems, prescribed fire is
used. Is there? What otherdisturbances, you know, human
trying to mimic natural ones.
But like, what? How? What otherways can humans or land
managers, you know, create thesedisturbances to try to restore
these resilient landscape?
Brad Schultz (33:11):
Well, looking back at the pre settlement area,
something nobody thinks abouttoday is if you had 25,000
Native Americans on thelandscape, and they burned fires
24 hours a day in their camps.
What fuel did they use?
(33:31):
Sagebrush was our mostpredominant fuel potential fuel
on the landscape. How muchsagebrush did they harvest, and
how did that affect that shrubbalance, grass ratio? And I've
only really heard one otherperson talk about their
harvesting of sagebrush, ourrancher here in the Winnemucca
(33:52):
area. But I think that'ssomething really worth looking
at, and perhaps our mowing tosome degree mimics that
herbicides have been attempted.
I forget the name of the onethat's used quite often, but
it's a granule, granularherbicide that they spread
(34:12):
under, underneath the plants.
And over time, in some settings,it has slowly reduced, killed
off sagebrush, or not generally,not every plant, but it
dramatically reduces the amountof sagebrush that's out there.
And one of the benefits of thatherbicide is it's generally a
slow acting so you don't changea lot fast, and we don't have a
(34:37):
lot of bunch grasses in theunderstory. That's probably
better than taking too much sagebrush out too fast. What it
really comes down to is anytreatment, thinking about it
strategically, all the differentuses that are out there, the
potential adverse impacts thatcould happen, and identifying
(34:59):
the best locations for each typeof treatment. No one type of
management treatment isappropriate every place. They
all probably have some utilitysomeplace. And then we often
tend to want to do things onceand have everything turn out
perfect. A lot of the managementgoing forward is going to be
(35:24):
multiple different actions, aseries of different actions.
Some might occur simultaneously,some might be sequential. And
then how does that sequence andthat timing differ from one
ecological site to another? Itmay not. It's undoubtedly not
going to be the same everyplace. And those are
complexities that take a lot ofthought and understanding of the
(35:47):
overall ecology area before youcan really figure out what is
most likely to be mostappropriate. And it's about
probabilities. There are no 100%guarantees other than, if we do
nothing, we're going to end upwith something we don't want.
Jamie Roice-Gomes (36:05):
Brad's point that our, our, our biggest
mistake is not doing anything atall, right? And so, you know,
because essentially, whathappened, you know, is there was
all this kind of manipulation ofthe landscape with grazing or
logging in the forest, right?
So, so you have these likesignificant impacts happening,
but you're not thoughtfullymanaging for adaptation,
(36:30):
ecosystem health resiliencealongside those disturbances
that you're introducing. And sothen you get all out of out of
sync, and so, you know, we needto continuously manage and
interact with the ecosystemsthat we live in and that
surround the areas in which welive, because we are so
(36:53):
ingrained and part of the systemthat if you just leave them
alone entirely, that's not asustainable path for us.
Brad Schultz (37:04):
These these lands have been managed, used by
people since way before Europeansettlers got here.
Jamie Roice-Gomes (37:13):
Yeah, 10s of 1000s of years.
Brad Schultz (37:14):
As far back as Native Americans go, which may
be 30,000 years or more indifferent areas, and we're using
it, starting to use a concepttoday. The term I've heard
(37:35):
recently is outcome basedmanagement. Well, that's the
same thing Native Americans weredoing when they were here, they
were managing landscapes foroutcomes they wanted based upon
their needs. So it's really nota new concept, we're just never
been put in those terms before,but it's, you know, it's outcome
based management, and that'sdeciding based on the capability
(37:58):
of what your lands are, whatresources you want them to
produce, and then what suite ofmanagement actions does it take
to achieve those outcomes?
Megan Kay (38:19):
Thank you for listening to the Living with
Fire Podcast, you can find morestories about wildfire and other
resources at livingwithfire.comthe Living with Fire program is
funded by the University ofNevada, Reno Extension, Nevada
Division of Forestry, Bureau ofLand Management and the United
States Forest Service.
Welcome. This is the first episode of The Living with
Fire Podcast. I'm your host,Megan Kay, the Outreach
Coordinator for Living with Fireand I'm joined by my two bosses,
Christina Restaino is here andJamie Roice-Gomes. You guys want
to introduce to introduceyourself?
Christina Restaino (00:46):
Yeah, my name is Christina Restaino. I am
the Director of the Living withFire Program.
Jamie Roice-Gomes (00:50):
Hi everyone.
Jamie Roice-Gomes, Manager ofthe Living with Fire Program.
Megan Kay (00:54):
Awesome. So we're here today to talk about our
interview we did with BradSchultz. He's the extension
educator out in Humboldt Countyfor University of Nevada, Reno
Extension. And he talked with usa while back about the history
of fire. In Nevada range lands.
You guys have had an opportunityto listen to the podcast, well,
I've listened to it a bunchbecause me and Jordan edit it,
(01:15):
so I'm gonna start off with yourguys thoughts. Jamie, want to go
first?
Jamie Roice-Gomes (01:16):
Yeah, I thought it was really
interesting. I didn't realizethat it was a hotly debated
question, when people aretalking about the fire history
on the range here in the GreatBasin, I honestly didn't even
consider that.
Megan Kay (01:29):
Yeah, I didn't realize that. I mean, I didn't
know anything about the scienceof history of fire. So it's
interesting to hear the sort of,the evidence that they have, and
also just a lot of it isspeculative because of which you
guys will hear about later. Whatabout you Christina?
Christina Restaino (01:48):
You know, I thought it was really cool how
he really talked a lot about howthese lands have been managed,
you know, perpetually andconstantly. And you don't really
think about the fact, like,okay, Native Americans were
having a lot of fire. They weregathering fuel and burning for
(02:14):
cooking, for manufacturing,right? It's like, I think more
about okay, staying warm andmaking food, but not like
manufacturing tools and clothingand things like that. And so you
know that just perpetual use offire all the time, and how that
really modified the fuelavailability on the landscape,
(02:37):
and how, with the absence ofthat. You know, what does that
mean for the fuels that we havenow? Right? We have, obviously
have so many fuels, and thishuge fuel issue. But I thought
that was really interesting.
Megan Kay (02:50):
Yeah, it seems to me, and you guys have a science
background, so when you guyswere learning about ecology,
were humans, talked about much?
Christina Restaino (03:00):
Oh, all the time.
Megan Kay (03:01):
All the time? Yeah.
So it's not exactly, it's notso, I don't know. It just seems,
it seems to me, like it's stillkind of like being understood,
though, the historic impact ofhumans in the landscape.
Christina Restaino (03:11):
I think it's often simplified, and I think
that that becomes, you know,it's the the same story. Native
Americans used a lot of fire.
The end. Right? As opposed tolike, well, how are they using
fire, and what times of yearwere they using fire, and what
were they using, what objectiveswere they using it for?
Jamie Roice-Gomes (03:30):
And what were they using to build those fires?
Like they were using sagebrushas the main fuel source. I mean,
I never considered that. Andthen I really thought it was
interesting when Brad brought upthe fact that, I mean, think
about how many campfires getloose today. I mean, if there is
a perpetual use of wildfire outon the landscape from Native
(03:50):
Americans, can you imagine howmany wildfires have gotten loose
then?
Megan Kay (03:53):
Seriously. Yeah, when he just laid out the math, my
brain was like, wow. And that'sjust for Northern Paiute
Shoshone people, which is like,or just Northern Paiute,
Christina Restaino (04:20):
Yeah. And then also, you know, the the
concept of, okay, then NativeAmericans were removed from the
land for the most part. Webrought in grazing, and we
started to develop landscapes.
And then the fine fuels wereremoved because of the grazing,
and then we didn't have anybefore.
(04:41):
fire, right? So it's like, youhave a bunch of fire all the
time. You don't have any fire,and now we have so much fire.
And so, you know, it's the samestory you hear in, you know, in
the Sierra Nevada ecosystems aswell, right? Right where you
have this well, we had fire, andthen we didn't have any fire,
(05:06):
and now we have a lot of fire.
And so, you know, just what arethe different ways that we
modify fuels as humans overtime? And then I love the point
at the end of, you know, wecan't not manage our ecosystems,
for fire, for ecosystemresilience, for climate change,
for any of these big, you know,problems and stressors that we
(05:29):
have because our ecosystems have
Jamie Roice-Gomes (05:32):
Yeah, I love how it ended on that.
always been managed andmanipulated in some way, whether
that be for the positive or thenegative. And so we can't just
step back and leave them aloneat this point, because there's
too, it's too complex.
Christina Restaino (05:49):
I did too.
Megan Kay (05:52):
Yeah, and something that I you know, when you're
learning about, like wildlife inthe ecosystem, you know, it's
you understand that animalshave, you know, we're animals
too, but they you understandthat wildlife have that sort of
symbiotic relationship wherethey are managing their little
habitats as well, and that'shaving an effect on the
(06:14):
ecosystem. But humans like itjust, you know, I'm learning as
well, and my brain is sort offorming to, you know, adapt to
this sort of like field ofstudy, and just the idea of,
yes, okay, humans in thelandscape, it's not just that
we're apart and separate. It'snot just that we should be hands
(06:36):
off and let mother nature do itsthing. It's like we are part of
it, and we always have been. Soyeah, I think that that part
really struck a chord with me,for sure.
Christina Restaino (06:44):
And we live in it and we keep building in
Megan Kay (06:47):
It's in our best interest to make sure that the
it.
outcomes of our land management,you know, strategies are
mutually beneficial to like allspecies. So, yeah, it was, I
mean, that's my little kumbayathing, but it's really, it's
definitely like, I've startedputting the pieces together, you
know, because I think there's alot of slogans, and there's a
(07:11):
lot of, like, cliches aboutnature and stewardship, but then
when you actually understandhumans roles, just in this
context with fire, then youreally, it's, I think it's like,
it helps, kind of like, bindthat all together for me, at
least so, and I hope it will forthe listeners to understand that
(07:31):
humans have always been in theselandscapes, and we're a huge
part of the resilience, likekeeping these things in check.
You know.
Brad Schultz (07:45):
So my name is Brad Schultz, and I'm the extension
educator for the University ofNevada Cooperative Extension
housed in Humboldt County thecity of Winnemucca. I've been in
this position for 20 years now,starting my 21st year, and my
program focus here is largelyrange management. I also do some
work, work with a noxious weedsand agricultural and pasture
(08:06):
settings. Within that context, Ido a lot of work with public
lands grazing issues. I'm on aquite a few different
collaborative planning processesfor different grazing
allotments. Been involved withthe sage-grouse planning issues
since it started here in 2001been working with Barry Perryman
quite a bit on fine fuelsmanagement, using livestock
(08:26):
during season grazing to managefine fuels, to try to reduce
fuel carry over and reduce thesize, intensity and probability
of large catastrophic wildfires.
Megan Kay (08:37):
How would you describe range management?
Brad Schultz (08:40):
So on rangelands, you're doing a type of land,
typically arid lands, notalways, but more often than not,
arid lands. So you're looking atwhat ecological processes,
mechanisms, interactions, affectthe distribution and abundance
of plants, animals, how theyinteract with soils, climate,
(09:02):
the flow of water, nutrientsthrough the system, and then the
management side is, whatspecific actions do you take to
manipulate those resources toachieve specific goals for the
benefit of society?
Megan Kay (09:15):
That's a very good, succinct explanation, and I feel
like I understand it better now.
So I think I'm excited for ourlisteners to hear that.
Brad Schultz (09:25):
And I probably should add people often equate
range management with livestockmanagement, and livestock
management is just one componentof range management. It's not,
livestock grazing is just oneuse of range fence. The two are
not this thing.
Megan Kay (09:38):
So this episoZde is about the history of fire in
Nevada, and I wanted to pickyour brain with your expertise,
and ask if you could paint apicture of what Nevada's range
lands used to look like, presettlement, and compare that to
how they look today.
Brad Schultz (09:51):
That's a really complex question without a
simple answer, and that'sbecause in Nevada, you have a
lot of environmental gradients,climatically, soils and so
forth. And those gradients runfrom the west side of the state
to the east side. Saw summerprecipitation increases as you
go to the east, and it gets alittle colder also north to
(10:13):
south, much colder in the north,very hot in the south. And then
you have elevation gradientsfrom less than 3000 feet to
almost 14,000 feet in parts ofthe state, and each of those
create a very complex landscape.
And all these different factorsreally determine the plant
communities you had out there.
So on, those lower, drier areasthat were formerly lakes and so
(10:37):
forth, you have what we call thesalt desert shrub community,
predominantly shrubs, relativelyfew grasses, except on sand
sheets, where you get a lot ofrice grass and so forth. Very
arid, very dry, very harsh sitesnot occupied by a lot of
prehistoric peoples, most of thetime, unless there were marshes
(10:58):
there the terminus of the riversand so forth. Moving up, you get
into the valleys, the alluvialfans. You start in the middle of
fans, up across these fans. Youcan do another we can call the
sagebrush grass plantcommunities going on to the
hillsides, more sagebrush andgrass, higher elevation, little
cooler, more moisture, much moreproductive. So a very
(11:21):
heterogeneous, very dynamic landscape.
Megan Kay (11:24):
Can I ask you a quick question before we move on? Can
you explain what the role offire was historically?
Brad Schultz (11:29):
Fire was widespread across much of the
sagebrush region. The generalrole of fire is to reduce woody
vegetation, whether it's shrubsor trees, particularly those
that don't sprout from the rootcrown or buds on the roots after
any kind of disturbance.
Sagebrush is a non sprouter mostof our conifer trees are non
sprouters. Aspen does sproutafter fire. Some of a few other
(11:51):
shrubs do as well, but firewould really reduce those shrubs
typically the time of year fireburns, mid summer, late summer
into the fall. Grasses aredormant. Their growing points
are below the ground surface, sothey're perennial bunch grasses.
There were very few annualspresent at that point in time.
These bunch grasses are largelyunaffected by most fires that
(12:13):
would burn that time of year. Sobunch grasses would increase
after a fire, and then overtime, plant succession,
vegetation change that occurs.
The shrubs would slowlyincrease, grasses would start to
decrease. Fire would come backand return that balance. And
across a large landscape, fireswould occur periodically, but at
(12:36):
different places, at differenttimes, and you would get a very
strong mosaic pattern ofpredominant grasses in some
areas, predominantly shrubs inothers, and most of it being a
mix in between that confers alot of benefits to the wildlife
species that occupy ourrangelands in Nevada. There's
probably well over 200 species,when we look at birds and
(12:59):
mammals, and a small set ofthose are what we call sagebrush
obligates. They requiresagebrush, the presence of
sagebrush, at least some pointin time, every year, within
their annual cycle, to survive.
If you don't have thatsagebrush, they either don't
survive or they have incrediblysmall populations. On the other
end, we have a few species thatprefer predominantly grasses.
(13:23):
They're considered grasslandspecies, and most are somewhere
in the middle, that do fairlygood with a reasonably good mix
of sagebrush shrubs and grassestogether, when you get that
mosaic across the landscape, dothat, that fire mechanism that
fire disturbance that occurredperiodically, you would end up
having this broad mix ofdifferent successional classes
(13:47):
that would allow all thosespecies to be present in most
places and not confined to verysmall areas of the landscape.
Megan Kay (13:59):
How often did fire happen?
Brad Schultz (14:01):
That is a very hotly debated question. It's
very difficult to understandthat in Nevada, because the best
way to document fire history isscars on trees, and most of
Nevada has very few long livedtrees. They can document that
fire history going backhundreds, if not thousands of
years. Another part of thatreally gets forgotten is most
(14:25):
people, they're very familiarwith lightning. They know
lightning causes fires. Whateverybody forgets about is the
role of Native Americans on thelandscape. Now, Native American
populations weren't overly highlarge in Nevada, 25,000 or give
or take, depending on whichanthropologist you want to look
(14:46):
at, probably confined to certainareas where water was available
year round, along the mainrivers, the perennial
tributaries, marshes and soforth. But they used fire every
day of the year. 24 hours a day,because fire was was used, not
just for cooking, butmanufacturing that their
clothes, their tools, theimpediments they need, they
(15:09):
needed to survive and so forth.
If you had one fire supportingfour people and a population of
25,000 people, you probably have3000, 6000 campfires burning
every day. Think about how manycampfires escape now, when you
have a lot fewer, and theemphasis on putting them out,
and none of them burn 24 hours aday, so you probably had some
(15:31):
escape fires from that. But theyalso use fire to manage
vegetation, for hunt, to huntanimals. Furs were a primary
source of clothing and so forth.
So they use fire veryextensively to manage landscapes
as well. Undoubtedly, some ofthose got very large, but they
(15:51):
and they used them every year,exactly how big fires got, how
often they got away, how muchthey burn, how they burn is
really quite speculative, but Iwould expect that with the very
patchy environment you had withyour vegetation and so forth,
more grasses, some areas, moreshrubs than others, that fires,
(16:13):
even when they got large, wereburned much patchier when they
burned into grasslands. They'reprobably more likely to go out
at night, where nowadays, whenthey burn at night, often
burning in heavy fuels, shrubsand so forth. So there's enough
fuel to carry those firesthrough the night and burn the
(16:34):
next day.
Megan Kay (16:35):
And so they were likely to go at night because of
like, temperatures and humidity.
Brad Schultz (16:39):
Temperature and humidity, even a little bit of
humidity recovery, we justdidn't have the large fuels.
Basin wildrye might be the onegrass that was an exception,
because it can be a very largeplant with a large roof, crown
and so forth. But there's reallya lot of unknowns within that.
Native American fires wereprobably concentrated in certain
areas, because their populationswere concentrated. And the
(17:01):
farther you moved away fromthat, there was probably less
influence. And then thelightning would have been a
greater role. The full extent ofthat is really an unknown.
Megan Kay (17:21):
84% of wildfires nationwide are caused by people.
If you're planning on headingout and enjoying public lands,
visit nevadafireinfo.org andlearn how you can recreate
responsibly and do your part toprevent wildfires.
So that mosaic pattern you'retalking about, it seems like
(17:43):
that was a key part of thelandscape, and its ability to
withstand fire and not, youknow, to experience periodic
fire without devastatingwildlife and habitats.
Brad Schultz (17:56):
Yeah, I would, you know, and none of this is really
definitive knowledge. It's basedon a lot of ads, a mix of
anecdotal and small scalestudies and looking at patterns
and so forth. But when you hadthat diverse landscape, fuel
loads, vary fuel continuitycarried, and most large fires
(18:19):
are accompanied by at leastlight to moderate and heavy
winds. And when you have thathigh diversity of fuel
continuity and fuel loads, yourwinds are going to they often
get quite square, what we callsquirrely and so forth change
direction a lot. So that's goingto push fire differently than
when you have one continuousfuel. If you were to go out and
look at the Martin fire when itburned a couple years ago across
(18:41):
the Hawaii desert that was onecontinuous stand of sage brush
for mile after mile, very highcover 20, 30% cover or more, no
breaks, no discontinuity in thatfuel. So it allowed one very
long, wide, broad front of afire to move across the entire
(19:02):
southern part of the Hawaiidesert. If that had been broken
up with 100 acres of fine fuelshere, or predominantly grasses
here, 1000 acres there, it wouldhave changed the pattern of that
fire front, and it would haveundoubtedly resulted in a very
different burning pattern,probably more unburned islands.
There are some large, unburnedislands out there now, but it
(19:22):
probably would have been muchdifferent.
Megan Kay (19:24):
That's a good segue into kind of talking about what
the rangeland and the vegetationand the wildlife look like
today, as opposed tohistorically, with that mosaic
pattern.
Brad Schultz (19:36):
In many ways, it's quite different today than it
was prior to settlement byEuropeans, one of the first
things that happened withEuropean settlement was the
massive introduction oflivestock to the Great Basin,
initially cattle, and thenfollowed by sheep. We had
livestock numbers many orders ofmagnitude greater than today.
(19:59):
They graze these areas what wecall season long from the time
the plants turn green in thespring and the snow melted the
entire growing season and clearinto the fall and sometimes the
winter. Grass plants, while theyhave many features that tolerate
grazing, no grass plant iscapable of surviving grazing
(20:22):
that occurs the entire growingseason every year, year after
year. Parallel with that, wasthe introduction of invasive
annual grasses that originatedfrom Europe and Eurasia,
probably as a contaminant in thegrain seed that was brought over
and seeded on the early farms.
Cheatgrass later, Medusaheadnow, Ventenata, is another one
(20:45):
that's coming, but predominantlycheatgrass is one everybody's
familiar with. These slowlystarted to spread across the
landscape, probably initiallyfollowing all the infrastructure
that was developed. This allowedthem to move across the
landscape, and then that startedto interact with a lot of the
other natural non humandisturbances out there.
Megan Kay (21:05):
So cattle production, you outlined how important that
was to the change. But whatabout fire and fire suppression?
And like human just humanssuppressing fire because they're
building houses in there. Howthey have settlements.
Brad Schultz (21:21):
The settlement and the widespread grazing, it
decreased the amount of finefuels. And fine fuels are where
most ignition would occur in thesummertime, from lightning,
Native American burningcompletely went away by about
1900 probably even earlier thanthat. It was, it was almost non
existent. So that source of firewas gone. Settlers, there was
(21:46):
some burning periodically. Butthe the European attitude
towards fire was, fire isgenerally bad on the landscape.
We don't want to burn thingspast history from where they
came from. It's a reflection ofthat, and it's also they're
seeing their forage, potentialforage, go away for a couple of
(22:07):
years when fires burn. So it wasthat.
Megan Kay (22:12):
It was like a matter of survival. They're like, we
can't that's our food sourcestop the fire from.
Brad Schultz (22:18):
So human caused fire initially went way down,
and so you didn't have thesources out there, and you
didn't have the fine fuels toignite as easily and to
initially carry a fire,particularly in non windy
conditions, where you get a lotof small fires, and our large
fires, even prior to settlement,were probably a very small part
(22:41):
of the total number of fires,but they probably burnt the most
acreage. But did it happen everyyear? Every five years, every 10
years? That that's really anunknown will probably never be
answered.
Megan Kay (22:52):
So how often is fire happening now? It seems like
it's, there's a ton of fire.
Brad Schultz (22:58):
So in your lower elevations, where cheatgrass has
become predominant. Fire is muchmore frequent than it used to
be. Some areas, I've seen someareas burn three or four times
since I've been here inWinnemucca, and that was really
common. Where were what most ofour fires were, these heat grass
driven fires before about 2000,2005 since about 2005 I've seen
(23:19):
an increase in our large firesin our mid and upper elevations
that are sage brush driven,shrub driven, most of these
areas have a at least a decentunderstory of perennial grasses
today, and they often come backlargely as perennial grasslands.
But those areas, typically, alot of them, haven't burned in
probably over 100 years, maybeeven much longer. And it's a
(23:39):
combination of this historiclivestock grazing that reduced
those fine fuels early on,followed by a very intensive
fire suppression era starting inthe 1930s that lack of fire,
that lack of disturbance, neverset the shrubs back, never
decreased them across very largeexpenses, hundreds of thousands
of acres, million acres or more,at times, and those shrubs have
(24:02):
slowly increased. You're getting20, 25, 30% shrub cover. And
every one of those sagebrushplants has about 300 different
volatile oils in it that arehighly flammable. So a sagebrush
plant that's three foot tall caneasily put off probably a 9-15
foot length flame, especiallywhen it's windy. And if you have
(24:22):
two to four feet between plants,and you get some wind, it pushes
that flame over from plant toplant. And when you've got 50
miles like you had on the Martinfire of continuous sagebrush
like that, that's highlyflammable in a very dry year
with a good understory of bunchgrasses, and most of it that
fire can move incredibly fastand incredibly far, very
Megan Kay (24:42):
Something that is interesting to me, when we're
talking about the history offire, is, and I keep going back
to what you were talking about,it's a lot of it is largely
speculative, because we it's notlike other ecosystems where you
can study tree rings and scars.
I'm just curious as to becausethis is sort of an ongoing field
of study and topic, how muchdoes understanding the history
(25:04):
of fire play into current landmanagement and how it's
evolving?
Brad Schultz (25:12):
Well, I think what the history of fire in the Great
Basin in sagebrush grass zonetells us is you need some amount
of periodic disturbance that'sgoing to reduce the shrubs for
some period of time and maintainthe bunch grasses, or allow the
bunch grasses to fully occupythe site. But in today's world,
(25:35):
it's really not so much aboutfire as understanding
disturbance and how it affectsthat shrub grass relationship,
you're not going to use fire thesame way the current prior to
settlement. We've got newplayers, more people on the
landscape, more infrastructurethat we don't want to burn.
We've got an invasive speciesthat can respond to it, so it's
not appropriate every place, butdisturbance of some type is is
(25:57):
still going to be needed tomaintain that shrub grass
balance, so that we have what wecall resilient plant
communities. By resilience,we're talking enough bunch
grasses on site that when a fireor some other disturbance
happens, they immediately occupythe site. They remain on the
site to competitively excludethose undesired species and keep
(26:18):
them from taking over more andmore of a landscape. Fires, I
think has a definite role insome areas. We have that good
bunch grass under story and youcan control it. One thing I
don't think we've looked at isusing fire outside the time
frames we've normally done it. Ithink a lot of these sage brush
(26:39):
areas, if you could get theright equipment out there,
helicopters, drip torches inDecember or January, when you've
got six inches of snow on theground, you could burn a lot of
small areas, half acre, quarteracre, couple acres, And a very
(26:59):
patchy environment, and haveabsolutely no effect on that
herbaceous understory and thesoil that hasn't been looked at
at all, but I think there'stremendous opportunity for that.
It might provide opportunitiesin those areas where cheatgrass
is the predominant understoryspecies. I haven't thought about
(27:21):
that as much, but there probablyare potential opportunities
there as well.
Megan Kay (27:32):
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Prepare for evacuation now,create an evacuation plan and
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Jamie Roice-Gomes (27:58):
So Brad, the narrative that we hear a lot is
that there's too much fire inthe rangeland ecosystems now,
right? And there's too littlefire in the forest ecosystems.
Can you talk about that a littlebit? Are there? Are there kind
of zones within the RangelandEcosystem where there might be
(28:19):
too little fire versus too muchfire?
Brad Schultz (28:21):
I would say definitely yes. I think a lot of
our mid and upper elevationshave probably, especially those
that haven't burned in the last100 or more years, have probably
had too little fire. And whenyou talk about fire, you can't
just talk about the presence orabsence of fire, but you have to
(28:42):
talk about the size of it. Andwe're not talking about large
scale fires. We're talking abouta lot of small and small has
different connotations todifferent people. A few acres
here, a few acres there, 100acres there, and maybe some in
the 1000-2000 acre, but it's andthen it's also the configuration
(29:04):
of that, you know, 1000 acressquare has much different effect
on how a landscape is used andthe animals that use it. Than
1000 acres, that's a longcorridor, say, 300 feet wide on
average. So, you know, you can'tjust say fire. It's how fire
occurs, the size of it, therelationship of one patch is
(29:26):
burned to another. Fire is avery complex it's not an off on switch.
Unknown (29:32):
And also, what happens, where the fire occurs, the
effects, what conditions Is itburning under? What's the
severity of fire? How does itinfluence the soil, etc, right?
So there's a lot of complexitiesto what the fire does to the
landscape, but it does seem likein our cheatgrass invaded
ecosystems, that's where we'reseeing this re-burn cycle
(29:56):
happening too close together.
Brad Schultz (29:59):
Oh, without a doubt, and a lot of those areas,
this fire was probably on a 50to 75 year return interval. And
you're talking three to fivemaybe 10 years now, and you'll
never get probably the bunchgrasses coming back, and
definitely not the sagebrush andthe non sprouting shrubs. You're
(30:19):
actually seeing an increase inshrubs like horse brush and
rabbit brush that sprout rightafter fire. They have buds on
the root, crown of the rootsthat get regrow stems then they
fire. Is very positive on them.
They respond to it very well,and they're generally undesired
species at a high abundance.
Megan Kay (30:38):
Yeah. I mean the just in the Reno area, like that
Caughlin fire that was, I feellike that, that hill up in
Caughlin ranch burns like everyfive to seven years. It seems
like.
Brad Schultz (30:50):
And I would add that just because an area may
have burned frequently prior tosettlement doesn't mean fire is
the best disturbance mechanismfor managing that landscape now,
a lot of things have changed.
Megan Kay (31:03):
What other disturbance mechanisms are there
that are commonly used.
Brad Schultz (31:09):
Insects and pests.
We have a defoliating moth thatoccurs periodically throughout
the Great Basin, the Aroga moth,and it can defoliate vast areas
of sagebrush.
Megan Kay (31:21):
What does defoliate mean?
Brad Schultz (31:23):
Take the leaves off.
Megan Kay (31:24):
Okay, well that makes sense.
Brad Schultz (31:28):
So they eat the leaves. And sagebrush is
actually a very grazing,intolerant plant. It's most of
the bugs that produce new growthfrom year to year are on the
outer inch of the stems. So ifyou defoliate that part of the
plant, you kill it very easilyand and there are some large
(31:49):
tracks of Northern Nevada thatjust in the last five to 10
years have been defoliated bythese insects. And if they have
a good bunch grass under story,those bunch grasses occupy the
site, you have good resilience,and you have the ability of
sagebrush to slowly return to asite if you don't have bunch
grasses. In the end of story,that's when you start to get the
annual grasses. Some of ourintense, prolonged droughts that
(32:12):
occur periodically candramatically reduce or even kill
off sagebrush in some areas,generally not large tracks, but
it does happen. On the otherextreme, we tend to think wet
years are very, very good andvery beneficial, but you can get
too wet, and that can also be adisturbance. If you get
(32:32):
saturated soils for too long. Insome areas, you can kill a lot
of sagebrush that way as well.
So there's those latitudeflooding, drought typically
occur at smaller scales, butthey are also present on the
landscape.
Megan Kay (32:50):
And then so in other ecosystems, prescribed fire is
used. Is there? What otherdisturbances, you know, human
trying to mimic natural ones.
But like, what? How? What otherways can humans or land
managers, you know, create thesedisturbances to try to restore
these resilient landscape?
Brad Schultz (33:11):
Well, looking back at the pre settlement area,
something nobody thinks abouttoday is if you had 25,000
Native Americans on thelandscape, and they burned fires
24 hours a day in their camps.
What fuel did they use?
(33:31):
Sagebrush was our mostpredominant fuel potential fuel
on the landscape. How muchsagebrush did they harvest, and
how did that affect that shrubbalance, grass ratio? And I've
only really heard one otherperson talk about their
harvesting of sagebrush, ourrancher here in the Winnemucca
(33:52):
area. But I think that'ssomething really worth looking
at, and perhaps our mowing tosome degree mimics that
herbicides have been attempted.
I forget the name of the onethat's used quite often, but
it's a granule, granularherbicide that they spread
(34:12):
under, underneath the plants.
And over time, in some settings,it has slowly reduced, killed
off sagebrush, or not generally,not every plant, but it
dramatically reduces the amountof sagebrush that's out there.
And one of the benefits of thatherbicide is it's generally a
slow acting so you don't changea lot fast, and we don't have a
(34:37):
lot of bunch grasses in theunderstory. That's probably
better than taking too much sagebrush out too fast. What it
really comes down to is anytreatment, thinking about it
strategically, all the differentuses that are out there, the
potential adverse impacts thatcould happen, and identifying
(34:59):
the best locations for each typeof treatment. No one type of
management treatment isappropriate every place. They
all probably have some utilitysomeplace. And then we often
tend to want to do things onceand have everything turn out
perfect. A lot of the managementgoing forward is going to be
(35:24):
multiple different actions, aseries of different actions.
Some might occur simultaneously,some might be sequential. And
then how does that sequence andthat timing differ from one
ecological site to another? Itmay not. It's undoubtedly not
going to be the same everyplace. And those are
complexities that take a lot ofthought and understanding of the
(35:47):
overall ecology area before youcan really figure out what is
most likely to be mostappropriate. And it's about
probabilities. There are no 100%guarantees other than, if we do
nothing, we're going to end upwith something we don't want.
Jamie Roice-Gomes (36:05):
Brad's point that our, our, our biggest
mistake is not doing anything atall, right? And so, you know,
because essentially, whathappened, you know, is there was
all this kind of manipulation ofthe landscape with grazing or
logging in the forest, right?
So, so you have these likesignificant impacts happening,
but you're not thoughtfullymanaging for adaptation,
(36:30):
ecosystem health resiliencealongside those disturbances
that you're introducing. And sothen you get all out of out of
sync, and so, you know, we needto continuously manage and
interact with the ecosystemsthat we live in and that
surround the areas in which welive, because we are so
(36:53):
ingrained and part of the systemthat if you just leave them
alone entirely, that's not asustainable path for us.
Brad Schultz (37:04):
These these lands have been managed, used by
people since way before Europeansettlers got here.
Jamie Roice-Gomes (37:13):
Yeah, 10s of 1000s of years.
Brad Schultz (37:14):
As far back as Native Americans go, which may
be 30,000 years or more indifferent areas, and we're using
it, starting to use a concepttoday. The term I've heard
(37:35):
recently is outcome basedmanagement. Well, that's the
same thing Native Americans weredoing when they were here, they
were managing landscapes foroutcomes they wanted based upon
their needs. So it's really nota new concept, we're just never
been put in those terms before,but it's, you know, it's outcome
based management, and that'sdeciding based on the capability
(37:58):
of what your lands are, whatresources you want them to
produce, and then what suite ofmanagement actions does it take
to achieve those outcomes?
Megan Kay (38:19):
Thank you for listening to the Living with
Fire Podcast, you can find morestories about wildfire and other
resources at livingwithfire.comthe Living with Fire program is
funded by the University ofNevada, Reno Extension, Nevada
Division of Forestry, Bureau ofLand Management and the United
States Forest Service.
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